GSMA Day 2 Wrap-up

Phone madness continues on in Barcelona, Spain, as the second day of GSMA Mobile World Congress comes to a close. Vodafone's CEO said he sees the mobile web as the future, Microsoft announced MSN Direct availability on Windows Mobile devices, and Yahoo launches OneConnect, a new tool that lets mobile phone users to aggregate their social-networking updates and messaging in one spot on their phones. T-Mobile also finally announces plans to launch 3G in the U.S. by summer 2008. There's also hope for an Android phone, as well as an Austrian version of the iPhone by the end of the year on T-Mobile. Nokia knocks out another announcement about Nokia Maps 2.0, a much improved maps application for its smart phones.

But let's move on to what you really want to know about--all the new and shiny gadgets. We take a closer look at the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, the first Windows Mobile smart phone by Sony Ericsson. It's tricked out with a huge 3-inch screen, an arc sliding QWERTY keyboard, HSDPA/HSUPA, a 3.2-megapixel camera, GPS, and Wi-Fi. HTC, a well-known Taiwanese manufacturer of smart phones, also announced a couple of new devices. The first is the HTC P3470 (we highly suggest a nicer name), a Windows Mobile 6 smartphone that comes with built-in GPS and TomTom Navigator 6 software, plus a 2.8-inch touchscreen, and a 2-megapixel camera. HTC also announced a revamped HTC Advantage with TouchFlo software (a la the HTC Touch) and hints at a new version of Windows Mobile.

LG also announced a few new phones. One of them is a Symbian-powered smartphone dubbed the KT610, which has a 2.4-inch screen, a QWERTY keyboard, and HSDPA. Then LG introduced yet another touchscreen wonder, the LG KF600, which is essentially the GSM version of the LG Venus. Bonnia Cha took a closer look at the LG KF700, and marveled at its beautiful touchscreen, as well as its slider keypad. The KF700 has a music and video player, a 3-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, and 90MB of internal memory, and a microSD expansion slot.

Samsung made the biggest splash today though, with a huge array of new phones. We already mentioned the Samsung Soul on Day 1, and on Day 2, Samsung showed us the F400, the F480 and the F490. The F400 is a phone with a definite multimedia focus, complete with a music player, stereo speakers, an amplifier with Bang & Olufsen technology, and a 3-megapixel camera. Both the F480 and the F490 look a lot like a certain phone from Apple. The F490 has a large 3.2-inch touch-screen display, a 5-megapixel camera, Google Search, plus a 3.5mm headset jack that isn't recessed. The F480 on the other hand, has a 2.8-inch touch-screen display, a 5-megapixel camera, FM radio, and e-mail.

Taking a departure from the touch-screen phones for a bit, Samsung also announced the G810, a slider phone running on the Symbian S60 operating system that has a 5-megapixel camera, TV out, GPS, and Wi-Fi. The P960 is a little on the lower end, with a 3-megapixel camera, an FM radio, and Bluetooth.

To round up the day's coverage, we took a look at a funky looking Sony Ericsson Bluetooth speaker, plus a closer look at prototype phones running the Google Android operating system.