Mobile World Congress Day 2: What you missed
It's the second day of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, and the phones just keep on coming. Nokia announced a whole slew of models, as did Samsung, LG, and a few others.
BARCELONA, Spain--Even though the first day of Mobile World Congress rolled out some nice phones that we're still talking about, the handsets that debuted the very next day did not fail to impress.
While LG, Samsung, and Huawei still had enough tricks up their sleeves to announce more new products, it was Nokia's unveiling of five phones that took up most of the chatter for the second day of the show.
Huawei
After announcing the Ascend D Quad the day before, Huawei followed that up with a quad-core tablet that features a 10.1-inch touch screen. The company claims that the device, called the MediaPad, is the first of its kind, but we here at CNET were wondering if Huawei ever heard of the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime. That device has a 10-inch screen and has a quad-core CPU as well. With the Ascend D Quad already being touted as the world's "fastest" phone, perhaps it'd benefit Huawei to take it easy with the superlatives.
LG
The LG Optimus 3D Max is still stuck on Android's Gingerbread OS, but it can record video in 3D that you can see without those funky glasses. It also has a 4.3-inch WVGA display and a 1.3GHz dual-core processor. LG displayed its line of L-Style phones as well, which includes the Ice Cream Sandwich-running Optimus L7 and L5, and the L3 (which runs Gingerbread). To keep track of all the LG phones we got our hands on, be sure to check out the LG roundup.
Samsung
Two handsets have been announced by Samsung, both of which are entry-to-midrange Gingerbread phones: the Galaxy S Advance and the Galaxy Ace Plus. Samsung also debuted two tablets, the 10-inch version of the Galaxy Tab 2 (a 7-inch model is available as well) and the Galaxy Note 10.1.
Nokia
At first, the company's press conference started out humbly. It announced three new additions to its line of entry-level phones called Asha: the 202, 203, and 302. Later, the company stated that its Lumia 900 will go global and that it will add a fourth member to the Lumia line, the 610, which will be marketed at a lower price for a younger audience. But when Nokia got to its final product, the 808 PureView phone, loud applause broke out. Hey, looking at a 41-megapixel camera, wouldn't you clap, too?
Asus
A few months ago, we were sad to see that Asus skipped out on CES this year, but we're glad that it has come to MWC, bringing with it the PadFone. It runs on ICS and has a 4.3-inch AMOLED touch screen and a dual-core processor. More importantly, however, the PadFone can slide into the Asus PadStation to become a 10.1-inch tablet. Now you can browse the Internet and use your apps in tablet form.
Be sure to check back as the smartphone and tablet news from Mobile World Congress continues to roll out this week.