Another announcement at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this past week was ZTE’s new hybrid called the Spro Plus. The company said the new device could become your second-most-used gadget, after the smartphone.

The Spro Plus is, first and foremost, a portable, battery-powered, laser projector. It can project a 300-inch sized picture onto a surface, and with 500 lumens of brightness, it'll look decent even in rooms that aren't very dark. 

However, unlike most projectors, which are pretty simple affairs, the Spro Plus also doubles as an Android tablet running the new Marshmallow version of Android. It has an 8.4-inch, 2K LCD screen; 3GB of RAM and 32 or 128GB of storage. The 4W stereo speakers, made by Harman/Kardon, provide better sound than you'd get from an ordinary tablet.

It's all powered by a huge 12,100mAh battery, which ensures 6 hours of projection time; though if you want full brightness, you'll need to connect the Spro Plus to a power socket. 

Finally, the ZTE is a connectivity hub; besides the USB and HDMI ports and a headphone jack, it also has Wi-Fi connectivity, and one version will have a 4G LTE slot, so you'll be able to use it as a mi-fi-style hub. 

We don’t have firm specs on size and weight but the prototype they showed in Barcelona came in at about 2 pounds and sized like a 10-inch tablet (although a very fat one).
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ZTE is quite proud of the Spro Plus's size and weight, as it's quite a bit smaller than its predecessor, the ZTE Spro 2. We don't have the exact measurements, but it weighs around 1 kilogram, and is sized like a 10-inch tablet (albeit a very fat one).  ZTE hasn’t announced pricing or availability but it appears that the unit will be available early this summer.  

When we look into the crystal ball, we are finding some prominent technology trends in the consumer space that are also stimulating innovation and transformation in the enterprise space.

There are many technologies impacting manufacturing and other sectors ranging from healthcare, transportation, retail and education. But here we are going to focus on a single potential game-changer, artificial intelligence (AI).

AI could reboot businesses and empower them to achieve a sustainable, quantum improvement in performance that alters the trajectory of the future. It’s about identifying new ways for companies to do things differently, and to innovate around the technology.

AI is coming of age as business leaders grasp the immense potential of ‘smart’ machines as catalysts for greater efficiencies and competitiveness. By 2019, the global market for content analytics, discovery and cognitive systems software is projected to reach $9.2 billion, according to IDC’s recent Worldwide Content Analytics, Discovery, and Cognitive Systems Software Forecast.

Late last year, AI advanced with image recognition software being used to challenge the typical text search. Pinterest and online footwear retailer Shoes.com are testing new ways to search or browse using just images rather than text, according to a recent report in MIT’s Technology Review.

Each year, Edge.org, a think tank organization publishes essays from thought leaders and researchers related to a hot topic in public and academic discourse. This year’s question was, “What do you think about machines that think?” In grappling with this question, a major comment thread was that AI is no longer a future abstraction but rather is becoming a tangible reality.

In the Edge.org probe, several other themes emerged. AI is expected to augment human workers—making humans more effective, sharpening their expertise and facilitating innovation by reducing the barriers between humans and machines. For now, augmentation is more common in the area of cognitive computing, in which machines can sense, comprehend and even act alone. Cognitive computing is more about “person and machine” rather than “person versus machine.”

Other scenarios see AI in the form of digital assistants that humans can use to more effectively perform tasks like enterprise customer service, workflow management or collaboration. 
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This trend is disrupting the “old order.” Smart, connected products are transforming companies, corporate strategies, entire value chains or ecosystems, as well as quality of life and competition. AI holds the promise of unleashing a new wave of creativity, opportunities and profitability. It will drive another chapter in the ongoing industrial technological revolution and offer companies, countries and economies opportunities to reinvent themselves for a more vibrant and optimistic future. 

If you’re desperate to make your phone’s battery last longer but don’t want to shell out for one of those battery cases – there is another way.

Unfortunately, this particular trick might not go down well with social networking fans.

All you have to do is uninstall Facebook’s app from your phone and use your browser to access the mobile Facebook website instead.

The trick has been shown to work on both iPhones and Android phones as well.

Late last year, Facebook was confronted by software experts and technology journalists over its mobile app which appeared to run processes in the background that ate away at valuable battery life.

The tech company acknowledged the problem and issued a fix within a week.
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Despite this, it still appears you can save battery by deleting the app altogether. Thankfully you don’t need to remove the standalone Facebook Messenger as well – so chat fans can rest easy.

Contactless ATMs have been available in countries like Spain and Canada for some time, but they haven't made their way to the US. That will soon change, thanks to the proliferation of mobile payment services like Apple Pay and Android Pay. Banks have begun the process of bringing contactless ATM capabilities to the US. According to reports from Wired and TechCrunch, Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo are all working on creating NFC-equipped ATMs, with Chase planning on rolling them out later this year. 

Chase is rolling out its contactless ATM plan in two phases over the next year. The first phase will ask users to authenticate on their mobile banking app which will give them a seven-digit code that allows them to access the ATM without their debit card. 

"This doesn’t replace the debit card. It’s just giving customers a more convenient choice in case they don’t have their debit card on them," Chase spokesman Michael Fusco said. Chase says it will rollout NFC-equipped ATMs later this year, that will let you access your ATM in the same way you access your credit cards on Apple Pay and Android Pay. 

Wells Fargo and Bank of America will also adopt NFC-equipped ATMs later this year, but neither would confirm that their services would work with Apple Pay. While neither would confirm that Apple Pay would be supported, TechCrunch is reporting that both banks are working on supporting the service. 

The adoption of contactless ATMs by major banks in US will likely help to cut down on card skimming and fraud. With no physical debit card to swipe, criminals would have to figure out how to crack the tough encryption on mobile payment Apple and Google's services, which is no easy task. 
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If you're wondering when you'll be able to use your phone at the ATM, Bank of America is looking like it will be the first bank to rollout the new ATMs. The bank said it will begin rolling out new ATMs in late February at "select ATMs in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Charlotte, New York and Boston followed by a broader roll out to customers mid year."