The Mobile World Congress 2008 – an Overview

Recently in Barcelona the annual Mobile World Congress (or MWC) took place with all the major manufacturers showcasing some of the mobile phones we all will be craving during the rest of the year. It certainly lived up to expectations with the 3 major manufacturers each showcasing new flagship devices as well as well as plenty of pleasant surprises.

The highlights of the MWC do vary depending on where you read but with an event as big as this that isn’t particularly surprising as there were some devices unveiled which had long-been rumoured as well as others which seemingly came out of nowhere. My personal highlights were a rather interesting development from Sony Ericsson, a long-awaited announcement from Nokia and LG’s attempt at breaking into the big-leagues.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1:
This is a new smartphone that operates on Windows Mobile version 6.1 and comes with a 3” touchscreen; slide-out QWERTY keyboard and 3G HSDPA at 3.6Mbps. The XPERIA X1 also comes with a 528MHz Qualcomm processor; 400MB of internal memory and Wi-Fi.

Personally this is looking like a top of the range smartphone that combines touch-navigation, great all round features (including a 3.15MP camera) in a relatively compact design making it my pick of the MWC.

Anticipation Rating – 5/5 – Can’t wait.

LG KF700:
The KF700 is the strongest sign yet that LG are gearing up to really compete with the big boys of Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. Following in the tradition of the KG800 Chocolate, we now have a new sliding device that offers a 3” touchscreen; HSDPA at 7.2Mbps and a 3.15MP camera with autofocus & image stabiliser put together in a body measuring only 14.5mm thick. A scroll wheel known as the ‘Shortcut Dial’ similar to the zoom lens on the Viewty located on the rear is used as a navigation method in conjunction with the touchscreen.

As long as the touch-navigation is implemented in the right way with adequate response from the UI, then this could prove to be as popular as the KG800, albeit at an inevitably higher price.

Anticipation Rating – 4/5 – Just what LG needed to build on the success of the Viewty.

Samsung U900 Soul

Now this is an interesting one. The U900 is likely to be the last addition to the Samsung Ultra range following on from the popular U600 and its 3G up[grade the U700. The U900 Soul (which stands for Spirit Of Ultra) will be aiming to finish off the series in style, whilst still maintaining the same high-end features and minimal size - 12.9mm thick in this case - that made the Ultra Series so popular.

The U900 Soul will come with a 5MP camera with autofocus, flash, face detection & image stabilizer; 3G HSDPA at 7.2Mbps; a 2.2” TFT 16M colour display and Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP profile for connection of wireless Bluetooth headphones.

A small touch-sensitive panel is located underneath the main screen which replaces the standard button-layout. The on-screen icons also change dependent on the screen you’re in, such as music keys when in the music player. Although this navigation solution has been seen before in the Samsung E950, a flagship handset like the U900 Soul will surely have this implemented better and the early signs are very encouraging.

The U900 Soul looks is so far looking like a fitting epitaph to the Samsung Ultra series, as it combines top of the range technical features along with a genuinely innovative navigation method. Providing that the touch panel in particular is implemented in the right way, there’s no reason why this can’t eclipse both the U700 & U600 as a Samsung flagship mobile.

Anticipation Rating – 4/5 – Looking forward to seeing it in the flesh.

Nokia N96:
After a seemingly endless stream of speculation with varying degrees of accuracy, the Nokia N96 was finally revealed and in truth, it’s a beast in terms of both physicality and technology. Nokia N96 takes the same design from the N81 and adds the dual-sliding action from the N95 to house a set of multimedia keys for video & music playback. Although it is a little on the hefty side due to the 125 gram load the sheer amount of features crammed in make it worthwhile.

The Nokia N96 comes with a 5MP Carl Zeiss Optics camera with flash & autofocus; 30 frames per-second video recording; 128MB of RAM and a DVB-H Digital TV receiver. Connectivity is by far and away the highest-scoring point of the N96. As well as the standard options of GPRS, Bluetooth 2.0 & EDGE (class 32 in this case) the N96 will have Wi-Fi & 3G HSDPA at 3.6Mbps. This does hammer home the point that Nokia want the N96 to be the most complete multimedia device on the market, and before you ask - yes that does include sat-nav. Nokia Maps version 2.0 comes pre-loaded to complement the built-in GPS receiver.

Re-iterating that point even further is the memory capacity, which is an astonishing 16GB internal as well as the possibly of upgrading via a microSD card taking the maximum possibly memory to a massive 24GB (that’s assuming SDHC cards are supported.)

Undoubtedly the Nokia N96 was the most-feature packed of the devices unveiled at the 2008 MWC, but my concerns are with the overall weight and the potentially insufficient 950mAh battery, which cold yet prove to be an issue as in the original N95, but on that count we’ll have to wait and see. Suffice to say is the N96 lives up to its promise, the N95 could be left standing.

Anticipation rating – 3/5 - Unquestionably powerful, but can it cope?

Modu Phone:
This is personally by far & away the most unique offering presented during the whole of the MWC, which considering some of the downright odd stuff on offer, is quite an achievement. The premise is you buy the phone itself which operates as a standard phone with a music player and you attach a ‘jacket’ to this small module to add a particular function.

The great thing about this kind of flexibility is that in theory, the Modu will never be out of style or out of date. The ‘jackets’ on show were the boombox & gaming versions, which are exactly as they sound – the boombox is for enhanced music playback & the gaming version is for mobile games in conjunction with a larger screen.

Further jackets are to be released including a sat-nav version as well as a rumoured storage version which would basically add a USB port to the Modu to enable it to be plugged directly into a PC without the need of a cable connection.

All in all the Modu is a very interesting concept and the best part is that as long as upgrades (or jackets) continue to be manufactured in line with the market place at the time, then the Modu is more than capable of keeping up with the competition just by adding a relatively simple improvement.

Anticipation Rating – 3/5 Intriguing and well worth watching out for.