AP Photo

This year's Mobile World Congress is bound to be frenetic with phone news. That's why we're about to brave Barcelona's rain, airline strikes and pickpockets (no offense, dear BCN) in order to stay up to date. But if there's one aspect of mobile phones we're not counting on to provide much excitement, it's their fundamental physical design or form factor. We're in the grip of the monolith, the concrete slab, the plain rectangle, with its full touchscreen and a couple of buttons here and there, and that grip is so tight that even the pickpockets are slightly shocked when they haul in something with a physical QWERTY.