MWC 2016: what we want to see

MWC 2015 has been and gone, but the products which were announced there aren't likely to be forgotten any time soon, from the flagship HTC One M9 and Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphones, to the stylish Huawei Watch and the innovative Galaxy S6 Edge - and those are just some of the highlights.

But we're already looking towards next year's show and thinking of all the things we want to see, whether it's improvements on this year's offerings or completely new ideas, there's a lot we're hoping for.

A truly bendy phone

Samsung and LG have teased us with the likes of the Galaxy S6 Edge and the LG G Flex 2, but we want someone to take these ideas to the next step, with a bendable phone or at the very least a phone which makes good use of its curves.

Hopefully something will manage that at MWC 2016 and hopefully it will be a flagship, rather than being designed as a niche device.

Bigger batteries rather than slimmer phones

The Samsung Galaxy S6 is a brilliant phone, but in focusing on design and making it as slim as possible Samsung forgot about one of the key things - good battery life, and many other manufacturers are almost as guilty of this.

We'll happily take a thicker phone if it means a bigger battery, we'll even pay a little more, so hopefully the powers that be, or the people that make, are listening, and many of the phones announced at MWC 2016 have great battery life.

Battery innovation

As well as thicker batteries how about new batteries? The same type of juice packs have been powering our phones for years and the reality is that they're just not very good.

New battery technology is being researched all the time and hopefully by next year some of that will have gone past the research stage and been implemented into smartphones. Origami batteries anyone? Or how about super-fast charging ones?'

HTC One M10

The HTC One M9 launched at MWC 2015 and there's a good chance we'll see the HTC One M10 at MWC 2016. But what specifically do we want? A better battery would be a good start, but beyond that it needs to be substantially different to and better than the M9.

That might mean changing the admittedly brilliant design, or maybe HTC will achieve it by adding new features to the phone, like a fingerprint or iris scanner, but the company needs to do something, because as great as the M9 is it feels like HTC's treading water.

Samsung Galaxy S7

There's also a good chance we'll see the Samsung Galaxy S7 at MWC 2016 and we hope so too, especially after how impressive the S6 was.

Battery life is a key concern again and it would be good if Samsung could return some of the features it cut from the S6, like a microSD card slot and a water resistant build.

More power, without the heat

Each year we see ever more powerful phones, but this year the mobile chip of choice - the Snapdragon 810, has been subject to overheating concerns.

No-one wants a toasty phone, especially not when excessive heat can risk damaging the innards too, so we hope whatever phones are announced at MWC 2016 are even more powerful, but without the heat. This shouldn't be a problem, in fact Fujitsu already claims to have the answer.

Smartwatches hitting their stride

It's still early days when it comes to smartwatches. The latest ones like the LG Watch Urbane, the Huawei Watch and the Apple Watch are finally starting to look less like tech and more like fashion, but they still have a way to go before they're likely to convince the masses to ditch their dumb-watches.

There needs to be other improvements too, with battery life key among them. We hope that by MWC 2016 many of the problems faced by smartwatches will have been solved and they'll be ready for prime time.

Modular mayhem

We were hoping Google would show off Project Ara at MWC 2015, but sadly that didn't happen. Still, we doubt we'll have to wait till MWC 2016 for a good look at it, no, what we want by then is for there to be a whole heap of modular phones, or at least a whole heap of modules for phones.

Then we'll be free to fix whatever the manufacturers inevitably get wrong/not to our tastes. No fingerprint scanner? Add one. Rubbish camera? Switch it for a better one. Battery too small? Put a bigger one in. And never buy a whole new phone again. Maybe.

A bigger Windows Phone presence

Windows Phone has had a tough time up against the might of Android and iOS and it feels like an eternity since the last Lumia flagship. But Windows 10 Mobile should be out later this year and hopefully that will kick-start production of more handsets.

We probably won't have to wait until 2016 for a new flagship, but hopefully a new OS will lead to a boost in popularity and with it a slew of new Windows Phone devices at MWC 2016.

Surprises

Surprises are always fun. Well, not always, there was that one time with the trampoline and the custard, but we don't talk about it.

When it comes to MWC more powerful devices are a given, new phones from HTC and Samsung are likely and everything else we've hoped for, well, we already hope for it, so it won't be much of a surprise.

So surprise us assorted tech makers. Bring us something we can't predict. Just make sure it's not something rubbish. And there's no custard. We never want to see custard again.

• We've got a wishlist for CES 2016 too.

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