BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS — During a Samsung developer conference here at Mobile World Congress this morning, the Korean company unveiled a new service called Samsung Wallet, which lets Samsung smartphone owners turn tickets, coupons, membership cards, boarding passes, and more into digital cards that they can store in a virtual wallet.

The service probably sounds familiar, and it is — Samsung Wallet is basically Apple’s Passbook, but for Samsung phones. It works in almost exactly the same way, and looks very similar, too.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS — Here at MWC in Barcelona, Krussell is showing off its latest lineup of waterproof smartphones cases called Sealabox, which let you take your smartphone swimming to snap pictures of the fishes. Available for almost all common smartphones, the Sealabox is IPX7 certified for water resistance up to one meter, and it’s been carefully designed to allow you to make the most of your smartphone in almost any environment.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS — Have you ever wanted to make a phone call on your tablet? No, me neither, but clearly someone at Asus has. Here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Taiwanese company is showing off its new FonePad, a 7-inch tablet that makes phone calls just like a smartphone.

The device costs just $249, and it has mid-range specifications that will allow it to compete with devices like the Google Nexus 7 and the Amazon Kindle Fire HD. But is its special feature worth the extra cash?

BlackBerry has been the preferred handheld for many of the U.S. Department of Defence’s employees because it’s got the security clearance to run on the Pentagon’s network. That might all change in 2014 though when Android and iOS join the party.

The U.S. Defense Department said today that it plans to open up its networks by February 2014 and allow 100,000 mobile phones and tablets from Apple and Google to use the network.

It has been reported that Google is working on its own retail stores, but recent comments from the head of Android fly in the face of such a claim. Google’s Andy Rubin talked about the possibility of a Google Store at Mobile World Congress today in Barcelona.

According to Rubin, Google “has no plans” to do any kind of retail store in the near future. That doesn’t mean things won’t change, but Google has thrown cold water on the store rumor for now.