3GSM World Congress - Roundup 1

12th February 2007

The first day of the 3GSM World Congress is traditionally the busiest day of the year for mobile phone announcments. In this first roundup, we give a glimpse of some of the devices to be announced. We'll follow up with more details later.

Nokia

Nokia will announce the Nokia E90 Communicator later today - the very long-awaited 3G successor to the 9500. The rumour are that it will have a bigger screen, possibly 800 pixels wide, a 2.0 or 3.2 megapixel digital camera (although we hope this will be an option), and perhaps HSDPA support.

There are also rumours of a Nokia N77 device with built-in DVB-H TV capabilities.

Samsung

As usual, Samsung have announced a huge number of devices.

The Samsung SGH-i520 is a 3G Symbian smartphone with a QVGA 2.3" screen, HSDPA and a 2 megapixel camera and microSD memory weighing just 99 grams. The Samsung SGH-i600 is a 3G Windows-based smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard, WiFi and HSDPA.

We already know about the Samsung SGH-F700 PDA-style multimedia device, this is joined by the SGH-F520 which has a 3" screen and a touchpad, plus HSDPA support. There's also the dual-faced SGH-F510 which has one side of the phone dedicated to multimedia, the other side for voice calls. Samsung will also be showing off the SGH-F300 media phone.

Four new Ultra Edition handsets also make a showing, with the new "U" designation - the number quoted after "Ultra Edition" refers to the thickness of the handset. The SGH-U600 (also known as the Ultra Edition 10.9) features a 3.2 megapixel camera, 2.2" QVGA display and EDGE. The SGH-U700 (Ultra Edition 12.1) is a 3G slider with HSDPA support and a 3 megapixel camera with autofocus. Then the SGH-U300 (Ultra Edition 9.6) is a compact clamshell phone in a stylish metal case, again with a 3 megapixel camera. The last one is the ultra-slim SGH-U100 (Ultra Edition 5.9) which at 5.9mm thick is the slimmest phone in the world, with a 3 megapixel camera and 176x220 pixel display.

Motorola

It is thought that Motorola will introduce the Motorola KRZR K3, RIZR Z8 and Moto Q EDGE devices that we previewed a couple of days ago. It's unlikely that there will be any significant announcements from Motorola other than that.

RIM / BlackBerry

RIM have announced their BlackBerry 8800 series - a revision of the popular 8700 with the multimedia features of the 8100 Pearl. While not to everyone's taste, the Pearl shows that there's a market for this type of device.

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