Samsung, Apple to Vie for Top Honors at MWC Awards

The Global Mobile awards, presented at Mobile World Congress every year, are the biggest industry-wide awards mobile has to offer, and the shortlist just came out in advance of the show. This year, Apple, Huawei, LG, and Samsung are up for top prizes.

Ziff Davis, PCMag's parent company, is a media sponsor of MWC, and I am on the judging panel for this year's Global Mobile Awards.

Of the multiple categories, consumers will be most interested in the device categories. The "best smartphone" and "disruptive device innovation" awards are nominated and selected by a panel of journalists and analysts, and this year, the iPhone X, Huawei Mate 10 Pro, LG V30, Samsung Galaxy S8, and Samsung Galaxy Note 8 are up for the honors.

The phones are selected by the panel based on their technical prowess and commercial success. One or the other isn't enough—you have to have a device that's both ground-breaking and successful in the market to win.

The "disruptive device innovation" award celebrates features that made a mark in mobile in 2017. Apple's ARKit and TrueDepth Camera are on the list, as is Google's Pixel Visual Core, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835, and Samsung's 18.5:9 displays.

"Best Overall Mobile Consumer Innovation" has some weird nominees, though: WeChat, which has been around for a while; the Nintendo Switch, which is excellent; and HQ Trivia, a noxious and poorly programmed fad. But that's just my opinion.

Paging through the list of other awards, there are some fun discussions in there. Personally, I like the "Smart City Award," and I'm looking forward to seeing how Barcelona, Bristol (?), Dubai, New York (trust me, not smart), Singapore and Yinchuan (??) duke it out.

In 2017, the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge won the best smartphone award; in 2016, it was the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. It'll be interesting to see if any of the other players manage to loosen Samsung's grip this year.

Winners will be announced at 9:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday, Feb. 27.

About Our Expert

Sascha Segan

Former Lead Analyst, Mobile

My Experience

I'm that 5G guy. I've actually been here for every "G." I reviewed well over a thousand products during 18 years working full-time at PCMag.com, including every generation of the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S. I also wrote a weekly newsletter, Fully Mobilized, where I obsessed about phones and networks.

My Areas of Expertise

US and Canadian mobile networks
Mobile phones released in the US
iPads, Android tablets, and ebook readers
Mobile hotspots
Big data features such as Fastest Mobile Networks and Best Work-From-Home Cities

The Technology I Use

Being cross-platform is critical for someone in my position. In the US, the mobile world is split pretty cleanly between iOS and Android. So I think it's really important to have Apple, Android and Windows devices all in my daily orbit.

I use a Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 for work and a 2021 Apple MacBook Pro for personal use. My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, although I'm probably going to move to an Android foldable. Most of my writing is either in Microsoft OneNote or a free notepad app called Notepad++. Number crunching, which I do often for those big data stories, is via Microsoft Excel, DataGrip for MySQL, and Tableau.

In terms of apps and cloud services, I use both Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive heavily, although I also have iCloud because of the three Macs and three iPads in our house. I subscribe to way too many streaming services.

My primary tablet is a 12.9-inch, 2020-model Apple iPad Pro. When I want to read a book, I've got a 2018-model flat-front Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. My home smart speakers run Google Home, and I watch a TCL Roku TV. And Verizon Fios keeps me connected at home.

My first computer was an Atari 800 and my first cell phone was a Qualcomm Thin Phone. I still have very fond feelings about both of them.

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