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Our favorite phones and tech from 2017’s Mobile World Congress

We've sifted through all the announcements so you don't have to.

When you think "big tech trade show at the beginning of the year," you probably think of CES. That's a big show for desktop and laptop PCs, PC and gaming accessories, home appliances, TVs, and an ever-increasing number of "smart" doodads. But if you're looking for news about smartphones and tablets and the chips that make them tick, the bigger show is February's Mobile World Congress.

We saw a bunch of things on the show floor at MWC this year, but there were a handful of devices that stood out from the crowd. The list below represents our favorite announcements from the show, and they're the devices you should keep an eye on as they begin to roll out to consumers in the coming months.

Best flagship smartphone: The LG G6

Considered as a total package, the LG G6 is the best flagship phone announcement to come out of MWC. We don't love its older Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor or its potentially fragile glass back, but we do like the way that the slim bezels and the skinny, tall 5.7-inch screen make the phone easier to hold than some other large phones. It doesn't hurt that it's a slick design that looks and feels great. Last year's modular LG G5 had some interesting ideas, but sometimes a more conventional design with great execution is better for potential buyers.

Best midrange smartphone: The Nokia 6

If you want the best "pure Google" Android phone and prompt software and security updates and you're willing to pay flagship smartphone prices, you can get a Google Pixel. But what do you do if you want those things but don't want to pay out the nose?

The answer to that question might just be "get a Nokia 6." The company's throwback feature phone probably got more press coverage, but the Android-based Nokia 3, 5, and 6 all look really promising. The phones' manufacturer, HMD, is promising a "pure, secure, and up-to-date" lineup that gets prompt monthly security updates and quick updates to new Android versions. And we came away impressed by the Nokia 6's build quality and specs, given that it costs about a third of what a Pixel will run you.

Nokia and HMD will still need to prove that they can actually follow through on their big talk about software updates and support, but for now, HMD is at least saying the right things.

Best spec sheet: The Sony Xperia XZ Premium

Practical phones are all well and good, but as with all things tech, there are some people who just want the newest, fastest, most bleeding-edge device. For those people, there's the Sony Xperia XZ Premium.

The phone has the squarish, boxy look that Sony's handsets are known for, but the fun part is the brand-new Snapdragon 835 SoC, the 5.5-inch 4K screen, and a camera capable of shooting 1,000 FPS slow-mo video. Is there much of a point to a 4K display in a smartphone? Not really. Will it be a drain on the battery? Probably. But if what you want is numbers that are higher than everyone else's numbers, the XZ Premium has your back.

Best tech announcement: Samsung’s Exynos 9

(A fancy render of) Samsung's latest high-end phone chip.

MWC comes with a lot of phone announcements, but is also comes with a lot of announcements about the stuff inside those phones. We saw plenty of SoCs and modems at the show, and talk of next-gen 5G cellular networks is beginning to pick up (though mainstream adoption and even finalized specs are years away), but Samsung's newest Exynos announcement is probably the most significant.

The Exynos 9 8895 combines a custom CPU design and a high-end GPU with a gigabit LTE modem with the same capabilities as the one in Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835, and it's all built on Samsung's new 10nm manufacturing process. It's significant not just because it looks like a really capable chip for Samsung's next flagship phones but because it highlights a couple of trends—companies that make phones are increasingly taking Apple's lead and designing (or at least partially designing) the chips that go into them, and Qualcomm is slowly losing the lead in mobile tech that it has enjoyed for most of the decade. You'll probably still see Qualcomm's chips in more phones this year (some versions of Samsung's Galaxy S8 are likely to use a Snapdragon chip), but it's getting some strong competition, and that's not a bad thing for the rest of us.

Listing image by Ron Amadeo

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