BARCELONA, Spain–While the HTC real stars of the evening are undoubtedly the HTC One family of Android Ice Cream Sandwich smartphones–the One X, One S, and One V–we did learn something new that will interest HTC Vivid owners on AT&T. The carrier issued a press release promising enhanced audio and compatibility with Beats Audio accessories …

BARCELONA, Spain–There are no secrets with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, the successor to the original 7-inch tablet family that Samsung unveiled last year. This Mobile World Congress brings not only a 7-inch version of the Tab 2, but an update to today’s 10.1-inch model as well. Related stories Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 not exactly priced to sell Samsung unveils …

BARCELONA, Spain–Just as Mobile World Congress was set to begin, Orange announced a new Android smartphone powered by an Intel Atom processor. Code-named the Orange Santa Clara, the handset will launch later this year in France and the United Kingdom. At that time, Orange also will reveal pricing and the phone’s official name. Outside of the processor, which is pretty …

BARCELONA, Spain–Later this year, some people should be able to buy mobile phones you can take into the shower. So forecast two companies specializing in waterproof coatings for electronics, HzO and Liquipel, that are showing off their technology here at the Mobile World Congress. There’s a certain shock value to seeing high-end Apple and Samsung phones swimming in the drink, …

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, in pictures (photos) +3 more See all photos BARCELONA, Spain–If you, like me, are still trying to figure out what the Samsung Galaxy Note with its S-Pen stylus is really for, then the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet is refreshingly simple as a large slate with a clear purpose. Related stories Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 unveiling …

BARCELONA, Spain–What do HTC’s three Mobile World Congress smartphones have in common? Quite a lot, actually. Besides sharing similar names, the HTC One X, HTC One S, and HTC One V are all Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) smartphones that also include the toned-down Sense 4.0 interface, HTC’s Beats Audio enhancement software, and a new image-processing chip that takes …

Google has patented a new way of using shortcuts from your smart phone. And it’s pretty clever. Here’s how it works. You write a letter that you’ve assigned to go to a website or carry out a set action, then, without breaking the stroke, you draw a circle round the text or image you want to apply that action to, …

Huawei’s speedy Ascend D Quad phone debuts (photos) +3 more See all photos Surprise, surprise. It turns out the first quad-core smartphones to be announced at Mobile World Congress aren’t powered by Nvidia’s vaunted Tegra 3 chip. Instead, Huawei’s D Quad line will feature quad-core silicon specially made by Huawei called the K3V2. Huawei Chairman Richard Yu took the stage …

Thankfully HTC went big at Mobile World Congress with its quad-core HTC One X smartphone. Sadly, the next handset to fill out the company’s new lineup, the One S, runs a less splashy Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core CPU. Still, if today’s phones are any indication, that will remain plenty fast. Related Links HTC One X hands on (video) Compact One …

BARCELONA, Spain–Just as dual-core chips represented the pinnacle of mobile devices last year, quad-core phones are shaping up to be the must-have feature on any premiere smartphone. The problem is, do consumers really care? Sure, the tech media and analyst community obsess over specifications, and at a show like Mobile World Congress, it’s hard to fault a vendor for putting …