Fujitsu once said that it didn’t have any plans to launch mobile handsets outside of Asia, but that strategy appears to be changing rapidly. Today comes a report that the Japanese handset maker — which makes both Android and Windows Phone-based devices — is planning to start selling its devices in Europe, with a debut to take place next week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The news comes after Fujitsu said that it also planned to sell devices in the U.S. market either this year or 2013. → Read More
With the end of February nearly in sight, the tech community is all abuzz with talk about Mobile World Congress, the huge mobile conference set to take place in beautiful Barcelona in just over a week. All the big players will be there (though some will be less conspicuous than before), and of course among them will be Taiwan-based phone giant HTC.
Look what just got leaked ahead of the announcement. That’s right, it’s the Samsung Galaxy S 2. The guys over at Moveplayer noticed that Korean news site Paran dropped the ball on the embargo and threw up the info.
Read ahead to see the specs. → Read More
The Galaxy Tab entered 2011 as one of the more worthwhile tablets on the market. It’s rumored that Samsung, wanting to stay competitive against growing tablet offerings, will release a 10-inch version of the Tab at the Mobile World Congress on Sunday. The new tablet will run Honeycomb: Android’s OS optimized for tablets.
Samsung currently offers the Tab as a 7-inch tablet; a 10-inch will be more competitive with the iPad and Xoom. The rumor also says that the new tablet will be thinner and lighter than the current iPad and also physically smaller. To be thinner and lighter, the screen will have to be something entirely different then the current TFT-LCD. Could those AMOLED rumors finally come true? → Read More
We’ve talked about pico projectors quite a bit. Right now, there’s nothing terribly exciting about them; the images are dim and projectors themselves aren’t small enough to be super useful. We know that pico projector integration into smartphones is imminent, but when? → Read More
The idea of an Android-based Playstation phone doesn’t make a great deal of sense to me, and Sony Ericsson seem to agree with me — at least on the branding.
Today, CEO Bert Nordberg told the Wall Street Journal that the device will carry Xperia branding, rather than Playstation.
More interestingly, though, he alluded to a reveal at MWC 2011… → Read More
GSMA, the organizers of the annual, massive Mobile World Congress, have announced a couple of new developments this morning. For one, the organization is to expand the developer-focused programme at the event to include new elements such as Macworld Mobile and the Brand App Challenge.
In addition, the organization has announced new speakers, including Sir Martin Sorrell, chief exec of WPP and HTC head honcho Peter Chou. → Read More
When I first saw shots of the new Puma phone, I was a little skeptical. It looked decent enough, but the whole solar charging thing made it seem a little gimmicky. After seeing the following video from Mobile World Congress, however, it’s beginning to look more like a smartphone I’d actually use. → Read More
[UPDATE: We are now SOLD OUT] During the 2010 GSM World Mobile Congress, TechCrunch Europe will be returning to Barcelona for yet another interactive and live-video-streamed session featuring some of the most innovative and interesting mobile startups and investors in Europe. You can get your tickets to the event here. And by the way, you don;t actually have to be signed up to Mobile World Congress (i.e. pay) to come to our event, which is offsite.
The venue:
Seminario de Barcelona, Carrer de la Diputacio` 231, 08007 Barcelona
Map: http://tinyurl.com/yfhb337
Here’s the programme for the day. → Read More
The mood in Barcelona must be somber, for the city’s team lost to Atletico Madrid yesterday. Granted, Atletico Madrid is Barcelona’s bogey team, but come on, Atletico Madrid?! Team CrunchGear could beat those guys on the pitch. Still, the Mobile World Congress soldiers on. Here’s something that caught my interest—something aside from the Windows Phone!—is the Vodaphone 150. It’s for the developing world. → Read More
Acer isn’t showing any signs of slowing down at Mobile World Congress this week. Just this morning, the manufacturer announced the Liquid e and now we have the neoTouch and beTouch. A little strange with the name scheme, but let’s see just what these devices are packing, shall we? → Read More
While we were allowed to play with the just-announced Windows Phone 7 Series operating system behind closed doors a few hours ago, it was a strictly no-photo, no-video deal. We just left a slightly more public showing of Windows Phone, where representatives had handsets at the ready – and this time, video was okay. → Read More
In case you didn’t know, snappy processors are all the rage these days. When I think of fast processors, the first one that comes to mind is Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon processor which is currently found on devices like the Nexus One, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and the LG eXpo. After Microsoft made its Windows Phone 7 announcement this morning, Qualcomm has come out and said that it will be the first chipset manufacturer to support the new handsets. → Read More
Intel’s had their Moblin mobile Linux distribution for some time. Nokia’s had their Maemo Linux distribution for awhile, too. Neither one really gained much traction in the development community. Along comes Google and everyone’s like “OMG Android!!1″ which must’ve really ticked off Intel and Nokia. In an effort to create a Linux distribution suited for new mobile devices — not just phones — Intel and Nokia are teaming up with the Linux Foundation to create MeeGo. → Read More
If you’re interested in getting into mobile development, you should probably check out Bug Labs. Their BUG system is a modular collection of snap-together components to rapidly prototype a new mobile device. The BUGbase is the backbone — think of it like the mainboard of a traditional PC — into which you can connect a GPS, touchscreen, accelerometer, etc. It runs Linux, and is programmed with Java. At Mobile World Congress today Bug Labs is making the big announcement of version 2 of their product, which supports Android. You can port existing Android apps to run on the BUG hardware, as well as develop new Android apps. Full press release inside! → Read More
Motorola is keeping the Android party rocking with the Cliq XT — or Quench in Euroland. The handset doesn’t bring anything we haven’t seen before including the aging Android 1.5 release along with Motorola’s social media-centric MOTOBLUR home screen replacement. A respectable 3.1-inch 320 x 480 occupies the front, while a 5.0 MP cam with LED flash is housed on the backside. Wi-Fi, HSDPA, A-GPS rounds out the rest of the notable specs on the otherwise boring phone. → Read More
We’re not allowed to say much about it, so we’ll leave it at this: I got a bit of hands-on time with Windows Phone (the official name for what was previously known as Windows Mobile 7) prior to its announcement. I’ll have a bunch more to say about it once I’ve spent some time with it in a setting that allows for video/photography – but in the mean time, read on for my notes and early impressions. → Read More
We’re in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, where Microsoft has at long last pulled back the curtains on the next generation of Windows Mobile. Don’t go calling it “Windows Mobile 7″, though – at least not around Microsoft’s folks, who have officially changed the name of the platform to “Windows Phone”. → Read More
We’ve gotta give it to Microsoft: considering that they’ve been working on Windows Mobile 7 for at least a year or two, the fact that they’ve kept its user interface completely under wraps until a few hours before it’s expected to be officially announced is ridiculously impressive.
Alas, a leak was bound to happen at some point, even if it is at the very last minute. → Read More
The bane of all mobile app developers is the need to rewrite the same app over and over again for different devices: the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm Pre, Nokia, Windows Mobile. Adobe is positioning its Flash platform (which includes the Flash player, AIR, developer tools, and media servers) as the write-once, deploy-anywhere solution for both the mobile Web and apps. Today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, it will announce plans to bring Adobe AIR to mobile devices, starting with Android and Blackberry phones.
AIR is currently used to create desktop applications, but it will soon be used to create Android and Blackberry apps as well. These mobile AIR apps will be able store data locally on the phone, access other data on the phones such as photos, and be distributed as regular apps in the Android and Blackberry app stores. Not only that, but the same apps created with Flash developer tools will be exportable as iPhone apps. Adobe wants developers to create their apps using its developer tools and then output them as AIR apps for Android and Blackberry phones, native iPhone apps, or Flash apps on the Web. → Read More
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