By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Highly regarded as the smartphone and mobile tradeshow, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona gives us a glimpse of where the industry is headed.

Smartphone manufacturers often choose Mobile World Congress to make a big splash and unveil new devices, technologies and partnerships that shape the mobile industry. This year was no different and was highlighted by some expected product launches as well as some big surprises.

The flurry of stories from this year’s MWC felt very much like a continuation of CES 2014’s focus on wearable devices. Huawei revealed its TalkBand smartwatch, an activity tracking wristband with a 1.4-inch flexible OLED display. Its main focus is fitness, and it promises to track sleep patterns as well as steps taken, calories burned.

Samsung made a major move in this space by updating its Galaxy Gear  with two models, the Gear 2 and the Gear Neo,  more importantly revealing a truly innovative Samsung Galaxy Fit. Samsung is aggressively taking the leadership role in wearables and smartwatches, now having more models available than any other manufacturer.

Samsung’s Galaxy S5, which now features a larger screen plus some water-resistance was one of the bigger releases but many felt it was too incremental an update over the Samsung Galaxy S4 despite the bump in specs and various new apps and functions.

Sony also flexed its muscle by revealing its own flagship smartphone the Xperia Z2. From the originator of the water and dust resistant smartphone, the Z2 gets even more waterproof, offers powerful performance with a 2.3GHz quad-core processor and more importantly, the ability to shoot 4K resolution video, which ties in to their TVs and Blu-Ray player business.

So, not only are smartphones in 2014 expected to be powerful, thin and light, they need to be tougher and capable of surviving dust, dirt and water.