This year's Mobile World Congress (MWC), held in Barcelona, had two huge themes — folding smartphones and 5G.

The former, folding phones, is the first draft of an answer to years of steady smartphone stagnation. The latter, 5G, is worshipped by many who believe it will revolutionize not just phones, but cars, smart home devices, and everything in-between.

Read More:

• This is why the Nokia 9 PureView has five rear cameras
• Microsoft keeps the focus on enterprise with new HoloLens 2
• Huawei counters Samsung with folding Mate X, but will it make it to the US?

As ever, Mobile World Congress is a show more suited to the largest companies than the smallest. While there are halls full of small tech firms striving for recognition, they often offer services at the enterprise, or business, level. Others are companies not quite ready for consumers, or do not have confirmed plans for entering the U.S. market.

But the bigger names, and a couple of old faces, made a return to MWC to show off what we think will impact your life in the coming year. Here are GearBrain's favorite devices from Mobile World Congress 2019.

Hover over the image below and click the blue arrows to navigate through the slideshow.

Nokia 9 PureView

GearBrain

The new Nokia 9 has five rear cameras and a 3D depth sensor

Nokia's long-anticipated flagship finally arrived at MWC this week, and that PureView name is an indication that it means business. Last used on a Nokia with a 41-megapixel camera (in 2012, would you believe), the PureView name now adorns the Nokia 9, which has five cameras on its back.

Joined by a flash and time-of-flight sensor for 3D scanning, the cameras use a complex system which creates enormous image files ranging from 60 to 240 megapixels, before crunching masses of data into something useable.

Three monochrome sensors and two color sensors work together to pick out detail sometimes lost by other smartphone cameras, while the 3D sensor breaks each image down into over 1,000 layers of depth. For context, other phones tend to create 10 layers of depth in an image.

The Nokia 9 PureView can't just be a fancy camera — it must perform as a flagship smartphone too. So we look forward to stretching its legs soon, along with its stripped-down, Google Pixel-like Android One operating system.