Do you ever wish your cell phone was waterproof? Or that you could use it to project videos and images on a wall? If cell phone manufacturers are right — and they are banking on it — then yes, you do.

At the recent World Mobile Congress in Barcelona — the world’s biggest annual mobile trade show — Fujitsu introduced its new waterproof phone, while Samsung launched the Galaxy Beam, which has a built-in projector that can show 50-inch-wide videos on a blank surface. Two manufacturers in particular made headlines with their latest innovations: Nokia showed a phone that incorporates a 41 megapixel camera — which places it on a par with vastly more expensive cameras — and Chinese cell phone maker Huawei displayed what it says is the world’s fastest phone — the Ascend D — which incorporates twice the processing power of current devices.

Other innovations included bigger displays, super tough “gorilla glass” screens and wireless chargers. CNN’s website offers a slideshow featuring many of the gadgets introduced at the show.

While there was an abundance of hype surrounding the new bells and whistles, the question remains: Will consumers bite?

Some cell phone technology and application breakthroughs “make sense,” according to Wharton operations and information management professor Eric Clemons. “A voice-activated assistant is a good thing while driving,” he notes, referring to Apple’s newest technological addition on its iPhone 4S. “Let’s hope ‘Siri’ gets good enough to work properly.”

But Clemons isn’t so sure about the 41 megapixel camera included in Nokia’s 808 PureView phone. “That is finer than the resolution of a real SLR lens” that a professional photographer might use, “and surely finer than the resolution of a phone camera lens. I think we expect a phone to have a decent camera, a decent battery life, decent memory and not much more.”

Wharton director of new media Kendall Whitehouse says that Nokia’s camera “strikes me as a valuable feature for a particular segment of the market,” since many people depend on the use of their phones as cameras instead of carrying both devices. But on the whole, the latest gadgets and applications on display at the World Mobile Congress seem to represent “a fight to control the high-end of the market, which tends to exert the greatest influence over the app development ecosystem,” he notes. Early adopters may be most interested in the kinds of innovations that come out of such events, because these consumers “are reluctant to purchase a phone that doesn’t incorporate the latest technologies” — regardless of whether they intend to make use of them.   

According to Whitehouse, one truly useful innovation would be for cell phone manufacturers to figure out how to extend battery life. After all, video projectors, faster processors and other technology “advances” all take a toll on batteries, which already often need charging at least once a day. 

And what functions would Clemons not want to do without on his own phone? “Skype and the alarm clock,” he says. “But then, I always take my iPad along for everything else.”

Here’s a trend you might not expect: According to a report by Bloomberg, high-profile retailers like J.C. Penney, Nordstrom, Gap and Gamestop have quietly shut down their Facebook “stores” during the last year.

These “stores” are essentially apps that enable customers to view a retailer’s merchandise from the company’s Facebook page, select items and complete a sale without having to leave the social networking site. Allowing users to shop seamlessly while engaging in social media sounds good in theory — but the results have been poor.

One reason? Users have found it easier to navigate and make purchases through the retailers’ own websites. “Whereas [brand] websites can categorize and organize social media, blogging and other engagement devices in a form that is easily navigated and searched, this is not true of Facebook, where all relevant postings are listed in a linear order based on time of posting,” notes Wharton marketing professor Stephen Hoch. “My guess is that Facebook is actively working on how brands can better link their brand pages to their [own] websites.”

The Bloomberg article also notes that the retailers’ merchandise selections were the same on Facebook as on their own sites, offering little incentive for users to engage in shopping while socializing online. “It was like trying to sell stuff to people while they’re hanging out with their friends at the bar,” Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru told Bloomberg. One executive the publication interviewed added: “I give so-called F-commerce an ‘F.’”

“Some platforms simply aren’t destined to support commercial activities,” says Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader. “Remember all the promise — and ultimate disappointment — associated with [merchandising in] virtual worlds such as Second Life? That wasn’t the first letdown of this sort, and Facebook won’t be the last.” 

Companies have had good reason to believe in the promise of “F-commerce.” With 845 million active users, it’s hard to overlook the social networking giant as a possible retail channel. What’s more, retailers have achieved some valuable brand-building through the site: Gap, alone, has 5.6 million Facebook “fans” for its Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic pages, according to Bloomberg. “Brands clearly recognize that Facebook has incredible reach and can help them engage with a larger audience than the one already engaged with the brand’s internal website,” Hoch says. “It also seems to me that brands need to continue to invest in social media in advance of clear payout metrics, for future option value if nothing else.”

Retailers have an obligation “to dip their toes in the water, with the expectation that there will be as many misses as hits,” Fader adds. “The hope is that they can genuinely learn from each of these experiences, not only to put them in a better position to capitalize on the next emerging platform, but also to bring some of these [lessons] back to their core business. That’s just the way things work today, and it’s a pattern that will likely recur for years ahead.”

In March, PayPal will enable its users to pay through their mobile phones, tablets or iPads at 2,000 Home Depot stores across the U.S., and by the end of the year at 20 other national retailers. Mobile payments are rapidly gaining popularity, but large scale adoption will depend on consumer perceptions of security and the pricing of such services, according to Wharton faculty.

A subsidiary of online shopping portal eBay, PayPal last year exceeded expectations with $4 billion in mobile payments volume, and the company predicts that figure will reach $7 billion in 2012, company spokesperson Anuj Nayar told Knowledge@Wharton Today. Last November, mobile payments were 538% higher on Black Friday than on the same day in 2010, according to PayPal. The firm’s latest encouragement comes from a pilot program it launched in January at 51 Home Depot stores, mostly in the San Francisco Bay area.

Mobile payments are a small fraction of the net payments of $118 billion that PayPal put through in 2011. Even so, Shawndra Hill, a Wharton professor of operations and information management, finds PayPal’s mobile initiative “exciting,” although she doesn’t think it is “a game changer just yet.” Before wide scale adoption occurs among consumers, “mobile solutions need to prove that they are as secure as paying with credit cards or cash,” she says. Also, consumers will need to trust the brands offering these services, just as “they have had a long time to learn to trust credit cards.” Further, mobile payment options need to be more convenient and possibly cheaper than other avenues, Hill adds.

According to Wharton marketing professor Barbara Kahn, pricing of mobile payments will determine their popularity, especially when conventional credit cards also move to mobile formats. “The issue from the consumer point of view will be which form of mobile payment to use, just like we now decide which type of card to use,” she says. “Right now, the end user [usually] pays list price for the item regardless of what kind of card is used; sometimes there is a cash discount, or in some countries a fee for using a credit card. I would imagine all of these pricing issues are on the table now.”

Hill suggests that mobile payment processors could expand their market opportunity by offering lower transaction fees than credit cards. Also, the requisite infrastructure and standards for money transfers have to keep pace, she notes.

PayPal’s mobile payments option is part of its recently launched PayPal Wallet, which includes a card that allows offline payments at stores. With that, “consumers will choose if they want to swipe a card, use an app or tap their phone,” says Nayar. Others in the mobile payments space include Google Wallet, which stores customer credit card information on smartphones, and so-called NFC devices that can be used for electronic payments. (The Near Field Communications Forum is a group of companies — including Nokia, Sony, Samsung and Microsoft, among others — that is developing mechanisms for payments and other services across devices.)

Mobile payments are just one of many new options consumers will see this year, according to Scott Dunlap, PayPal’s vice president of emerging opportunities. “In 2012, we will see a rise in virtual currencies and the ability to use them to pay for ‘real’ goods,” he wrote recently in the online magazine Gigaom.com. “Imagine paying for groceries at Safeway with Facebook credits or using extra frequent flyer miles for that cup of coffee at Starbucks.”