Having bagged an award at CES in January, RealNetworks’ Unifi service is already drawing quite a buzz ahead of its launch later this year. We sat down for a hands-on demo with Unifi this morning at Mobile World Congress, and came away impressed. Here’s the problem it’s designed to solve: you have photos, music and …

HTC has delivered a truckload of brand-new smart phones this morning at Mobile World Congress, including two new mobiles built around Facebook. We reckon the HTC Salsa is the hero of the two — the Qwerty-sporting HTC ChaCha is definitely the hip-swinging sidekick. But the Salsa has a real social-networking rival in the shape of the new INQ Cloud Touch …

The T-Mobile G-Slate is the U.S. version of the LG Optimus Pad. Bonnie Cha/CNET It’s not just handsets and smartphones at this year’s Mobile World Congress; tablets made their way to Barcelona, Spain, as well, despite some people’s opinion that tablets aren’t really mobile. As an echo to CES this year, Mobile World Congress proved once again that 2011 is …

ViewSonic pegs the ViewPad 4 as equal parts phone and tablet. ViewSonic ViewSonic Europe is in Barcelona this week where it’s showing off the latest addition to its ViewPad family. Joining its 7-inch and 10-inch siblings, the 4.1-inch ViewPad 4 is expected to be on the short list of Android devices running Android 2.3 Gingerbread when it debuts. Currently listed …

Forget the Facebook Phone, which remains a thing of myth, but how about a Twitter Phone? CEO Dick Costolo rubbished the idea in his keynote speech at Mobile World Congress yesterday, saying that he’d rather see more mobile manufacturers make Twitter a key feature in their handsets instead. “I believe there is a need [to better integrate] Twitter in existing …

BARCELONA, Spain–Google today unveiled Movie Studio, a new application for the upcoming Honeycomb era of Android tablets that lets people edit videos. The software, which Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt announced during a speech here at Mobile World Congress, is designed to expand on a phone’s abilities to capture imagery. With it, people can combine still images and videos to …

commentary Australian broadcasters are mistaken if they believe that it’s possible to quell TV show piracy purely by launching iTunes-like video download services. Such a venture would flop faster than a Vanilla Ice comeback album, opines Asher Moses. According to Envisional, a web monitoring company, Australians are responsible for 15.6 percent of all online TV piracy, bested only by Britain, …

Who likes tablets? Everyone! But they’re so expensive. Cash-strapped technophiles eager for some touchscreen computing action should listen up, because the Linx Commtiva N700 on Three will set you back a mere £99 initially, then £25 per month on a 24-month contract, with 15GB of data thrown in for good measure. Maths enthusiasts will have spotted that the total cost …

This post was updated at 12:34 p.m., PT with a clarification on the Microsoft Kinect feature. BARCELONA, Spain–A year ago, Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone 7 at Mobile World Congress and this year the company gave us a glimpse of what lies ahead for the platform. Outlined by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer during his MWC keynote, Microsoft said it will push …

BARCELONA, Spain–With the exception of the European versions of the Droid Pro and Xoom, it looks like Motorola will be light on the hardware announcements here at Mobile World Congress 2011, but there’s still some news coming out of good ol’ Moto. Today, the company announced several enhancements to its Motoblur software, all designed to increase connectivity with your contacts …

BARCELONA, Spain–Huawei Mobile World Congress press conference is still a day away, but the company jumped the gun and announced four new devices on Monday. Details are slim at the moment, but we can offer what we know. The trim Huawei Ideos X3 smartphone runs Gingerbread on a 3.2 inch-screen. The Huawei Ideos S7 Slim tablet has a 7-inch (480×800 …

BARCELONA, Spain–The battle for the mobile consumer is no longer about who has the coolest device, but rather who has the most compelling ecosystem. That’s the message from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who took the stage to kick off this year’s Mobile World Congress. A year ago, Ballmer was here to launch the company’s revamped mobile operating system, Windows Phone …

Windows Phone 7 has played second fiddle to iOS, Android and BlackBerry OS since it hit the streets in October last year. Microsoft is about to augment its mobile OS, however, with a glut of new features designed to help Windows Phone 7 handsets compete with the iPhones and HTC Desire HDs of this world. Speaking at Mobile World Congress …

Dual-core Android smart phones are all the rage at Mobile World Congress this year, but technology is moving on apace. Qualcomm just unveiled its next-generation Snapdragon chipset, which you can expect to see in devices sometime in 2012. How powerful is it? Quad-core. Even the word sounds slightly rude. The APQ8064 uses a new micro-architecture code called Krait, which has …

Telstra today announced 4G network upgrades using Ericsson LTE technology to be completed in 2011; changes which could deliver peak speeds of 100Mbps. (Credit: Four Thirds Consortium) The LTE upgrades will occur in metropolitan areas of Australia as well as some major unannounced regional hubs. Telstra will also extend the reach of its current 42Mbps HSPA+ services to areas not …