Smartphones

Acer's looking to get the Mobile World Congress 2010 party booming by supplying attendees with a Liquid E hit. It has three other smartphones running the Android operating system up its sleeve as well: a mysterious Ferrari handset, the BeTouch E110, and the BeTouch E400.

Sharing the same name as a date-rape drug, rather alarmingly, the Liquid E is the successor to last year's surprisingly good, but not very glamorous, Liquid. The Liquid E looks very similar to its predecessor in terms of specs, sporting a capacitive, 89mm (3.5-inch) touch screen, a Snapdragon processor running at 768MHz (… Read more

Editor's note: Our colleague over at ZDNET UK was able to break the phone.

BARCELONA, Spain--Sonim Technologies, which makes some of the most rugged--though not completely indestructible--phones around, used Mobile World Congress to unveil its latest handset. The XP2 Spirit falls in between the XP1 and the XP3 Quest (we were wondering what happened to No. 2), but like its predecessors it should withstand just about any blow.

You can submerge it in water for up to 30 minutes, drop it onto a concrete floor, press the keypad buttons up to 850,000 times before they give out, … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Sony Ericsson's Xperia X10 has barely hit the streets, but the company already is introducing new models based on the same design. At Mobile World Congress the company unveiled the X10 Mini and the X10 Mini Pro. It's all about size with these puppies. Though they retain the feature set of the Xperia X10 (with the exception of a lower-resolution camera), they deliver it in much smaller packages.

We understand what Sony Ericsson is trying to do here, but whenever you shrink a phone there are always trade-offs. And in this case, we think the trade-offs might … Read more

With the Windows Mobile neoTouch P400 and P300 smartphones, announced at Mobile World Congress 2010, Acer pushes the enterprise angle on its mobile phones.

The P300 (pictured on the left) and P400 both sport Windows Mobile 6.5.3, which adds, among other features, multitouch support and a reworked virtual keyboard. Even though version 6.5.3 is only a couple of weeks old, it's already looking rather long in the tooth, what with Microsoft this very day unveiling Windows Mobile 7, or Windows Phone 7 Series, to give the operating system its proper title.

Read more of "… Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--We were first on the show floor at the Mobile World Congress Monday morning to get our hands on Sony Ericsson's new Vivaz and Vivaz Pro. Even as the gates opened, the crowds were thick in Sony Ericsson's booth, which is usually the case with one of MWC's most active participants. The Vivaz

The phones hit high on the design scale. We like the reflective skin on both models and their trim, aerodynamic profiles. Sony Ericsson is big on a new trend of producing phones with curved backs. Apparently, they're supposed to mimic the shape … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Steve Ballmer hopes "7" will be Microsoft's lucky number as the company restarts its mobile business with the release of Windows Phone 7.

On Monday, the CEO of Microsoft and his team of Microsoft executives took the wraps off the latest version of the Windows Mobile operating system at a press conference here at the Mobile World Congress. The new Windows Phone 7 is a fresh start for the company in mobile.

"There's no question that a year and a half ago we had to rethink everything," Ballmer said.

Instead of revamping Windows … Read more

At long last, the Zune Phone is here. Microsoft isn't calling it that--apparently it thought the name Windows Phone 7 Series rolled off the tongue a bit more easily--but the next generation of Microsoft's smartphone software not only features the entire Zune HD software and services experience (just like the iPod became a component of the iPhone), but the entire user interface itself bears a close resemblance to the Zune HD.

To be clear, Microsoft isn't building the hardware like it did with Zune--rather, partners like HTC, LG, and Samsung will do that work. But a lot of what the company learned from several iterations of Zune design has been rolled into its mobile platform.

Microsoft introduced Windows Phone 7 Series Monday morning at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and there's a lot to wrap your head around. I'll leave the full rundown to others at CNET, but one of the most interesting aspects is the way Microsoft seems to be trying to get rid of the notion of "apps," which have become the iPhone's calling card and are widely imitated by every other smart phone OS out there.

I don't mean that Windows Phone 7 Series phones won't support third-party applications--of course they will. But you won't interact with those applications by selecting a specific icon, opening an app, doing whatever you want to do, then closing it and moving on to something else. … Read more

Adobe Systems, hard at work bringing its Flash technology to mobile phones, announced Monday that it's also working on making the same move for a related programming foundation called AIR.

AIR, short for Adobe Integrated Runtime, is a foundation for standalone applications that use Flash or Web technology. Examples of AIR applications include the New York Times Reader and the TweetDeck for advanced Twitter usage.

Adobe plans to release AIR for Google's Android operating system for mobile devices in 2010, the company said at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona. Also at the show, Adobe announced that it's joined the LiMo Foundation to bring Flash to Linux-based mobile phones. … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--As expected, Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7 during its news conference at Mobile World Congress 2010 on Monday. The event is actually happening right now as this story posts, but we received a prebriefing of today's news and wanted to share a quick list of major points with you.