Posts filed under Events

Lenovo have been showing off the Lenovo Lephone at CES 2010. The Lephone is a brand new Android handset that has a new user interface designed by the company. When I first heard about the Lephone yesterday, I didn’t pay it much attention. Lenovo aren’t exactly known for developing cutting edge smartphones, so I thought it would be just another run of the mill Android phone.

Boy was I wrong?! As the video shows, the Lephone is leagues ahead of “standard” Android phones, and its new user interface looks at least as good as the Nexus One’s.

The list of phones vying for the “world’s best smartphone” title just grew by one!

More details and video of the Lenovo Lephone after the jump.

I’m sure in 20 years’ time from now, there really will be Androids roaming the vast spaces of MWC, but until then, I’ll stick with news on the mobile variety – Google Android, obviously!

Unfortunately, the only Android announcement of any note at MWC was the new HTC Magic (or the G2, as we thought it would be called) that will come exclusively to Vodafone.

So where have all the other Androids gone? We track the Android news from the major manufacturers at MWC after the jump.

LG has officially annoucned the LG GM730 Eigen smartphone at MWC. The Eigen is a Windows Mobile-based smartphone that has the specs you’d expect from a feature-phone, plus the new S-class interface of the LG Arena. In other words, it looks set to be a top-notch smartphone (even if it does run Windows Mobile!)

The LG Eigen will feature the new Windows Mobile 6.5 OS, which itself comes with a brand new UI. However, not for LG the default UI of other Windows Mobile smartphones – they’re going to equip the Eigen with the brand new 3D UI they developed for themselves. First shown on the LG Arena, this is leagues ahead of the TouchWiz UI from Samsung, and only marginally behind the iPhone’s UI.

As such, putting such a powerful UI in a phone with specs like these is tantalizing to say the least!

So what are the specs? They’re just a jump away:

LG have announced several new phones at MWC 2009 as you’d expect, but one that caught my eye was this – the LG GD900. It’s not the most exciting of phones spec-wise, particularly when compared ot the LG Arena, but it does have one trick up its sleeve – a completely see-through keypad.

The LG-GD900 is a fashion phone, so don’t expect anything too special from it, but the transparent keypad should certainly provide a talking point. If you’re into fashion phones, and you like your phones in the buff, you should certainly check out the GD900 when it’s released later this year.

[Source: Slashphone]

One of the more impressive Windows Mobile phones at MWC this year was the HTC Touch Pro2. Sporting the same enhanced TouchFLO user interface as the Touch Diamond2, the Touch Pro2 features a smaller camera (3.2 megapixels, compared to the Diamond2′s 5 megapixels), but a much better keyboard. As you can see from the pics, it features a full QWERTY keyboard that slides open and pivots.

More details and pics of the HTC Touch Pro2 after the jump.

As well as the Android-based HTC Magic announced earlier today, HTC has also been showing off its HTC Touch Diamond2 and Touch Pro2 Windows Mobile machines. These two smartphones aren’t based on Microsoft’s new Windows Mobile 6.5, unfortunately, as that’s not due until the summer; instead, they have to make do with Windows Mobile 6.1 with a new user interface overlaid on top.

HTC’s original Touch smartphone was the first to feature this new interface (called TouchFLO), and it was sorely needed, as the default interface that Windows Mobile ships with looks like something from the designers of Windows 95!

The new HTC Touch phones take TouchFLO and run with it, refining it as needed and making it much more repsonisve thanks to some extra horsepower lurking deep within the bowels of the machines.

More details and pics of the HTC Touch Diamond2 after the jump.

Nokia has finally decided to formally announce the Nokia N86, its brand new 8 megapixel camera phone that it inadvertently showed off to the world in Singapore when the rest of the mobile phone world was at MWC 2009 in Barcelona.

Now the full details have been released, we can see that the N86 is, firstly, a cracking camera phone, at least as far as the camera part is concerned; but secondly, not exactly as innovative a device as you’d expect from an N-Series phone.

Full details, pics and vids after the jump.

Day two at MWC 2009 has been a bit quieter. Perhaps the biggest news (and the least unexpected) has been the launch of the HTC Magic, aka the Android G2. As we reported yesterday, the HTC Magic will be available exclusively on Vodafone, and will probably not be going to the US anytime soon, leaving some to wonder if T-Mobile have their sights set on a G3?

The Magic, meanwhile, has been garnering warm praise from bloggers, with Gizmodo describing it as the closest competitor to the iPhone yet.

More details of the HTC Magic after the jump.

The news coming out of MWC 2009 at the moment is nuts – so just imagine what it’s like being there?!

Fortunately, our friends at Clove Technologies are there as we speak, and they’ve given us a brief taste of the devices they’ve seen, and the announcements that will be made on Tuesday…

There’s a lot of news with Windows Mobile today – indeed, the OS was the most talked about at the show so far (although it is still only the first day).

The reason for this was that Microsoft was showing off its brand new update to Windows Mobile, Windows Mobile 6.5. Many bloggers have raved about it across the Web, but having seen videos of it, it doesn’t come close to some of the new Symbian-powered UIs we’ve seen so far today from the likes of LG and Nokia.

As for iPhone, Android and even the Palm Pre – fugeddaboutit!

There was also a plethora of new Windows Mobile phones on show from the likes of HTC and Toshiba, but I’ll talk about those some more on Tuesday, as I’m getting blisters from blogging!

More details and that video of Windows Mobile 6.5 after the jump.