For the sixth year in a row, Apple has topped Fortune’s list of world’s most admired companies, beating out other tech giants to the top spot like Google, Amazon and IBM.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS – This year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was pretty disappointing from a gadget-lovers point of view. Samsung was there, but didn’t announce anything new. Microsoft didn’t even have a stand, and even the once-great App Planet section is little but a business-service wasteland (albeit with the best tea, coffee and beer in the show).

Still, even a pile of crap has variations in its texture, and so we bring you the “Best” of Mobile World Congress 2013.

We say “might,” because we haven’t tested it yet; but sandwiched between the hard exterior shell of Incase’s new Chisel case and the iPhone it protects is a second, soft case with a secret ingredient called Poron XRD — a material we’ve found almost unbelievably excellent at absorbing impact energy.

There have been a lot of theories floated for why Foxconn froze new hires earlier this month. Early rumors suggested that iPhone 5 production had slowed, while later reports said that Apple’s new measures to improve working conditions had caused fewer workers than usual to abandon their posts over Chinese New Year.

Now there’s a new theory: Foxconn’s getting out of China, at least in part.

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.

It had to happen eventually: Photoshop for your phone. As of today you can buy Photoshop Touch for the iPhone and Android, and it pretty much does everything you can do on the iPad version.

While you may chalk up any pro-Apple sentiment here as only true to form, it’s perhaps even more telling when there’s another, more impartial group, claiming an Apple win.

Good Technology is one such independent group. The company provides mobile device, app, and data security to over 4000 customers, including banks, healthcare organizations, governments, and retailers. They also do a quarterly Device Activation Report, which looks at the type of mobile devices and uses in the Enterprise. The Q4 report, released today, details which and how many smartphone and tablet devices were activated by Good Technology’s enterprise customers.

Guess what they found? Hint: it’s in the headline.

Otterbox is known for making really durable iPhone cases that are designed to survive all kinds of calamities. Now Otterbox is taking the next logical step: screen protectors for the iPhone and iPad.

The company has unveiled four different screen protectors, and each one has its own distinct appeal.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS — As I was walking around the show floor at MWC today, I noticed a number of smartphones that looked very familiar — yet they were being paraded by Chinese companies I’d never heard of. I saw what looked like a large iPhone 5, an entire range of Samsung Galaxy devices, and a number of high-end HTC handsets.

Except they weren’t really Apple, Samsung, or HTC devices at all; they were actually cheap clones that were trying their best to look like the real thing. They even had fake accessories that were identical to the originals.

If you were expecting Samsung to unveil the Galaxy S4 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, prepare to be disappointed: Samsung has instead sent out invitations to a press event in New York on March 14, where they will debut their much-anticipated (and iPhone 5 challenging) new smartphone.