Today at Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona, Nokia’s “Dean of Devices” Kai Öistämö announced the Nokia E55, their slimmest QWERTY (SureType) device yet. It will be available in Europe this summer for roughly $340 USD. Amongst the details currently announced is an incredibly impressive one month stand-by time.
Update: We got the deets. → Read More
This may give you an idea of how crazy Mobile World Congress can get: the first hands on demo of our trip went down when we were still at the airport. Well, in a car right outside of it – but still. Garmin/Asus offered us a ride to our hotel along with a hands-on of their newly announced nuvifone M20; a free ride and a product demo? We couldn’t resist. While we appreciate them sparing us a cab ride, we didn’t walk away too impressed with the M20. Read on for our impressions. → Read More
Today at MWC, T-Mobile unveiled the Memoir (again) and announced that it will be available February 25th for $249.99. You can find all the details you want on the Memoir here. → Read More
Want to know something I learned today? If you forget the power adapter required for making US style plugs play friendly with the outlets in Spain and happen to have arrived on a Sunday, you are screwed. All the stores are closed and, if your hotel is like mine, the “concierge” dude sitting at the front desk watching spanish Futurama doesn’t give a crap. Oh, and I also learned all about the Sony Ericsson “Idou”. Sort of. → Read More
Mobile World Congress in Barcelona kicks off in just 3 days, and we’re headed out the door for the first leg of our trip. We’re still a car, train, and plane ride away – but Barcelona, here we come! So what can we expect? Too much to list. Samsung is bringing all kinds of stuff (but no Android, and no 12MP camera phone, according to SamsungCentral). All sorts of Android goodness will debut. The first day alone has half a dozen press announcements, many of which are happening back to back or at conflicting times. Yikes. Be sure to keep an eye on all of our Mobile World Congress 2009 coverage. → Read More
Somewhere in the heart of Mount Fuji, Acer’s crack team of designers are listening to Hail to the Thief and pounding back Zima because they have finally gotten the world’s attention. You see, Acer’s smartphone division has been completely forgotten within the company – someone tasked them with creating a touchscreen phone back in 2003 or so and then forgot to let them out of the factory, forcing them to live in complete isolation – cultural and technical – as the world passed them by. Now, however, they’ve sent a message: “We’re here! Look! We made phones! Let us out!” → Read More
In light of MWC next week, Garmin-Asus has made a full announcement about the upcoming nuvifone product line. Which, btw, isn’t nearly as fun as spy shots and rumors, but we’ll take it. The original G60 that we have been hearing about for nearly a year seems like it will finally be released and might be a solid contender judging by the specs. Garmin-Asus is announcing a new player however, in the smallish WinMo 6.1, M20 handheld that naturally runs Garmin’s mapping software which might make a larger splash at MWC than it’s big brother. → Read More
Facebook strategists clearly see the potential for growth in the mobile sector, seeing as 13% of their users log in from their phones. To some that number would have the appearance of success, but Facebook sees nowhere to go but up.
They’ve begun talks with pretty much everyone in the business, and are hoping to bring more Facebook to more handsets, including Palm’s much-anticipated Pre and hopefully a whole bunch of Nokias. → Read More
If you were holding your breath until MWC to see if Samsung would drop its promised Android-based phone, you can exhale. It seems that the Samdroid will have to wait, as they’re still in negotiations with carriers and no hardware has been put forth. Shucks! It’s bad news for Samsung lovers, but there’s still a chance that HTC will give us a glimpse of the G2 (not this thing, which is totally fake). Hey, I like my G1, but believe me I’d be down like a clown if they put out something sexier. → Read More
Joining Samsung in the mentality of “Lets announce small stuff before MWC so that people don’t notice our gigantic leaks” is Sony Ericsson, who has gone ahead and announced the W395 Walkman phone. It’s not quite the beastly beaut we’re expecting to see next week at Mobile World Congress, but it might be just enough to tide over the desire for more leaks in the meanwhile. What’s that you’re saying? It definitely won’t? Yeah. You’re probably right. Then again, Sony Ericsson might be getting this announcement out of the way now because its boring. Essentially another who-cares Walkman phone, it’s got a 2.0 megapixel camera, FM, “large powerful built-in stereo speakers” and, well, that’s about it. Full specs after the jump. → Read More
It’s stirring. Even in this harsh economy, SE is still launching two phones for MWC, a move that shows SE’s dedication to the status quo and an understanding that consumers want more of the same. In a way, Sony Ericsson is telling the world “Yes, we’re still alive and kicking. Yes, we still have phones. And yes, one is is a mid-level cameraphone for Europe.”
The SE C903 Cyber-shot is a “creative and stylish mobile phone” with swivel screen, 5-megapixel camera, Smile Shutter (TM)(C)(R), BestPic (TM)(C)(R) (a silly system that takes 9 bad pictures in a row and lets you pick the best one). It comes in Lacquer Black, Techno White and Glamour Red and includes aGPS. → Read More
Archos, best known for its line of hard drive-based portable media players, has announced plans to “extend its product line with a new ultra-thin Internet Media Tablet combined with a mobile phone, by merging Google’s Android telephony stack and the ARCHOS’ multimedia framework,” according to IT News Online. This new hybrid device (something of a joint effort between Archos and Texas Instruments) aims to merge the functionality of a “premium” smartphone with the rich multimedia capabilities found throughout the rest of Archos’ lineup. → Read More
Take the 8-megapixel shooter and slider form factor from the Sony Ericsson C905, up the screen from 2.4″ to 2.6″, throw in stereo speakers, dedicated music keys and an oh-so-necessary 3.5mm headphone jack, and stamp on the Walkman logo. What do you get? The Hikaru. According to the SEMCBlog, we’ll see this high-end camera phone/music phone hybrid get announced at Sony Ericsson’s MWC press conference on February 15th, with a launch window sometime before the end of Q2. We can’t really say what we think about this one until we get a chance to touch it, but we can say that we really want to touch it. → Read More
Okay, seriously. Its gotta be intentional at this point. Samsung is a more than a dozen pre-MWC leaks deep, with everything from the lowest of lows to their higher-end stuff out on the table. Two more Samsung phones purported to be getting their announcements next week have now leaked. Neither are anything groundbreaking, but we’ll cover’em for the sake of completion. From left to right, with what we know: Samsung J700: Taking the place of the original J700 2.2″ Screen 2 megapixel camera No price given, but expected to be a budget phone Samsung S7220 2.4″ AMOLED Screen 5 megapixel camera aGPS [LeakedPhones via GSMArena] → Read More
With good ol Sammie Samsung’s pipes being all kinds of leaky this year, it’s not too surprising that Samsung is going ahead and announcing somethings right before Mobile World Congress. Might as well make sure word gets out properly, right? This morning, Samsung announced that they have revamped the TouchWiz UI that graces a number of its handsets, and will be demoing it in Barcelona next week. Our translate-o-bot is chorking on the Korean press release a bit, but here’s what we gather: → Read More
When word first got out of the LG Arena, we figured it was safe to say we could expect an official debut at Mobile World Congress – and it definitely was. LG has just pushed a previously unpublished shot of the KM900 (and its interface, which looks a whole lot less iPhone-y here than it did in previous shots) to their blog, saying nothing but “All will be revealed at Mobile World Congress… (Awful teases, aren’t we?!)”. With alleged and likely legit specs already out (Tri-band radio, FM, aGPS, WiFi, 5MP camera, 3″ 800×480 touchscreen), we’re not quite sure exactly what else there is to be “revealed” – but hopefully the new interface packs something worth keeping secret until the big day in Barcelona. → Read More
Looks like the rumors from a few weeks back about Microsoft launching a MobileMe-esque product for Windows Mobile were spot on – except for the name. Earlier this morning a beta signup page briefly went live at GetSkybox.com, but wherever we expected to see “Skybox”, it said “My Phone” instead. Perhaps Microsoft got a bit tired of the Skynet references? The page has since been pulled (don’t worry, there was no actual functionality to any of the links past the front page), but it does confirm that SkyBox will support over-the-air syncing of data, contacts, and photos from your phone to Microsoft’s magical land in the clouds. (Side note, but does anyone else think its odd that they just flipped the name “MobileMe” around and plugged in synonymous variations? It’s probably not intentional, but you’d think they might avoid something so confusingly similar.) [via EngadgetMobile] → Read More
Jeez – at this point, saying something like “when it rains, it pours” would almost seem rude. The number of Samsung phones leaked prior to MWC has now leapt out of “countable on two hands” territory, with details of an 11th previously unheard of Samsung phone, the C6625, making their way onto the tubes. Unlike all of the past leaks, this latest pre-announcement isn’t so much a “leak” as it is a slip-up. Mobile reseller Expansys pushed the product page live a bit early, and some eagle eye stumbled across it. Rockin’ a 2 megapixel camera, 2.6″ 320×240 screen, and a 2 megapixel camera, it’s looking a whole lot like a slightly higher spec’d Samsung Ace. It’s not available yet, but it looks like it’ll go for roughly $365 once it starts shipping. Full specs after the jump. → Read More
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