We know, there was an absolute flood of news from Mobile World Congress today, but day one in Spain has finally come to a close, and it looks like Microsoft is flexing all its muscle to try and lock up partners and rejoin the fight for mobile dominance. Seriously, this is Redmond’s show: we haven’t seen a new, non-prototype Android handset powered up yet, and that’s frankly astonishing and somewhat disappointing. What else did we learn?
There’s not a whole lot to look at with the GD900 slider, but in this case, that’s exactly the effect LG was shooting for. The high-design phone was being carefully guarded by plastic and metal not its own at MWC this week, making a true hands-on impossible — but the good news is that we were able to get a good look at the phone’s headline feature. That nearly transparent keypad has a glow applied around its edges to illuminate etched numbers, but with tactile feedback hovering near zero, this is a situation where you’ve really got to value form over function (and in this case, we just might). Interestingly, documentation by the GD900 says it’ll start launching in May, though LG’s press documentation claims we won’t see it until the second half of the year — so it’s unclear when you’ll be able to get one imported. Question is, do you really want people to see your cheek while you’re on the horn?
Having already taken Samsung’s Beat DJ for a spin, the mixers at Engadget Spanish tried out its not-quite-finished younger brother, the Beat Disc. The two handsets are pretty similar, with the most notable differences being a slide-out keyboard and the Bang & Olufsen speakers placed closer together at the bottom of the device. All in all, it comes off as a cheaper version of the DJ, so take that as you will. Check out the moving pictures version of the hands-on after the break.
File this one away in the “man, I should’ve thought of that” category. Here at Mobile World Congress, Oberthur Technologies is making a name for itself by introducing the planet’s first motion detecting and handset-independent SIM card. SIMSense, as it’s so eloquently named, could open up a whole new world of interaction with phones that don’t come with any sort of accelerometer built in. For instance, a user could simply shake their cellphone upon receiving a second call in order to send out a pre-written SMS that explains the situation. Or they could navigate phone menus by simply moving or tapping. Or, better still, they could program their handset to dial an emergency contact if it detected a sudden fall while close to the person’s body. There’s been no indication of anyone grabbing this thing and running with it, but we can’t imagine this not making it out to the commercial realm.
We saw the rough’n’ready Archos 10 get reviewed mere days ago, and now the company’s back with the Atom-powered Archos 10s, a new 20mm thin netbook with 3.5G functionality, 1GB memory, Windows XP Home and up to 160GB storage. Additionally, the company has designs on a 17mm-thin, 9-inch tablet based on Intel’s Moorestown MID platform, to see the light of day sometime this year. This guy will include the Intel System Controller Hub chipset, up to 160GB storage, VOD and hi-def video playback, and digital TV reception. The Archos 10s should be available sometime in April, at a price to be announced.
It was about this time last year when we heard that LG was aiming to push out Android-powered handsets by 2009, and sure enough, it looks like it’ll happen by this summer. According to T3, the company’s altogether bubbly KS360 will be relaunched with Google’s operating system, though the actual specifications (outside of the OS, obviously) will remain the same. Marketing Manager Jeremy Newing also confirmed at Mobile World Congress that LG would be releasing two other Android phones this year, though he wouldn’t divulge any model names or favorite colors for us to guess.
I like the new Windows Mobile 6.5 interface, specially the new home screen, which is brilliantly executed. Running on the new HTC Touch Diamond 2, everything looked smoother, cleaner, and matched the iPhone’s lick factor.
While everything seems to have been touched up, simplified, and polished to no end, what really makes this version of Windows Mobile 6.5 isn’t the new, revamped browser—which uses the engine deployed in 6.1 but feels a lot faster and has a good new interface—or the honeycomb start screen—which I don’t find particularly impressive—or the cleaner UI designed for one-finger operation or the speed or the touch gestures.
To me, what really makes this new operating system great is the new home screen, combined with the lock screen. The lock screen doesn’t look very good aesthetically—somehow, the elements don’t appear tight enough—but it allows you to see what’s cooking in your digital life with just one glance. Turn the screen on and you will see whatever pending alerts, mails, calls, short text messages, or any other element that requires your attention. No need to get deeper into the phone applications. From there, if you want to drill down, just slide-to-unlock the notification and you will be taken straight to the info.
Once you unlock your phone, you are taken to the home screen. This is the true jewel in the operating system: A simple list of categories which let you access information without having to get into the phone applications. It sounds like the lock screen, but from here you can get deeper into the information itself. Here’s how it works:
When you slide your finger over the list, it scrolls like it’s passing through a visor. The visor transforms the text line into the information itself, so if you go through “text”, it will show you the last received text message. Once you are looking at that, you will effectively have access to all your SMS messages right on that screen: Just swipe your finger like passing the pages of a book and it will change the text message. The same happens with all the other categories. There is even a custom “Favorites” category, that would allow you to navigate through whatever you want to put in there, from weather reports to Messenger’s messages.
Then you have the start menu, which is accessible through the now-obligatory Windows flag start button, which must be present in all Windows 6.5 cellphones. Microsoft calls this the “start experience.” I call it: “about time something makes sense in your damn phones.” The start page shows all your available applications displayed as icons in a honeycomb. You can scroll up and down the honeycomb to start apps. No more start menu. The honeycomb is supposed to make it easier to see the icons and click on them. It works well.
Of course, Windows Mobile 6.5 is not perfect. I doesn’t seem to support multitouch, for example. However, it’s a huge leap over the previous fugly versions, which were completely unpalatable. If it fulfills its promise, this one will make Windows users think twice before getting an iPhone or an Android phone.
From this first touch on, it looks like Microsoft is back in the game. They don’t have the upper hand yet, but they are clearly waking up. We will see what happens and how deep these changes really are once it gets released.
We were really hoping MWC would be Android’s coming out party, but while there’s a hefty amount of name-dropping at the show, nobody much seems ready to put hardware on the line. And then there’s Huawei. We were expecting a handset from them at the show, and they’re halfway there, announcing an Android phone, but only bringing a non-working prototype to show for it. The touchphone hardware is decidedly iPhone-esque, and almost seems too button scarce to work with the traditional Android interface, but that’s where the rest of the story comes in: Huawei is working with an “established design consultancy” to develop its own custom interface for the device. The as-yet unnamed phone will be coming to market in Q3 of this year, and Huawei is currently in talks with a carrier who will rebrand the device — the lack of finality there left much of the rest of the info on this phone shrouded. We’re looking forward to learning more about this device in the coming months, but for now you can check out the tease of a gallery below, and the even less informative press release at the read link below.
We’ve been waiting to get our grubby mitts on the LG Arena KM900 and try out the S-Class 3D UI for ourselves, and well — it’s a nice featurephone interface, but it’s not exactly revolutionary. The widget interface is nice, and we’re into the picture-based contacts screen, but the icon-based home screen just feels cluttered, especially when viewed in the expanded horizontal orientation. It’ll be interesting to see how LG refines these elements in its upcoming onslaught of Windows Mobile phones — we wouldn’t drop back to a featurephone for this stuff, but we’d be plenty interested in seeing more phones like the GM730 with this interface. Video after the break!
Read – Engadget Spanish coverage of the KM900 Read – Press release
Well, these are not the Acer phones we saw leaked a few days ago — in fact, there are four new dudes here, all previously unseen. We know little about them, except that they are apparently on hand somewhere at MWC, and we hear that it’s possible they’re going to be unveiled today, so we’ll keep our eyes peeled for them. In the meantime, try to contain yourself and hit the read link for photos of the other two.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
I like the new 
While everything seems to have been touched up, simplified, and polished to no end, what really makes this version of Windows Mobile 6.5 isn’t the new, revamped browser—which uses the engine deployed in 6.1 but feels a lot faster and has a good new interface—or the honeycomb start screen—which I don’t find particularly impressive—or the cleaner UI designed for one-finger operation or the speed or the touch gestures.
