While all the hype may be around the relaunch of an old favourite, the Nokia 3310, which I’m already completely bored hearing about, for those of us who prefer to look forwards rather than backwards, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona offers an exciting glimpse into the not too distant future.

Thanks to Huawei (pronounced Waa-Wey, though I’m still not sure how), I was privileged enough to get a brief glimpse into this future in Barcelona at the weekend.

From the minute I landed at the city’s fabulously named El Prat airport where literally hundreds of different companies all holding name boards had descended to meet their guests, I could sense the anticipation and excitement around the latest hi-tech products, about to be unleashed at Mobile World Congress.

Ostensibly, I was there as a guest of Huawei to meet various artists at Barcelona’s Metronom gallery . The one thing they have in common? They’ve all used the latest Huawei P10 smartphone to compose the images displayed in a pop-up exhibition that runs until March 2nd.

And while the Chinese smart phone manufacturer which is, believe it or not,  the third biggest in the world after Apple and Samsung, isn’t the first company to collaborate with the artistic community in order to gain kudos and credibility, it is the first one I’ve seen which has done a really convincing job.

I was simply blown away by the quality of some of the images which I’d expected to offer good resolution, but which also seemed well lit too, thanks to various post production facilities within the cameraphone.

Talking to light artist and photographer Chris Levine, who is perhaps most famous for taking pictures of the Queen with her eyes closed (here he is above with one of those images), you could see that he was genuinely excited about the quality and potential that new smartphone technology offers photographers.

Sure, he hasn’t quite ditched his iPhone 6S completely yet, but he told me that the Huawei P10 provides the best quality for photography he’s seen from a smartphone yet, thanks to its Leica dual lens system. Is he telling the truth? I think so judging from what I’ve witnessed, but I’ll let you know when I test out the dazzling blue P10 (which doesn’t seem so dazzling to me) which they gave me to keep!

You can read the specs of the Huawei P10 here on my tech blog Tech Digest here. My interview with artist Chris Levine will follow later this week on ShinyShiny.

Above: Some photographs taken by Chris Levine using the Huawei P10 smartphone. 

Below: Andrew Garrihy, Chief Marketing Officer for Consumer Technology, Huawei Technologies, talks about the strategy behind the Huawei P10 launch including its collaboration with colour company Pantone and camera manufacturer Leica in this YouTube video below.

Apologies it’s a little shaky – I would like to say it’s because of all the glasses of champagne at the launch but I wasn’t even drinking at the time!