February 2009 Roundup
28th February 2009
February may be the shortest month in
the calendar, but it is probably the biggest month for
new phone releases thanks to the annual Mobile World
Congress (MWC) event, where most manufacturers showcase
their new products for 2009.
Solar Power
Several manufacturers showed off solar
powered phones and accessories during February, including
the impressive Samsung
Blue Earth touchscreen phone. Right down at the
bottom end of the market is the Digicel
Coral 200 Solar, bound for the Caribbean and Central
America, and somewhere in between is the Commtiva
Sola with more mass-market appeal.
Windows Mobile
Touchscreen phones are still very much
the in thing, and we have seen several of them being
announced this month. The Acer
DX900 finally hit the market after a year-long wait
- this dual-SIM smartphone looks to be a useful device
and a solution to carrying around two devices at once.
Another new name appears on the Garmin-Asus nüvifone M20,
basically a standard Windows Mobile device with a decent
GPS system added in. LG don't compete much in the smartphone
market, but the LG
GM730 looks like a reasonable attempt. GSmart showed
off their slim and attractive GSmart
S1200 touchscreen phone, along with the useful but
unexciting GSmart
MS820, which is certainly a capable phone but it
lacks that certain something. Earlier in the month we
saw the Motorola
A3000, basically a cut-down version of the upcoming
A3100.
HTC are probably the biggest name in
Windows Mobile, and the new HTC
Touch Diamond2 improves significantly on what was
already a very impressive Windows phone while toning
down the design a little. One step up from that is the
HTC
Touch Pro2 which adds a QWERTY keyboard, but piles
on the ounces when it comes to weight. T-Mobile announced
their own versions of these two HTC phones, the T-Mobile
MDA Compact V and T-Mobile
MDA Vario V. Perhaps the most exciting device to
be announced was the Toshiba
TG01 which fits into the "bigger, better, faster,
more" philosophy of design, featuring a big display,
lots of memory and a much faster processor than the
competition.
Android
The HTC
Dream is instantly recognisable as the same handset
as the T-Mobile G1, bound for Singapore and Australia.
HTC's second Android phone is the HTC Magic, basically
a keyboardless G1 which will be widely available on
the Vodafone network.
Nokia
The week before the big MWC event, Nokia announced
the Nokia
5630 XpressMusic, a capable music phone with mass-market
appeal. Nokia's main announcement covered the Nokia
E75 with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, the Nokia
E55 compact messaging phone, the Nokia
6710 Navigator which is designed as a personal satellite
navigation tool and the Nokia
6720 Classic which, strangely enough, seems to be
aimed at people who want to make phone calls. Finally,
Nokia announced the Nokia
N86 8MP, their first eight megapixel camera phone
which seemed more like an evolutionary device than a
revolutionary one.
Sony Ericsson
An attractive 3.5G slider with GPS, the Sony
Ericsson C903 is one of the best looking phones
announced this month. The Sony
Ericsson W395 is a low-end Walkman phone, but on
the other end of the scale is the feature packed Sony
Ericsson W995 with an 8.1 megapixel camera and plenty
of other goodies. We also caught site of the upcoming
Sony
Ericsson C901 Cyber-shot phone and the Sony
Ericsson Idou concept device with a 12.1 megapixel
camera.
Samsung
Earlier in the month we saw the Samsung
Memoir touchscreen phone, destined for T-Mobile
USA. Four new budget phones, the Samsung E1070, E1100, E1125 and E2100 offered
smart looks at very inexpensive prices. The Samsung
BEAT DISC and Samsung
BEAT DJ are two very capable and distinctive looking
music phones.
The two headlining Samsung phones this month are
the Samsung
Tocco Ultra Edition, also called the UltraTOUCH
or simply the GT-S8300. Featuring a bigger touchscreen,
an 8 megapixel camera and slide-out keypad, the S8300
adds a lot of features to the original Tocco. Then there
is the top-of-the range Samsung
Omnia HD, a Symbian touchscreen phone with a large
display, 8 megapixel camera and almost every other feature
going.
LG
One of the stars of MWC was the LG
ARENA, a very attractive high-end touchscreen phone
with a custom interface that really does challenge its
Apple rival. LG also gave a glimpse of the cool but
slightly silly LG
GD900 with a transparent keypad and the elegant
looking LG
KT770 Symbian slider, plus the Windows based GM730.
The LG
GT500 Puccini is a touchscreen phone that looks
like it will be a T-Mobile exclusive.
Other manufacturers
Hyundai Mobile showed off the incredibly cheap and
compact Hyundai
MB-150 Chico, the dolphin-inspired Hyundai MB-490i and
the dual-SIM Hyundai MB-D650
business phone. The missing-in-action Garmin-Asus nüvifone G60
threatened to make an appearance sometime before it
becomes obsolete. T-Mobile demonstrated their budget
touchscreen T-Mobile
Vairy Touch handset aimed at Central and Eastern
Europe. Finally, modu
promised that their eponymous and very cool modular
phone system will launch sometime during this
year.
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