MWC 2012: highlights of the show Cameras The star of the show was arguably Nokia's 808 PureView - a phone that incorporates a camera with an unprecedented 41-megapixel sensor. As Chief Executive Stephen Elop has been demonstrating to his senior staff, that means you can zoom in on even the tiniest imperfections. Other brands, too, showed 13 megapixel devices that are now becoming increasingly common. And for now Nokia's innovation is, in the words of one analyst, "an amazing thing that nobody's going to buy," because it's based on an operating system that is falling rapidly out of favour in the developed world. Symbian was even described by Elop as "a burning platform," but in emerging markets it remains popular. It's surely, however, a sign of things to come and Nokia's technology will surely come to its impressive line of Lumia Windows Phones eventually. Screens Apple's iPhone may have a screen that's just 3.5," but it's hard at Mobile World Congress to find a manufacturer that's excited about anything less than a device that's at least an inch bigger. With media consumption, from TV to movies, a growing part of revenue streams and advertising appeal, products of the moment include the newly announced Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, which features handwriting recognition thanks to a stylus and 10.1" screen. Phones such as Sony's and HTC's, which feature increasingly prominent entertainment services, use sharp screens to really do the content justice. The overall effect, however, is not to make devices bigger - screens simply stretch all the way to the edge, and Samsung's hotly anticipated Galaxy SIII is set to do away with a border altogether. Asus, meanwhile is an innovative brand emphasizing design and now making a gadget called the Padfone - your handset slots into a tablet which slots into a keyboard; it takes some getting used to, but this is a multi-use device that deserves to do well. Horsepower As phones become increasingly versatile, the computer in your pocket needs more power under the bonnet. So processors are increasingly using four "cores," which makes gaming and other intensive applications faster than ever. Huawei used its press conference to show that the functions most consumers want quick access to are the camera and photo galleries, and better processors make those as fast as they need to be. Intel, too, is emphasising its early success in the mobile market, in which it had been largely absent. Orange will be the first to launch an Intel phone, which the company calls "a Ferrari at a mid-range price." Mike Bell, a veteran of Apple, runs the firm's huge division focusing on "ultramobility" and he says more mobile phone "reference devices" are on the way. That will increase competition in the manufacture of what's effectively the raw materials of a smartphone, and that can only be a good thing. Far East Brands such as ZTE, Huawei, Asus, Fujitsu and more have a larger presence at MWC than ever before - these are Asian brands with little current European presence but who have huge cash reserves and an undoubted commitment to "crack Europe." Only that will give them the global footprint to make smartphones really profitable in the long term, and to do well at home these companies need to be aspirational, almost European brands anyway. Indeed, Huawei's press conference for the Ascend D Quad was among the slickest of the whole show - even invoking a Pegasus as its mascot - and the company is making huge waves by producing a phone that promises two to three days of battery life, compared to rivals at less than one, while offering what it claims is the world's fastest smartphone. Last year it was American brand Motorola making that claim. Now in the process of being bought by Google, it's one of a shrinking number of companies that is set to compete in what is a truly globalized market, where huge corporations will make devices used around the world. But it's worth remembering - whoever makes the handset or tablet, the vast majority of these new gadgets will be powered by Google's software.