Posts filed under Mobile World Congress 2010

The crazy mobile phone week that is MWC 2010 has now ended. This year’s MWC 2010 started off with a bang, with Sony Ericsson and Samsung showing off all manner of new tech-loveliness. The buzz continued on the second day with HTC and Microsoft announcing some seriously cool new tech.

With so much news coming from so many different sources, though, it’s easy for some tasty tidbits of info to get drowned out.

So we compiled this little guide to all the best announcements from MWC 2010, together with a compilation of some amazing facts about the mobile phone industry today and over the next five years.

If you want to see the state of the art for 2010 and get a peek into the future of the mobile industry, read on after the jump.

After the fugliness of the Huawei U8300, it’s nice to see some genuinely beautiful news phones, such as this pair of Lumigons. The Lumigon S1 (left) and T1 are new Android 2.1 devices that not only feature some pretty capable hardware, they’ve also been designed with cutting edge style in mind.

Lumigon are a Scandinavian company, and the intriguing design reflects the phone’s origins (think Bang & Olufsen rather than Ikea!)

It’s not all about design, though. They’ve also powered their phones with 720p video support, HDMI out, and TV remote control. There’s even an HDMI deskstation accessory, which will let you connect your phone to your TV and a Bluetooth keyboard.

Lumigon founder Lars Gravesen also let slip some exciting news about its forthcoming phone, the E1.

“The E1 is the most beautiful phone I have ever seen during my entire 10 year career in mobile business…featuring a unique navigation system and a shape never experienced in mobile phones” he said.

Sweet! Let’s just hope he’s not over-hyping things a tad!

[Source: IntoMobile]

What’s that coming over the hill, is it a Huawei…

Yes, it certainly is. To be more precise, it’s the Huawei U8100, officially the world’s ugliest phone! Like the other three Huaweis on show here, it’s based on Android and features a new Huawei user interface, which apparently they’ve spent rather more on than the design of the outside of this fugly phone!

Read on after the jump for ore images (if you can bear them!) and more Huawei Android phones.

Sagem have got together with Puma and released the PumaPhone at MWC 2010. The PumaPhone is, as you’d imagine, a ‘lifestyle’ phone – specifically, designed for someone whose lifestyle revolves around keeping fit, running, cycling and generally moving about a bit.

There are dedicated apps for keeping track of your performance in a variety of activites, from running to cycling, as well as the usual obligatory MP3 player (complete with novelty deck for ’scratching’ – yes, it needs the inverted commas, just check it out for yourself in the video below!).

See the video of the PUMAPhone after the jump.

If you’re wondering how well Samsung’s new Bada platform plays games, you might be interested in the video after the jump. Taken at MWC 2010, the video shows the Samsung Wave playing a 3D baseball game, and with pretty nice graphics and smooth motion, it has to be said.

Of course, the game isn’t excatly pushing the hardware all that hard, but at least it gives a flavour of the power of Bada (and, of course, the hardware it’s running on).

Video after the jump.

Samsung announced the Samsung Monte shortly before this week’s MWC 2010, and it was on show in Barcelona, as you’d expect.

The Monte is a mid-range series of mobile phone with nothing particularly distinctive about them. They’ve got the usual connectivity options – Wi-Fi, HSDPA, and also aGPS. There’s also the by-no ubiquitous social networking app, which now even has its own acronym (SNS – Social Network Service).

Other than that, the only thing of note is the fact that it does look rather good – oh, and the nifty video, which you can see after the jump.

Motorola have released a new smartphone at MWC 2010 in the shape of this, the Motorola Quench. Unlike many other phones debuting this week, the Quench isn’t going to know anyone’s socks off – it’s basically just a Motorola DEXT without the keyboard.

However, it backs up Motorola’s commitment to Android, and should be a cheap option ofr those people looking to get into smartphones cheaply.

Huawei are the latest to introduce a new mini phone at MWC 2010 with this, the T-Mobile Pulse Mini. Featuring much of the same features as the standard T-Mobile Pulse, including a 3.2 megapixel camera, aGPS, WiFi and all the rest, the Pulse Mini goes one better by adding Android 2.1 to the mix.

Its screen is only 2.8″ and you’d never exactly call the Pulse Mini, but with its diminuitive proportions, you can’t deny its cuteness.

Even cuter is the expected price – just £99 on Pay As You Go when it’s released in the UK in April.

[Source: Pocket-Lint]

HTC may have been showing off their new shiny Android phones at MWC 2010 today, but that doesn’t mean they’d forgotten about dear old (and I do mean old!) Windows Mobile. So they also released this, the HTC HD Mini, a much smaller version of the HTC HD2 released late last year.

The HD2 was the best Windows Mobile smartphone ever released, and with the transition from Windows Mobile to the brand new (and utterly different) Windows Phone 7 Series, will probably remain so. Indeed, it’ll probably become a classic of its time – the definitive Windows Mobile phone, you could call it.

But the HD2 was huge – its screen was 4.3″ in size – meaning it wasn’t for everyone.

So HTC decided to cover all bases, and have come up its little brother, the HTC HD Mini. Featuring the same Windows Mobile 6.5.3 OS and HTC Sense UI, it’s pretty much the same phone, but in a much smaller body.

Does that make it unusable though? Well, let’s have a look.

If you thought the HTC Legend was good, wait until you see the HTC Desire. Sporting the same internals as the Google Nexus One (i.e. a 1GHz Snapdrgaon CPU, 3.7″ AMOLED display, 5 megapixel camera, and all the usual sensors, GPS, WiFi and HSDPA gloriousness you’d expect from an Android device – oh, and Android 2.1), the HTC Desire adds to all this, er, desirability with its newly updated Sense UI.

Oh, and it also throws Flash 10.1 into the mix as well. Mmmmmm :)

More pics of the HTC Desire after the jump