Microsoft made headlines on the first day of Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona with the announcement of Windows Phone 7, its brand new mobile operating system. It will feature integration with Xbox Live and Zune, with a user interface unlike anything we’ve seen before. The Windows Mobile name is effectively dead.
But that’s not all that debuted in Barcelona. Samsung took the opportunity to reveal its new Bada operating system with the Samsung Wave.
The Wave is slim, with a 3.3-inch AMOLED display, and features powerful features like Wi-Fi, a 1GHz processor, GPS, a 5-megapixel camera, a microSD card slot, a 3.5-mm headset jack, and more. It’s also the first Samsung phone to support Bluetooth 3.0.
Sony Ericsson also showed off three new handsets at the show–the Vivaz Pro, Xperia X10 Mini, and Xperia X10 Mini Pro. The Vivaz Pro runs on the Symbian Series 60 operating system, and has a full keyboard, a 5.1-megapixel camera, GPS, and more.
The Xperia X10 Mini is pretty much like a mini Xperia X10 with a 2.5-inch display instead of a 4-inch one. It also runs the Android 1.6 operating system, and has features like a 5-megapixel camera, GPS, Wi-Fi, and more. The Xperia X10 Mini Pro has almost the same features, but sports has a keyboard as well.
Aside from the two Xperia phones, Android has also charmed its way into four new Acer smartphones–the Liquid e, Ferrari, BeTouch E110, and BeTouch E400. And while Windows Phone 7 is all the rage now, Acer and Toshiba still released a few Windows Mobile 6.5 phones. They are the Acer neoTouch P300, the Acer neoTouch P400, the Toshiba TG02, and the Toshiba K01.
There were a few more interesting announcements made at Mobile World Congress: Skype could soon be coming to Verizon phones; international carriers have come together to launch an “applications community”; Intel and Nokia are combining their Linux operating environments to form Meego; Jabra announced the Clipper stereo Bluetooth headset; and Verizon gives us hope for a bright shiny 4G-LTE future.
Stay tuned to our Mobile World Congress 2010 blog for more phone news from Barcelona!