These Weird Phone Features At MWC 2025 Are Just Too Cool For The Real World

Mobile World Congress, as the name suggests, brings together many of the world's phone makers into one venue to show their wares. Yes, you get Samsung and Motorola showcases, representing the offerings headed to the U.S. You also get a number of foreign phone makers such as Xiaomi, Realme, Oppo, and so many more offering especially unique mobile tech. Meaning no disrespect to our friends on domestic shores, U.S. phones tend to skew toward the more vanilla offerings.

Sure, you'll get great cameras, powerful processors, and fun colorways, but phones from across the pond have all that and more. In fact, some phones you'll see at a show like MWC have all of those things, plus some features that you might never have expected to find on a smartphone. Here are some of the coolest, weirdest, and wildest features I found on a smartphone at the show — in order of wow-factor from least to greatest.

Tecno had a few interesting offerings at MWC — including one of our best of MWC award winners with the Tecno AI Glasses. However, if you took the opportunity to walk around its booth, you could see a few other cool concepts, such as a tri-fold phone concept. Of course, this particular offering comes with a healthy dose of caveats.

First, the phone was under glass, which doesn't inspire a ton of confidence. There was a second unit there that a Tecno representative could show you, but you couldn't hold it yourself. Usually that means there are very few of them that exist in the world, so you won't be buying one tomorrow on Amazon.

Tri-fold phones are not a new thing: Huawei in particular has a consumer version of a tri-fold available that you can buy, assuming you live in China and don't want to install anything from Google. Samsung also teased one with a brief graphic at Samsung Unpacked, so it's only a matter of time before they become available, and it's nice to see more than a few companies working to bring these to market.

One smartphone concept from RealMe that was on display was the RealMe interchangeable lens concept phone. This phone has a large camera bump on the back, but for the first time, it feels like it needs one. The camera bump has a one-inch Sony camera sensor (not exposed, under glass) and a bracket that accepts Leica M-mount lenses.

The result is you get a camera that is as versatile as your glass, plus a ton of computational power behind the lens powered by the smartphone. If you want to shoot macro shots, there's a lens for that; If you want zoom, there's a lens for that; You get the idea. The phone also has "normal" camera lenses for when you don't want to tote a camera bag with you.

This isn't a new concept either. Phones in the past have had this before, but it has been a long time. It's an interesting concept, for sure, and much more targeted to camera gear nerds rather than the average consumer. But it's still a nice option to have, if you want it.

Oukitel — and don't ask me how to pronounce its name — brought a couple of cool consumer-ready products to the show, and the first one is the WP100 Titan. And boy, is this device appropriately named. I just called it "the brick." 

You can see it in the photo above, and it's honestly probably thicker than you're thinking it is or how it looks. The headline feature on this phone has to be the fact that it has a 33,000 mAh battery, which I'm not 100% positive can be taken on a plane. This phone isn't really meant to be on a plane, though. It's meant to accompany a hiker or camper for a long weekend, or a month or so.

Additionally, the phone has a built in 100-lumen projector, so you can watch content on a larger screen. It also sports a 1,200 lumen floodlight, which can fill an area or flash SOS if you need it to, and here's hoping you don't.

The phone is incredibly bulky — roughly four times the thickness of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. It even has a plastic carrying strap on one side so you can carry it like a briefcase. I tried putting it in my pocket and it was surprisingly not bad, but still, this is not a thing you will want to do regularly.

Another Oukitel phone — the WP200 — has a small screen on the back of it where you'd normally see the camera module. This screen pops out, though, into an earpiece with an LED screen on the back. The earpiece is obviously a mono earpiece — it's not intended for music necessarily, but should be pretty decent for podcasts or phone calls. Plus, the screen on the back is touch sensitive, so you can adjust settings in the earpiece.

Since the earpiece has a screen on the back, Oukitel also ships a strap with the phone that you can add to the earpiece, switching it into a smartwatch form. Actually, it would be more accurate to describe it as a fitness band, but it has all that functionality. When it's time to charge, just pop it back into the phone so it can get topped up. This phone is basically a 3-in-1 (but not at the same time) device, and we're here for it.