Although Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona is described by the GSMA as “the world’s premier mobile industry event”, many of the anticipated 75,000 attendees will be relying on WiFi rather than a cellular connection.

Fira de Barcelona, the organisation behind the city’s trade fairs, says it’s deployed 1,200 WiFi access points across the Fira Gran Via site, making this one of the world’s largest WiFi networks ever installed in an exhibition centre.

Iain Graham writes:

Vodafone’s admission last week that ‘some customers’ may have been experiencing issues with mobile services came three weeks late for me. I’ve been having my own ongoing battle with the network since the beginning of the month.

Google says it’s produced a smartphone with a 5-inch screen, movement sensors and custom Android-based software that can track 3D motion of the device. Data from the phone can then be used to produce a 3D map of the surrounding environment

Potential uses could be for indoor location-based services, virtual reality gaming or simply measuring internal spaces.

Both Visa and MasterCard have made separate announcements about taking advantage of Host Card Emulation (HCE) within the Android operating system to offer more mobile payment options.

HCE allows an NFC application on an Android device to emulate a ‘smart’ payment card, which avoids the need for payment details to be uploaded to a SIM card.

Finnish smartphone developer Jolla says its Sailfish mobile operating system has reached release 1.0 and will ready for global distribution from next month.

There’ll also be a downloadable version of the software for handsets that currently run Android, plus a separate user interface app that’ll simulate the Sailfish OS experience on Android devices.