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[Video] The Android Team Shows Us What Mobile World Congress 2012 Looked Like From Its Point Of View
It takes a lot to put together something amazing for an event like Mobile World Congress. Countless hours of planning have to go into designing an amazing booth, and days of construction likely take place just to get everything set up. All for three days worth of mobile-packed awesomeness.
Mobile World Congress means different things to different people. To marketers, it means reaching new audiences, to company execs, its their chance to make us of those public speaking lessons. For us gadget nerds, it means one thing: shiny new toys! What are you most looking forward to adding to your personal arsenal of gadgets? A shiny new HTC One device? Do you have a need for a projector phone that's gone unfulfilled until now? Or are you eager to get your hands on a phone/tablet/netbook with 14,000 mAh worth of battery?
Things are winding to a close in Barcelona, but the effects of what happens at this event will ripple out through the tech industry for the rest of the year. We gadget nerds do enjoy our idle speculation. Who do think made the biggest impact this year? Is it Samsung with its Galaxy Note 10.1 that's nipping at Wacom's heels? Or is HTC poised to take back the high-end smartphone market with its HTC One series? What about ASUS? With four different lines of tablets for every price point, not to mention the Padfone, ASUS seems to be leading the way in Android tablet design and experimentation. Or maybe you're convinced that LG is going to bring 4:3 back.
You're busy. We get it. You don't necessarily have time to keep up with the flood of stories coming out of MWC this year. You've got things to do. Well, this is all we do. So allow us to make things easy for you. Here's a roundup of all the best, most interesting things that happened at MWC this year.
We trotted on over to the NVIDIA boot at MWC in Barcelona this morning, and happened upon the newest tablet offering from Toshiba, the AT270. Officially unnamed at this point, the device is packing a 7.7" SAMOLED 1280x800 display, a Tegra 3 processor, Wi-Fi, and 32GB of storage (it's unknown if this is the standard amount). It's also running Android 4.0.
While at the Google booth earlier today, ASUS was kind enough to let us take a look at the upcoming Transformer Pad Infinity (basically, a beefed up TF Prime), albeit a version we had not yet seen.
What good is four-to-five cores if you're not going to crank out some high-quality games to go along with it? That's the question NVIDIA had to ask itself. Thankfully, we're getting the answer in the form of some brand new quad-core-optimized games coming to the Tegra Zone. Perhaps the most recognizable name on the list is Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II.
Out of all the fun things going on today at the big Android booth Google set up at MWC, one cute little guy stood out from the pack. Want a custom-made Galaxy Nexus battery door while you ogle suspicious-looking jelly beans and scarf down free ice cream sandwiches and delicious smoothies? No problem - just walk up to a conveniently located tablet, order up a design, and watch it make one for you live with utmost precision of a true Android. You know you want this bad boy cooking you breakfast every morning:
When I first heard about the ASUS Padfone, I thought the idea was a bit laughable. When I tried in person today, my opinion changed substantially. ASUS definitely seems to have done this right - particularly considering it's still a prerelease piece of hardware. My primary concern was in how seamless the transition from phone to tablet would be, and how much the phone's hardware design would suffer because of the docking mechanism.
Earlier today we got a chance to play with Samsung's Galaxy Beam (though photo opportunities were limited by lighting), and I have to say - for a projector phone, it's not bad.
We're not exactly sure why, but LG has developed a gigantic new device called the Optimus Vu. And while the growing market for "mega-phones" seems to be getting more and more crowded every day, we have to say, LG's takes the cake for ridiculousness. The Vu's 5-inch display may not be absurdly large, but it is absurdly shaped. A 4:3 1024x768 (think CRT, Windows 98, etc.) display on the device makes it ridiculously wide, and also very oddly proportioned. I tend to think this is yet another device that will end up with 3rd-party app compatibility issues due to its unique resolution - something Kyocera Echo owners can probably... echo.
We're at the Samsung booth at MWC this afternoon, and first on our list were Samsung's newest Tabs - the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, and the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0. The devices are actually fairly similar - same processor, same cameras, microSD card slot, and 3G SIM card slot. Both are also running Android 4.0, which is pretty standard fare for tablets these days. They even share very similar, very plasticky rear covers.
Oh, Google. You know just how to get our attention. If you're not planting giant statues on your front lawn, you're giving your guests tasty treats with a wink. At Google's theme park MWC booth, the company has set up bowls of jelly beans that are, according to sources close to the matter, "delicious." What we're really after, though, is details on Google's next OS version of the same name. Could this mean we're going to hear about it?
We descended upon the Huawei booth just a short while ago here in Barcelona, and there we found a whole gaggle of Huawei's new flagship device: the Ascend D Quad. I'm calling it the DQ for short - because who doesn't like Blizzards? Anyway, we know the DQ is packing Huawei's first in-house processor, the K3V2.
Back at CES, ASUS lit a bit of a wildfire by announcing a new iteration of the Transformer Prime with the model number TF700T. ASUS insisted that this new Prime would not replace the old Prime. To further drive that point home, the Taiwanese company has rebranded the TF700T as the Transformer Pad Infinity and placed it on the top rung of its rather varied tablet ladder.
ASUS has barely been able to contain its excitement for its Padfone device(s?). Finally, though, we get some more details about what the phone/tablet set will be packing. The former is sporting a a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 (it's unclear what model at this time) and 1GB of RAM, underneath a 4.3" 960x540 Super AMOLED screen. Much like Motorola's line of lapdocks, the SoC of the phone will power the tablet while docked.
When Panasonic announced the original ELUGA for the European smartphone market, we were a little underwhelmed. Today the ELUGA gets a new, awkwardly-capitalized older brother, the ELUGA power. True to its name, the device is considerably more powerful than its predecessor. Which is good, because this series needs all the help it can get.
When we heard about rumors of Samsung releasing a 10.1-inch version of the popular Galaxy Note smartphone, we were understandably a bit skeptical. I mean, the idea makes sense - a larger Note would mean more area to use that advanced pressure-sensitive stylus. But given that Samsung has yet to announce a Galaxy Tab 10.1 successor, it seemed a bit odd. But now, the Note 10.1 is obviously for-real, and we spent a little time with it today.
Qualcomm is going to release an upgraded version of its S4 generation Snapdragon chipset in the second half of 2012, the company announced at MWC 2012 today.
Last night we got some hands-on time with HTC's new family of smartphones - the One series. While we didn't get a hands-on video with the One X (largely due to a dead battery), we did spend a fair amount of time with the One S, which shares most of its hardware with its larger sibling.