If you thought the (admittedly weak) Liquid e was all Acer had in store for Mobile World Congress, you’d be badly mistaken. We’ve got a foursome of other smartphones on tap, so we won’t waste any time breaking ’em down. Up first is the neoTouch P300 and neoTouch P400, each of which ship with Windows Mobile 6.5.3. The P300 gets a luscious 3.2-inch WQVGA touch panel, slide-out QWERTY keyboard (backlit, no less!), WiFi and a March ship date, while the May-bound P400 packs a 3.2-inch HVGA touchscreen, 600MHz Qualcomm 7227 CPU, WiFi and a 3.2 megapixel camera. Moving on, there’s the beTouch E110 (shipping in March in black and dark blue), complete with a 2.8-inch touch panel, Android, 3 megapixel camera, FM tuner and a 1,500mAh battery. Finally, the beTouch E400 touts Android 2.1, the same 600MHz power plant as on the P400, a 3.2-inch HVGA resistive touchscreen, smart LED lighting (acts as a message indicator) and an April ship date. Pricing remains a mystery on the whole lot, but we’re hoping to learn more as we dig our heels in at the show.
Barcelona — Today I tried out Opera Mini running on the iPhone, and it kicks Safari’s butt. The folks at Opera have a native version of their browser running on the iPhone, and while there are limits due to the way it is built, for sheer speed of browsing, it has Safari beat.
Opera Mini has not yet been submitted to Apple for approval: The demo I saw was of a very mature but unfinished version. But when it does get sent to Apple’s crack team of picky, fickle reviewers, it should, technically at least, pass. The reason that browsers other than those based on Webkit (Safari) aren’t allowed on the iPhone is that Apple bans the running of interpretive code. This means Java, or Flash, or any other runtime is out.
Opera Mini gets around this by doing all the rendering on the server – Opera’s servers actually run web browsers – and sending what are essentially pictures to the phone. These “pictures” look and act like regular web pages, only they are 90% smaller. That’s a big deal if you’re using a phone in a country with expensive bandwidth (Russia is a big market for Opera Mini).
IPhone users will be more interested in the cost reductions for roaming data use, and in speed. We loaded up the NYT front page in both browsers (Opera’s Phillip Grønvold is pretty good at hitting both “go” buttons at once) and we were up and browsing five or six pages deep with Opera before Safari had even finished the front page. Better, Opera is responsive to zooming and scrolling as soon as the text is up on screen. IPhone users know that this isn’t the case for Mobile Safari.
Another speed-up comes from caching. Not caching pages, but keeping the markup file (like we said, they’re not really just pictures) from each page, ready to re-display. This gives instant back-and-forward navigation.
There are some quirks. In order to keep things consistent across platforms (Opera Mini is available for almost any modern phone), some iPhone UI conventions are ignored. Copy and paste gets its own custom widgets, although it still talks to the built-in clipboard. In this way it is a little like, say, Photoshop, which has almost identical versions on Windows and OS X, even if the OS X version annoys many Mac users with its UI.
If Opera makes it through the Apple approval process, I’ll be grabbing it right away. The speed makes it perfect the kind of fast reading you do on a phone. And it has one feature that will surely make Apple warm to it: because it doesn’t support video of any kind, Opera Mini won’t display Flash.
Straight out of Denmark comes a trio of additions to the ever-growing Android lineup, the result of “two years of top secret international development work” by Lumigon Corp. The first phones are the T1 and S1, both shipping before July, the latter of the two offering a sliding T9 keypad, both featuring Android 2.1, Freescale processors, 720p output over HDMI, FM tuning and broadcasting, and the handy ability to act as a universal remote. Next will be the E1, coming sometime later and offering a “unique navigation system and shape never experienced in mobile phones.” It’s so mind-blowingly beautiful that the company hasn’t deemed your or our eyes capable of beholding such a wonder, so no pictures have been released just yet. Perhaps if we spend our days in devotional contemplation we’ll be mentally prepared for its eventual release.
Apple may have the iPhone, but the iPhone doesn’t have the Xbox. Today, Microsoft leveraged their most compelling entertainment asset, the Xbox 360, into Windows Phone 7 Series. But what does this mean, practically speaking?
(Note: If you don’t understand what the heck Windows Phone 7 is, read this first.)
Here’s the official word from Microsoft on how WP7 will incorporate Xbox Live.
“Games—This hub delivers the first and only official Xbox LIVE experience on a phone, including Xbox LIVE games, Spotlight feed and the ability to see a gamer’s avatar, Achievements and gamer profile. With more than 23 million active members around the world, Xbox LIVE unlocks a world of friends, games and entertainment on Xbox 360, and now also on Windows Phone 7 Series.”
What we saw in Microsoft’s demo today fleshes that concept out a bit. There will be a Spotlight section, with your Xbox Live avatar and notice of friends’ achievements. And of course, there will be games—”premium titles” with achievements and multiplayer connected to other cellphones, PCs and Xbox 360 consoles.
Don’t let the simple interface fool you. Xbox Live on a phone is more than having your avatar on one more screen because of the three types of games I believe we’ll see on Windows Phone 7.
The Three Games of Windows 7 Phone
The first type of game will be a lot like an iPhone title. Powerful pocket hardware will push impressive graphics (that make the PSP and DS look sad). That’s a simple idea that I know all of you can wrap your heads around.
Now, some of these games may be released cross-platform, as Microsoft teased today. They’ll be what I classify as the second type of gaming on Windows Phone 7—casual, connected titles that allow anyone with a Live account to join in (no matter if they’re on a WP7, 360 or PC). You won’t see the most beautiful XBLA titles on the phone, of course, but something like Worms? Why not? A buy it once, play it anywhere model would make this type of game incredibly enticing. UPDATE: It appears that Windows Phone 7 will run XNA framework, meaning it should be (theoretically) compatible with the Xbox 360’s XNA games.
The third type of game—the one that will appeal most to the hardcore gamers—is the Xbox 360 expanded title, something unmentioned by Microsoft but that I see coming a mile away. Imagine a minigame accompaniment to Halo that could unlock more content/resources/anything. Now imagine that such a game is driven by some of the most powerful handheld processors in the world. (You should be picturing something that looks a lot like Call of Duty’s Nazi Zombies on the iPhone.) But with the iPhone, Nazi Zombies never leaves your phone—nothing about it will affect your Call of Duty experience on your home console.
Such no longer needs to be the case when the game is connected to Live. AAA franchises can make their way to the mobile space with Microsoft in a way that they never could with Apple. Put differently, pocketable games can have console-level repercussions.
Microsoft’s Mobile Trump Card: Nobody Else Has an Xbox Live…Not Really
While the iPhone is a treasure trove of pocketable amusements, they’re pretty much self-contained entities working in a closed box. Sadly, pretty much the same thing can be said about the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP. Nintendo and Sony have both experimented with connecting their mobile and home platforms on a title-by-title basis (and no doubt, the PSP’s early promise of Remote Play still sounds like a revolutionary idea today), but neither company has been all that successful in bridging the gap to create a seamless digital experience.
Plus, let’s face it, neither Sony nor Nintendo is relevant in the smartphone business—the present and future of pocket gaming. And while the iPhone is tough competition, it’s one phone. Windows Phone 7 Series is a specification (that includes baseline hardware specs and software specs) for many phones that could potentially be on many carriers.
Imagine if Nintendo let any willing manufacturer integrate Wii/DS services. That’s essentially what Microsoft is doing here.
But when it really comes down to it, is Microsoft selling us the Xbox 360 experience on cellphones, or are they pitching putting cellphone games on the Xbox 360? And will anyone want to create original, non-ported content for the Windows 7 Phone Series when there are 75 million iPhones and iPod touches out there already?
Time will tell. Despite what promises to be the most full-featured mobile gaming platform of all time, Microsoft must woo developers to create compelling mobile content before any of this matters.
Barcelona — Sony Ericsson has jumped aboard the Android Train at the Mobile World Congress 2010. Of three new handsets announced, two use Google’s phone OS, and only the poor, dull Vivaz still uses the tired Symbian OS.
The Android phones are the Xperia X10 Mini and Pro. The main difference between the two tiny handsets is the slide-out QWERTY keyboard on the pro model. In fact, so similar are these handsets that even their mother, the bigger Xperia X10 releasewd last year, has trouble telling them apart.
Both have touch-screens, small at just 2.55-inches and with a decidedly last-century VGA resolution (240 x 320). They also have 5MP cameras, A-GPS, the standard Webkit browser and, on top of the usual Android OS, a lot of customization.
The most obvious tweak is Timescape, which is a kind of floaty cover-flow view for contacts, pictures, missed calls or pretty much anything that can be put in a list. Imagine the bits of information on a series of translucent pieces of paper, hovering in space, and you have the idea. Whether this is useful or not is debatable.
The touch screens are also less than perfect, with a slightly laggy feel that comes from resistive touch. But then, these are clearly aimed at the non-smart market: Android OS 1.6 isn’t going to attract any of the geeks buying the Droid or Nexus.
This fragmentation of the Android range so early in its life is bound to lead to problems, with so many different devices with differently tweaked skins running on top. The irony is that, with its new Windows 7 Phone, Microsoft has moved from this fragmented position into a much more Apple-like approach, with minimum hardware specs and tight relationships with manufacturers and carriers.
FLO TV may not have had the best Super Bowl commercial (not by a long shot, actually), but the fledgling mobile programming service is doing its darnedest to make some waves over in Barcelona. The biggest news is that Qualcomm will be on hand at MWC in order to showcase a FLO-enabled smartbook, a device that will purportedly bring together live television and live social networking updates — something that would come in handy while watching the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, for example. In other, more international news, FLO-EV is being introduced, with Qualcomm describing it as the “next evolution of the FLO air interface.” Finally, Audiovox has announced that an in-vehicle system based on FLO TV is now sweeping the nation, with Advent-branded solutions hitting up showroom accessory departments en masse. Now, if only these guys and gals could convince people to care about TV on-the-go…
As we see in this first ever video, the Windows Phone 7 interface is filled with simple, beautiful animations not so dissimilar to the Zune HD. UPDATE:
UPDATE: Here’s more video showing us the experience of maps and web browsing. Very sharp.
UPDATE 2: And here’s a full features rundown clip that’s a must-watch.
UPDATE 3: One last video from Recombu—here we see a giant Windows 7 Series mockup running the interface in real time. It probably offers the best feel of general navigation we’ve seen yet.
Update: Read our hands-on with the new Windows Phone 7 Series.
Microsoft on Monday announced its next-generation mobile operating system Windows Phone 7 Series, which will bring together the Zune multimedia experience and Xbox Live gaming to mobile phones worldwide.
Manufacturers have already begun building phones featuring Windows Phone 7 Series with plans for release by the 2010 holiday season, according to Microsoft. Manufacturers on board include Dell, Garmin, Asus, HTC, Hewlett-Packard, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba.
Carrier partners include AT&T, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, SFR, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, and Vodafone.
Microsoft did not announce its own phone hardware. However, the software giant is working more closely than it has in the past with manufacturing partners in the design process of their phone hardware. For example, each Windows 7 Series phone will include a dedicated hardware button to access Microsoft’s Bing search tool with one click.
“In a crowded market filled with phones that look the same and do the same things, I challenged the team to deliver a different kind of mobile experience,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft, in a press statement. “Windows Phone 7 Series marks a turning point toward phones that truly reflect the speed of people’s lives and their need to connect to other people and all kinds of seamless experiences.”
Similar to the Zune HD’s interface, the Windows Phone 7 Series main screen is organized into six “Hubs” (categories) containing different sets of features: People, Pictures, Games, Music + Video, Marketplace and Office.
The People hub includes tools to make posting status updates, photos and videos on social networking sites (such as Facebook and Windows Live) a one-step process.
The Pictures hub keeps a user’s videos and photos all in one place, where they can also be immediately posted on a social networking site.
The Games section will provide access to the Xbox Live experience. With Xbox Live integration, Windows Phone 7 Series users will be able to download and play games sold through Microsoft’s online store, Xbox Live Marketplace, which currently serves about 300 titles. Windows Phone 7 users will also be able to view their Xbox Live profiles, avatars and game achievements on their phones. (The addition of Xbox Live to Microsoft’s mobile OS may come as a surprise, but the software giant as early as 2007 announced its plans to incorporate the Xbox Live experience into phones as part of its “Live Anywhere” program.)
For Music + Video, Microsoft is integrating its Zune player software into Windows Phone 7 Series, which will enable Windows Phone 7 Series customers to sync and play content downloaded through the Zune Marketplace store. Windows Phone 7 Series devices will also include a built-in FM radio and Zune Social to share their music recommendations with other users.
The Office hub will contain productivity tools: Office, OneNote and SharePoint Workspace, enabling users to read, edit and share documents. This section also includes Outlook Mobile for managing e-mail, appointments, contacts and tasks.
At the press conference, Ballmer was vague about the Marketplace hub, which will serve downloadable third-party apps and games. Microsoft did not disclose whether Windows Phone 7 Series would have access to apps and games sold through the Zune Marketplace. The company said it plans to share details about the Windows Phone 7 Series Marketplace and its development platform during the Microsoft MIX developer conference in March.
“Windows phones are very differentiated with the new UI,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president and tech strategist of Interpet. “They don’t look to act like another iPhone clone. The integration of other Microsoft services such as Zune and especially Xbox will help drive a message that there’s more to mobile than apps, and that integrative services matter a lot as well. Finally, the breakdown of app silos into an integrated story will help, and Microsoft explains why different can be better.”
Microsoft’s new, rebranded mobile OS is the software giant’s effort to regain its edge in the mobile space. The software giant had a head start in mobile beginning with Windows CE, its pocket PC OS, in 1996, which serves as the foundation for the Windows Mobile OS shipping on smartphones today. However, while Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android devices are gaining market share and rising in popularity, they’ve left Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS in the dust. Windows Mobile lost nearly a third of its smartphone market share between 2008 and 2009, according to research firm Gartner. Windows Mobile had 11 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter of 2008, according to Gartner, and in the third quarter of 2009 Windows Mobile’s market share plummeted to 7.9 percent.
Analysts and developers told Wired.com in November 2009 that Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS failed to appeal to the mainstream because its apps focused on enterprise users rather than consumers. Also, from a programmer’s perspective the platform was difficult to develop apps for due to segmentation of the hardware ecosystem for Windows Mobile smartphones. Because Windows Mobile ships on several different manufacturers’ hardware, including phones made by HTC, LG and Samsung, developers have to code an app for several phones with different UI styles, buttons and screen sizes — a daunting task when compared to coding one app for Apple’s iPhone platform.
It remains to be seen to what extent Windows Phone 7 Series will compensate for its predecessor’s weaknesses — though the emphasis of personal media and social networking, along with the additions of Xbox gaming and Zune functionality, will likely shift the new platform’s focus toward consumers. Also, because Microsoft is now more involved in the design process of Windows Phone 7 Series hardware (as shown by the Bing button and built-in FM tuner included with all Windows Phone 7 Series phones), it may become easier for developers to code software for the new platform.
“Microsoft hasn’t been in nearly as bad shape as many have believed, but this refresh takes them to the next level in terms of mobile platforms and does so in a way that differentiates them from the rest of the market,” Gartenberg said. “Their challenge now is to execute, continue to tell the rest of the story and begin to expand their market share as these devices come to market.”
A live webcast of the Windows Phone 7 Series announcement will be viewable at Microsoft’s website 3 p.m. CET (6 a.m. PDT) on Monday. Wired.com’s Charlie Sorrel will be reporting live from Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, Spain. He’ll post more details as he receives them, so stay tuned.
It’s astounding that until this moment, three years after the iPhone, the biggest software company in the world basically didn’t compete in mobile. Windows Phone 7 Series is more than the Microsoft smartphone we’ve been waiting for. Everything’s different now. More »
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Barcelona — Today I tried out Opera Mini running on the iPhone, and it kicks Safari’s butt. The folks at Opera have a native version of their browser running on the iPhone, and while there are limits due to the way it is built, for sheer speed of browsing, it has Safari beat.
Apple may have the iPhone, but the iPhone doesn’t have the Xbox. Today, Microsoft leveraged their most compelling entertainment asset, the 
What we saw in Microsoft’s demo today fleshes that concept out a bit. There will be a Spotlight section, with your Xbox Live avatar and notice of friends’ achievements. And of course, there will be games—”premium titles” with achievements and multiplayer connected to other cellphones, PCs and Xbox 360 consoles.
UPDATE 2: And here’s a full features rundown clip that’s a must-watch.
UPDATE 3: One last video from 
