Traditionally, the area of interculturality in teacher education has included international collaboration projects aiming to enhance students’ cultural awareness. Due to current pandemic situation student and teacher exchange was reduced, especially with non-EU states. This paper presents research on how smartphones can assist teacher educators in fulfilling the goals of intercultural competence development. The focus of research was on mobile learning collaboration in geographically distributed and culturally diverse settings. The presentation will specifically highlight challenges experienced at a science teacher training department in Sweden. Following research questions were raised in the project: What potential could be identified in using smartphones in science teaching for promoting intercultural competence? How does cultural context affect implementation of the introduced innovations? Data collection was conducted through interviews with students involved in the project and analysed using the CHAT theoretical framework. The results show that future teachers have skills and interest in using and acquiring new applications of m-technology in the context of cross-cultural collaboration, but they express concern about current restrictions on use of smartphones in schools. Our findings indicate that existing tensions and contradictions concerning “smartphones in education” need to be proactively addressed at all curriculum levels.