The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona has unsurprisingly been the star event of this week, featuring the mixture of new product launches, corporate jostling and PR whimsy that we all know and love. For us here at PHONE Magazine, it’s been a week of exclusive video demos, and we hope you’ve been as excited as we were by the first proper hands-on experience of platforms like Google’s Android. You can review all our Mobile World Congress coverage by hitting the tag, but here are a few highlights I’ve picked out.
Android’s hardware partners were out in force, with prototypes in various stages of completion to demonstrate Google’s latest foray into open-source software. Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and ARM all had reference platforms and were happy to flaunt them in front of Vincent’s video camera, while TI even wheeled out their sub-$1k Wireless Development Platform aimed at the small-scale programmer outfits. Arguably most impressive of the lot, however, were E28, who had loaded the public release of Android onto one of their existing Linux touchscreen handsets and, despite its relatively low-specs, created something promising enough to prompt many emails to the company enquiring about availability. Google, meanwhile, listened to its developer community and pushed out a new version of the Android SDK, m5-rc14, complete with significant GUI and API changes.
Of course, the mainstream cellphone manufacturers weren’t going to be left out, and there were notable announcements of handsets you’ll soon be able to actually buy. Sony Ericsson wowed with their XPERIA X1, a Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro smartphone that determinedly set its sights on the niche Apple’s iPhone has carved out for itself. With a slide-out hardware keyboard, high-speed internet and a GUI overlay that manages to make WM6.1 look good, this could be the first significant rival to Cupertino’s offspring, and we had the hands-on photos and video to prove it.
Meanwhile, Nokia pushed out four new handsets with Mobile Maps and GPS figuring strongly in the line-up. Most promising is the replacement to the N95, the N96, which come Q3 2008 will slot neatly into position as the company’s flagship smartphone and, in certain markets, feature mobile TV. Less impressive was the first demo of Nokia’s S60 Touch OS, a touchscreen update to what has become the most implemented smartphone OS, and which demonstrated just how far behind Apple the Finnish company is.
Samsung’s announcements seemed interminable, with numerous new cellphones for different markets. Of the lot, though, the U900 Soul and i900 smartphone piqued our interest. The former is a dual-screen slider, one being a touchscreen for contextual controls, while the latter is an evolution of the F700 that drops the slide-out keyboard but gains a camera upgrade to 5-megapixels.
Motorola’s showing was overshadowed by ongoing concerns for the financial status of the US giant, and CEO Greg Brown’s insistence that they’re still “fully committed” to the cellphone business was undermined by lacklustre products. The Z6w looks to be a one-trick pony with VoIP WiFi, while the W181 and W161 are so feature-lite that they redefine the term “budget”. Moto needed a decisive, headline grabbing launch that at least might cash in on their often-celebrated design know-how; analysts and investors alike are dubious about the company’s prospects.
Other key demos from MWC included NVIDIA’s super-strength APX 2500 mobile platform for Windows Mobile, which is capable of hardware-decoding 720p high-def video (they demo’d it driving a 60-inch plasma HDTV), and Vincent’s live photos of Garmin’s GPS-loving nuviphone. I’m also pretty excited by Opera Mobile 9.5, again for Windows Mobile, which Arne Hess described as “[at least] on the same level as Apple’s iPhone browser or Nokia’s S60 web browser”, and can’t wait to try out Polymer Vision’s Readius cellphone with that foldable e-paper display.
I’d also like to thank everyone for reading and commenting on what has been PHONE Magazine’s first Mobile World Congress experience – we hope you’ve had as much fun as we have!
