The UK Mobile Phone Blog

Mobile World Congress 2008

The Mobile World Congress has been in Barcelona for a few years now. It used to be held in Cannes, France. The reason it moved from Cannes is because it had outgrown the location. Well, it would seem that the GSMA will have to look for a new location, as Barcelona was so packed today it was hard to move. This is the third year that I have attended what used to be called 3GSM, and I’ve never seen it so busy. It was heaving, people from all sides of the mobile phone industry converged in one place. Software companies, hardware companies, networks, content providers, operating systems, chip makers, screen makers, and of course, the manufacturers. Getting around the hall was a real fight, no time for good manners, it seemed, as I was buffeted and elbowed from stall to stall.

From list of exhibitors, my main focus was on the manufacturers. Time was short, and working to a tight schedule, I wanted to make sure I got to see as much as I could from the likes of Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG, Samsung, and Motorola.

My first port of call was Nokia, and having had time with the handsets at the recent Press event in London, I didn’t really need too much time on the stand, nor did I need to get many photos, which is just as well! You couldn’t move on the stand for people. They had all the recent handset releases there, such as the Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia E90, Nokia 5610, as well as the new releases, Nokia N78, Nokia 6210 Navigator and Nokia 6220. I am sure the Nokia N96 would have been there too, but I didn’t get to see it here.

After Nokia, I moved to the LG stand. LG have made some of the most popular handsets in the retail market of recent times, with phone such as the LG Shine, LG Prada, and LG Chocolate. I was curious to see some handsets that we have already heard about, such as the LG KF600 Venus and LG F700, plus I wanted to know what other surprises they had for us. At the back of their stand was a display for the Black Metal range. Shown were the LG Chocolate, and LG Shine. The pod for the next phone in that range was left blank, with a ‘To Be Confirmed’ sign showing. I wonder what they have got in store for us.

I got some hands on time with the LG Venus. The unique fact about this handset is the dual front screen. The whole design of the phone is of a standard slide, but on the front with the handset closed, where you would normally see control buttons, there is instead a touch screen section. This offers different icons, depending on what you are actually doing at the time, whether that be listening to music, writing an SMS or browsing the web. A clever touch, when the phone is closed, the screen saver kicks in and utilises both the standard screen and the touch screen. Doesn’t improve functionality in anyway, but looks good nonetheless.

The LG F700 is similar in design to the LG Prada, a long mobile with a large touchscreen. The concept works well but as with all touchscreen phones the fingerprints soon start to show.

After the LG Stand I stopped in at the Motorola stall. Last year, when I attended 3GSM with a colleague, we were not allowed to take any pictures of any Motorola handset, as it was restricted to press only. We were attending as visitors, so we had no chance. This year I attended as a member of the Press. No such problems this year, I thought. And it started of OK. I took a couple of pictures and a security guard came up to me. “Are you Press?” He asked. “Of course,” I replied, and showed him my badge. He gruffly mumbled something and left me to it. I walked around the stall a bit more taking more photos. I was taking photos of the new PEBL phone, the U9 when another security man came up “Are you Press?” He enquired. “Of course,” I replied and showed him my badge. However that wasn’t enough for him. “Did you register?” He persisted. I asked him to explain what he meant and he told me all Press had to register at the front of the stand before they were allowed to take pictures. I looked over and saw the length of the queue, and decided taking pictures of the PEBL wasn’t worth such a wait, and promptly left.

A quick note to Motorola. At an exhibition, where you exhibit your products, expect people to take pictures, so they can go back and share them, with friends, with colleagues, and online. If you don’t like it, don’t exhibit. I would have thought that right now Motorola would be doing all it can to win friends, not alienate the very people who want to know about their latest products.

After that brief stay on the Motorola stand, I moved to Samsung. Samsung were exhibiting the new Samsung SGH U900 Soul. You couldn’t fail to know about it, adverts were plastered all over town, visible on the ride in from the airport. You would hope that with such advertising that Samsung had a product to warrant it, and the U900 didn’t disappoint. The Samsung U900 Soul comes in a metallic style casing, which is pleasurable to hold. It has a nice weighted feel, well balanced and looks good. The U900 is a slide style phone, similar to many Samsung phones to date. The slide style s an ideal choice if you want a large screen and a decent keypad. The Samsung U900 has a 5.0 megapixel camera, and appears to have a new style menu. The standout feature from looking at the phone is the new touchstyle pad. You can see from the photos, it is located on the outside of the phone, usually where you would expect to see the menu control keys. If you think touchpad as found on a laptop, you have some idea of what this new control pad looks like. You don’t slide your finger across the screen to control the cursor as you do with a laptop, but there are four directional arrows with an ‘OK’ selection in the middle of the screen. All selections can also be made with the soft option keys, which does seem to be a bit unnecessary. Overall the Samsung SGH U900 Soul is a nice handset and sure to sell well.

Finally, of the large manufacturers, I made my way to the Sony Ericsson stand. All the talk about Sony Ericsson has been about the X1. I’ll bet Microsoft is happy. Finally they have their Windows Mobile software on a handset that could be mainstream, and a handset that has a decent feature set. The X1 has a 3 inch wide touchscreen with a slide out QWERTY keypad that slides out in a soft arc, making the screen easily viewable when the phone is positioned as a PDA. Control of the device is also managed with a touch sensitive trackball. There was only one X1 on the stand, and whilst it was ‘out’ (I.e. not behind a display case) it wasn’t being passed around. Security? Something to hide? Who knows? To be fair it would have been a prototype so it would have been unfair to judge the handset right now. From what I saw, it looked very nice.

Sony Ericsson also had the G700i and G900i on display. These are new touch screen phones from Sony Ericsson, designed to appeal to the mainstream audience The G700i is a 3G handset, with a 3.2 megapixel camera. The G900i is also a 3G handset and comes with a 5.0 megapixel camera, and both are based on the Symbian UIQ operating system. A different idea from Sony Ericsson, as in theory both these phones would sit in the smartphone category, but they are not being sold as such. Time will tell whether the handsets are a success or not. I suspect that the next versions may be, but am not sure about these; they didn’t seem to have that wow factor.

By far the busiest manufacturer, Sony Ericsson also had the C702, C902 and W980i on display. The W980i is a Walkman handset, flip style, supporting both 3G and Mobile Broadband HSDPA. It is very light and compact, but feels kind a plastic and cheap. There is no expandable memory, but the internal memory capacity is an amazing 8GB, plenty of space for music, video and photos. The W980 as well as being a Walkman phone also incorporates an FM radio *and* has an FM transmitter. This works in a similar way to the clip on modules available for portable music players, the device will scan for an available FM frequency and you can play your music collection through your car or home stereo.

The C702 and C902 are both Cybershot branded handsets. The Sony Ericsson C902i has a 5.0 megapixel camera, with auto focus, image stabiliser and face recognition. The handset supports 3G and Mobile Broadband HSDPA, and is equipped with a second, front facing camera for making video calls.

The Sony Ericsson C702i has a 3.2 megapixel camera, with auto focus. The handset is also 3G and has Mobile Broadband HSDPA connectivity, and is also equipped with an internal GPS receiver and has support for A-GPS which will help the handset establish a quick login time.

Finally, I don’t normally look at accessories, my interest and for most others is on the new handsets. However, I saw two Sony Ericsson Bluetooth watches. Slimmer than the original Sony Ericsson Bluetooth watch, the new style product also has music control controls on the side, allowing you to fast forward/rewind, skip tracks and control the volume. Very nice, maybe with these products remote Bluetooth control will finally hit the mainstream market?

Overall it was a good exhibition, despite the time restraint. Negatives are Motorola and their photo policy, and the fact it was just too busy. A new venue is needed, I think, if this much interest is going to be generated year after year. Positives are the new Nseries handsets, the Samsung U900 Soul and the Sony Ericsson X1.