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SAN DIEGO — Though a significantly smaller show than January’s Consumer Electronic Show and February’s Mobile World Conference, MobileCon 2012 still kicked off its first day with a handful of new phones. However, hardware companies didn’t hog all the fun; there was plenty of carrier news as well.
T-Mobile
T-Mobile introducedits first Windows Phone 8 handset, the Nokia Lumia 810. Available withiin weeks, the Lumia 810 has a 4.3 inch touchscreen, an 8 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss technology, and interchangeable back plates that enables the device to charge wirelessly.
Another T-Mobile device, the LG Optimus L9, wasn’t announced at MobileCon, but reporters got to play with it. It’s a 4G-enabled Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich phone with a 4.5 inch qHD Corning Gorilla Glass 2 screen and a 5 megapixel camera. The top-tier handset in LG’s line of L-series phones, the L9 is powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor and a 2,150mAh battery.
The carrier also demoed Moga, a compact Bluetooth game controller by PowerA. It will be available in T-Mobile retail stores and can connect to Android devices.
Sprint
In addition to unveiling its 4G LTE USB hotspot stick and its Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 — a 10-inch tablet that initially launched as a Wi-Fi only device and ships natively with Android 4.0 — the carrier debuted the LG Mach. The Mach is a 4G LTE smartphone, complete with a 5 megapixel camera and a five-row slide out keyboard. Like the Optimus L9, it has a dual-core CPU under its hood.
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AT&T and Verizon
Although neither company announced new handsets today, the two leading U.S. carriers still made news. AT&T brought over the first LTE hotspot equipped with a touchscreen and a user interface. Known as the MiFi Liberate, the device is made by Novatel Wireless and has a reported continuous usage time of 11 hours.
Meanwhile, Verizon talked up its 4G LTE accomplishments. It reported that it finished its goal of covering 400+ markets with its 4G LTE network two months early (which was originally projected for the end of 2012), and said that it won’t be long before most of the data traffic on Big Red’s network will travel on its LTE network. Moreover, it wants to shift its voice service onto the LTE network, also known as VoLTE, by late 2013 or early 2014.
Stay tuned with CNET as MobileCon 2012 continues throughout the week.
