Each February, the GSM Association pulls together a big bash for anyone under the cellphone sun in an event we’ve come to know as the Mobile World Congress. Hosted across eight different halls at the Fira de Barcelona — not to mention countless off-site locations — MWC plays host to the biggest phone announcements of the year. Looking back at the recently concluded MWC 2012 I noticed some key trends and products emerging this year.

Cameras are back, baby!: Jaws dropped when Nokia unveiled the new 808 PureView, a phone with a 41-megapixel camera. Yes, no misprint there — the star of the show was a forty-unbelievable-one megapixel shooter from Nokia. Never again will you feel the need for optical zoom on a phone again — you simply zoom into the image since it’s that detailed! Oddly enough, this may be the innovation that no one’s going to buy, since the 808 is based on the older Symbian operating software that is rapidly falling out of favour even within Nokia. How about a PureView for your Windows Mobile devices, Nokia?

Big, bigger, biggest: While Apple still pushes a 3.5-in display in its devices, you’d be hard pressed at MWC to find a phone manufacturer who’s not pushing displays that are at least an inch bigger, if not more. Forget the 5-in Galaxy Note, Samsung launched a 10.1-in version of the Note. Add that to LG’s giant Optimus 4X HD and the Sony Xperia P’s 4-in screen, and it quickly becomes clear that smaller displays are so 2011. The effect isn’t just to make the phone bigger — screens now stretch all the way to the edge. And the one phone launch conspicuous by its absence — the hotly anticipated Samsung Galaxy SIII — is set to do away with a border altogether. Time to stitch bigger pockets?

Horsepower is everything: Remember how dual-core processors dominated phones in 2011? If you want to be a contender in the smartphone game, it appears the bar has just been raised — it’s either quad-core or nothing! MWC saw LG launching the Optimus 4X HD, which was followed in close succession by HTC’s One X and ZTE’s Era devices — all three share the Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor in common.

With quad-cores high on the spec list for 2012 phones, consumers can expect to see better performance in computing-intensive tasks such as full-motion video games. And finally, these processors also ship with low power modes to increase battery life — a common complaint on these monsterphones.

The Tegra 3 for example packs an extra processor that can be used for simple everyday tasks such as phone calls, emails and music playback without sacrificing battery life. Genuine question to all phone makers though — with your phones packing quad-core chips, where are the entertainment apps that might stretch even today’s dual-core phones?

Android is everywhere: You couldn’t have thrown a stone at Fira de Barcelona without it hitting a vendor with an Android offering. Google is everywhere and every major vendor, including LG, Samsung, Sony and Motorola, is offering Android-based handsets and tablets. Expect other operating systems like Windows Phone 7 to see more love next year.

Convergence or oddity: Is the Galaxy Note 10.1 an oversized phone or a tablet with an identity-crisis? Converged devices made a strong showing at MWC, with the interesting Asus Padfone which converts the smartphone to a tablet and then, if consumers so choose, a notebook (with additional accessories). Impressive, to say the least.

iPad 3: Even though the iPad 3 only launched a few days ago, its shadow loomed over MWC, with just about every tablet maker trying to second-guess what Apple would do with the iPad3, and beat them at that game. And just as Google’s Eric Schmidt took the stage for the keynote, Apple dropped the bomb and announced the March 7 iPad 3 launch event. Classic show-stealing tactics which had many industry watchers chuckling. u