Visitors walk past a 5G logo during the Mobile World Congress on the third day of the MWC in Barcelona, on March 1, 2017. The new year for smartphones is about to dawn. The South Korean electronics giant is is the headline exhibitor at the Mobile World Congress trade show that commences over the weekend, drawing some 108,000 attendees to the mobile industry's annual signature shindig. The S9 represents Samsung's turn to try and leapfrog Apple's most recent iPhones, as the rivals resume their bottomless battle for smartphone supremacy. Leaks point to a Galaxy phone with, among other features, an improved camera system.

Google Assistant had its coming out party at Mobile World Congress 2017 with the announcement that it was expanding beyond Google's own Pixel phones, and now it's ready to take on the world. Google has announced it will be expanding Assistant to nearly two dozen more languages this year as it expands its influence to some "95 percent of all eligible Android phones worldwide." Google Assistant already speaks English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Portuguese (Brazil), but its linguist capabilities will be greatly expanded over the next 10 months as Google plans to add support for more than 30 languages. First up will be Danish, Dutch, Hindi, Indonesian, Norwegian, Swedish and Thai, all of which should arrive by summer. Along with the new languages comes support for multilingual speakers.

Today's Google Assistant is much, much more capable than the version that first debuted on the original Pixel and Pixel XL. Don't expect that progress to slow anytime soon, either: Google laid out some new plans to improve the Assistant just in time for Mobile World Congress, and they extend far beyond just teaching it more languages. Most importantly, Google confirmed it has been working with smartphone makers on ways to weave Assistant more elegantly into our smartphones. That work is being formalized in the new Assistant Mobile OEM program, and Google's list of accomplishments with its partners is nothing to sneeze at: it helped make Assistant compatible with certain kinds of mobile AI coprocessor and worked to make sure devices can listen for the right wake-words even when their screens are off. It won't be long before you start to see device-specific Google Assistant commands, either -- LG touted a list of 23 new commands for its updated V30, and Google also cited close working relationships with companies like Sony and Xiaomi.

The Huawei #Mate10Pro has the power to be so much more. Here's what happened when we pushed its object recognition to new limits – using it to pilot a #driverlesscar. Disclaimer: Images were recorded by professionals in closed circuit and under due surveillance to prevent any animal or personal harm. This video has been created for exclusive marketing purposes to demonstrate the potential ability of artificial intelligence included on Huawei devices, this feature is not commercially available on any Huawei device. Huawei strongly discourages public to replicate the action and this video shall not be understood to encourage people to mistreat others or animals nor to use Huawei devices in cars as a driverless tool.

Unlike other driverless cars, which simply detect obstacles, Huawei's RoadReacher project claims to have turned a Porsche Panamera into a driverless vehicle that does not just see, it "understands" its surroundings. Using the image recognition AI-chip embedded in the Huawei Mate 10, the car can now distinguish between thousands of different objects such as: cat or dog, or, ball or bike, and take the most appropriate action. "Our smartphone is already outstanding at object recognition. We wanted to see if in a short space of time we could teach it to not only drive a car, but to use its AI capabilities to see certain objects, and be taught to avoid them" said Andrew Garrihy, chief marketing officer, Huawei Western Europe. Huawei will be showcasing the RoadReader project and the vehicle's capabilities at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona from 26 to 27 February.

Maximizing intelligence on client devices residing on the edge of the network ensures AI-powered user experiences can be realized with better overall performance and with or without a network connection. The key benefits of on-device AI include real-time responsiveness, improved privacy, and enhanced reliability. Supported within the AI Engine, Snapdragon core hardware architectures – Qualcomm Hexagon Vector Processor, Qualcomm Adreno GPU and Qualcomm Kryo CPU – are engineered to run AI applications quickly and efficiently on-device. This heterogeneous computing approach gives developers and OEMs the ability to optimize AI user experiences on smartphones and other edge devices. "On-device AI demands multiple hardware architectures, software tools, and frameworks to meet developer demand and performance thresholds for the myriad of AI-powered features and apps arriving on smartphones this year," said Gary Brotman, director of product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "The AI Engine capabilities of select Snapdragon mobile platforms have and will continue to fuel AI innovation among our OEMs and ecosystem partners, and are engineered to accelerate the development and delivery of rich, seamless and compelling features for consumers."

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are two of the latest networking buzzwords being thrown around the industry. The problem is many enterprise network managers remain confused about the real value of these vastly useful technologies. Emerging network analytics services, powered by AI and machine learning promise to transform traditional infrastructure management models by simplifying operations, lowering costs, and giving unprecedented insights into the user experience – improving the productivity of both IT professionals and their users. For network staff, the concept and value of these technologies is extremely powerful if applied to the right problems. One big problem is today's operational challenge in dealing with the mass of user, device, application and network service data traversing the enterprise access infrastructure.

Nordstrom is transforming the way that they do business and the cloud is the key to enabling speed and hyper personalized customer experiences.

Comcast's voice remote for its X1 platform has become an increasingly popular feature, and the operator has kept it stocked with a constant flow of updates that, for example, support voice commands for special events such as the Super Bowl or the Winter Olympics. The technology that underpins that platform is also branching well beyond the TV. Comcast has already started to integrate the X1 voice remote with Xfinity Home, its home security and automation service. Comcast also recently added another voice wrinkle with a Phone Finder feature for Xfinity Mobile. Those customers can activate it by saying, "Xfinity Mobile, find my phone" into the X1 voice remote, or by uttering their 10-digit phone number into the remote.

Huawei has really upped its game in recent years, especially with the launch of its Huawei Mate 10 Series late last year. Its sleek build aside, its specifications are pretty outstanding. In fact, it boasts Kirin 970 – which Huawei designed and built itself – the world's first AI processor for smartphones with a dedicated Neural-Network Processing Unit (NPU). This chipset pretty much fuels the smartphone's machine-learning features and includes a special module dedicated to AI calculations. AI is becoming increasingly important in today's smartphone experience, and coupled with machine learning, they are the reasons why our phones are getting better and more powerful every year.