MWC 2017: What to expect from LG, Nokia, and more

To show us "the next element," Mobile World Congress is set to kick off in Barcelona, Spain on February 27 - March 2. The industry trade show is used by some of the biggest mobile players to announce their smartphones and accompanying accessories for the year. Some companies like to make their announcements in the days leading up to the show. Here's who we are expecting to hear announcements from...

China smartphone giant Huawei, who we've given praise for some pretty great hardware, is set to debut the Huawei P9 follow up at the show, rumors suggested. In a teaser, Huawei said the P10 phone will "Change the way you see colour," but didn't offer any further hints. Sketchy rumors and leaks point to a 5.5-inch display with 2560x1440 resolution and Leica camera.

Huawei's MWC press conference is set for Sunday, February 26.

Evleaks tweeted an alleged press image of the photo.

Samsung probably had bigger plans for MWC before its Galaxy Note 7 fiasco. Nonetheless, the smartphone giant has confirmed it will be at the show with an event on February 26. A recent filing with the FCC suggests a Galaxy Tab S3 (just look at that invite), and a report from SamMobile laid out some specifications:

• 9.6-inch display with 2,048x1,536-pixel resolution
• 12-megapixel rear camera
• 5-megapixel front-facing camera
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor
• Android 7.0 Nougat
• 4GB of RAM

Evleaks tweeted an alleged press image of the tablet with keyboard.

Oh, and there's said to be S Pen support. Samsung already confirmed it won't debut the Galaxy S8 at the show.

BlackBerry and hardware partner TCL are expected to bring back the ol'-fashion BlackBerry keyboard with an announcement on February 25. TCL Communications has pre-announced the BlackBerry Mercury, a touchscreen Android smartphone with BlackBerry's keyboard at the bottom.

Here's what we do know about the Mercury:

• The keyboard also works as a touchpad
• There's a fingerprint reader
• USB-C connection
• It runs Android, with BlackBerry's software suite overlaid

Nokia made its splash back on the smartphone scene with the announcement of the Nokia 6 at CES 2017 in January. Nokia won't tell us how many smartphones it plans to announce at MWC. HMD previously said it plans to spend $500 million over the next three years to market its Nokia-branded smartphones and tablets.

China-giant Oppo is teasing a smartphone with "5x photography technology," but isn't saying much more ahead of its February 27 event. Could Oppo mean 5x optical zoom?

ZTE pre-announced the ZTE Gigabit Phone, said to have 360-degree VR, 4K video, and instant cloud storage. Better yet, ZTE is promising 1Gbps download speeds on networks that support it. Details are light, so we'll have to wait for ZTE's announcement.

Lenovo-owned Motorola is planning an event for February 26, and it's event invite suggests some type of mid-range phone. The Moto G5 leaked shortly after Motorola's event invite went out, revealing the G5 has shrunk to 5-inches and G5 Plus to 5.2-inches -- from 5.5 inches on both previous versions.

HTC hasn't scheduled a press event for MWC.