Let me welcome all my readers to the first part of my Mobile World Congress reports. Note that I’ve started writing this report yesterday evening but, having no Wi-Fi at my hotel and Vodafone Spain’s problems, I couldn’t post it right away. Therefore, in order for the most important news to be presented right at the beginning, I have broken up this article to a brand new conference report (see the first few paragraph) and, then, a more complete description of what has happened yesterday. It’s the last section that elaborates on the Showstopper party yesterday, with a lot of info & screenshots on Opera Mobile 9.5 and several other technologies.

Today, first, I’ve met the great folks from Spb Software House. Vasily demoed the latest Spb Mobile Shell, which I plan to review some time in the future, along with all the other shell enhancers, including those of the XDA-Developers folks.

i-mate news

After this, I had the pleasure the meet top i-mate folks. The first question I asked, of course, was the recent DigiTimes / Pocket PC Thoughts news on i-mate’s switching back to HTC. I told the i-mate folks that, with the major problems with the HTC Qualcomm video drivers and HTC’s refusing to fix the problem, how disappointed the WinMo folks have become with HTC.

The major and indeed REALLY-REALLY welcome news is that i-mate is NOT returning to HTC but keeps on bringing out their own handsets. Great news!

I’ve also asked about cancelling the, compared to the latest Marvell PXA310/320 CPU’s, already-dated PXA270 series in their later models and (even silently, just like for example Dell did with the Dell Axim x5) upgrading to the PXA310/320. They stated they’re investigating all these things and the possible upgrade. This is pretty much promising.

Nokia with WinMo devices? Not now

Third, I’ve met John Starkweather from Microsoft. My first question was, of course, the talks with Nokia reported by several sites. My previous remarks, over at PPCT, on a Nokia-manufactured camera / gaming / GPS / entertainment machine are worth checking out to see why I’d welcome Nokia to re-release the N95 or the N82 with Windows Mobile on them if and only if they provide the same high quality add-on software enhacing these devices on Symbian.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing to report on. That is, in the future, it’s highly unlikely Nokia comes out with WinMo phones. But this doesn’t certainly mean this won’t change in the later future.

However, the Sony-Ericsson folks have just announced a multimedia-friendly WVGA touchscreen device, the XPERIX A1, of which you can read more at, for example, on our blog or at PPCT and at XDA-Devs. I'll post other, related threads too when I have the time.

I’ll definitely pay a visit to the S-E booth here to see whether they have the device in here. If they do, I definitely post some comparative pictures in here.

Microsoft’s press conference

Microsoft’s press conference took place at 3PM local time in Hotel Catalonia Plaza, which, fortunately, is just at the other side of the Espana square, facing the entrance of MWC and is, therefore, easy to get there. In addition, it has a more or less working Wi-Fi network, which isn’t really the case with the press section of MWC, where I’ve wasted at least one hour desperately tryng to access the Internet. (Finally, I had to use a local PC and transfer files to be uploaded by a storage card). Pretty much stone-age, I know.
This event will surely be thoroughly covered by other mags, so, I only very shortly sumarize it. First, the most important announcement was Microsoft’s announcing they would invest far more effort on gaming and entertainment. (For the platform’s gaming capabilities, they’ve used the Amiga Inc. game I’ve reviewed some days ago and also called very cool.) I really hope this indeed materializes – at least via the non-HTC players; most importantly, Sony.

They have also announced having acquired Danger. This, however, won’t mean Microsoft starts producing hardware like the T-Mobile Sidekick.

MSN Direct

The MS press conference has also shown MSN Direct in action. After the conference, I’ve also had an appointment with the MSN Direct folks so I could learn a bit more about it.

It’s like a fully-fledged RSS client with the following goodies:

1. It uses some kind of a push protocol, which, while being really bandwidth friendly, still promises updates in realtime
2. It integrates nicely into the MS Smartphone today screen.

Note that, currently, only the MS Smartphone (WM6 Standard) platform is supported and the client is in no way can be installed on a touchscreen Pocket PC. The sole reason for this is the programmatic difference between accessing the Today screen on the Smartphone and the Pocket PC platform. Nevertheless, they promise a Pocket PC version very soon, which I’ll also announce when it becomes available.

Should you have a Smartphone, you might want to check out ne.msndirect.com

Other tidbits

I’ve also had the chance to play with the new Toshiba G910/920 models. Of course, of the two, it was the clamshell WVGA (800*480) model I was most interested in.

Unfortunately, as some people have already guessed, the device is strictly clamshell and you can’t turn the screen by 180 degrees so that it becomes a true PDA easily hold in one hand (which you might want to do to, for example, play Portrait games), unlike with the Universal or the old Sharp Zaurus models. Also, the screen was pretty small compared to the physical size of the lid. While the thumbboard keys are pretty good (just like with the HTC Universal and the HTC Kaiser / AT & T Tilt and unlike, for example, the HTC Wizard), the overall impression of the new model isn’t very good.

Now, however, that Sony is entering the scene with a WVGA (!), high-end device with all the goodies needed for multimedia and gaming, I’m pretty sure the lacking features of the new Toshi models (and, of course, HTC’s refusing to fix the video driver in all their Qualcomm-based devices) don’t make power / geek WinMo users pretty much angry and/or head for Symbian (the Nokia N series) for better multimedia / gaming experience.

And what happened yesterday...

Fortunately, my hotel has a direct connection with the Espanja square (where MWC is located); that is, I just hop in the bus in the morning in the station located very close to the hotel and travel some 20 minutes. Public transport is pretty much cheap in here (about the same fees as in Hungary and half the fees as in Finland), albeit the cleanness of the buses / metros leave a lot to be desired and none of the bus riders I’ve spoken to so far were able to speak either English or German. This is pretty much unimaginable in smaller European countries.

This is how a bus looks like from the inside

A Vodafone rant

After a quick press registration, I’ve asked the staff where to get a SIM card from so that I can be constantly connected to the Net via GPRS. They have directed me to Mare Mágnum, the shopping center at Port Vell. Fortunately, while the place mostly offered only clothes and restaurants, I found a Vodafone store where I’ve purchased a SIM card for 25 euros (with 18 euros usable). A 25Mbyte data plan costs 20 euros. This means 100 reconnections at most – this pretty much rules out using it with, say, Nokias, if you have the tendency of always exiting / restarting applications that use the Net. Symbian, the operating system of Nokia phones, uses different connections for each app requiring a connection, as opposed to Windows Mobile. This has some definite advantages in some cases (for example, with the Blackberry client, you can be connected to the GSM operator’s BIS all the time – over an, in general, very slow connection -, while can surf the Web in another task via another one – either over Wi-Fi or a fully-fledged, full-speed mobile phone data connection. )

In addition, there is another severe restriction in Vodafone ES’s Internet. One connection can only last 10 minutes; if you exceed this, you’re billed 0.5 euros, no matter whether you’ve used the net connection at all or it’s just sitting idly.

Other mobile data rates / prices are pretty high here in Spain, at least with Vodafone. For example, their Blackberry package is offered for 29 euros a month, and it only contains some 3 Mbytes. Just for comparisong: with T-Mobile Hungary, the basic 5Mbyte BIS package is some 11 euros and you can buy an additional data plan for some additional money if you plan to, say, use Opera Mini or an instant messenger (I use IM+ on my BB; it was pretty expensive but works just great and ha sall the goodies I want: multi-account log in to the same IM network, logging etc); for example, a 80M data plan costs some 7 euros. Pretty cheap, if you ask me – and this means almost unlimited Opera Mini, mail and instant messaging usage. There is also a related thread in the Opera Mini forums

Unlimited (flat) access is too very expensive: 49 euros a month, which is way more expensive than in Finland or Hungary.
I’ve spotted the latter, pretty cool cartoon-alike in the shopping center:

No comments needed, I think :)

With Vodafone ES, you need to phone in to the customer service to activate your services. (I don’t understand why they don’t just use the same approach as with, say, Vodafone HU, where you, some years back when there was just one kind of a GPRS data plan, just sent in an SMS containing “NET” and your net access is granted at once.) Unfortunately, very few people speak English at the service - the automated menus don’t even contain an “Press X for English” menu. After some random pressing the phone buttons, I’ve been directed – at last – to a human, which, not being able to speak English, then switched me thru another operator. The latter has turned out to not to speak English either. Finally, the third operator already knew the language. He, however, didn’t understand what I said when referring to the “APN” (access point name) . Noone was able to answer my question, not even the guy that sold me the card (fortunately, he spoke good English so I didn’t have communications problems – at least with him). He said he would look it up later in the day. I couldn’t call him back because I got back to the hotel, where there’s a coin-operated phone, after 10PM.

Fortunately, Heronsailor from XDA-Developers has answered my help request in the Kaiser forum. In the meantime so I could set up a ocnnection even at the hotel. BTW, speaking of hotels... always ask the hotel personnel before booking for a hotel. Even if they list their hotel as “full Wi-Fi” (meaning you should be able to access the Net everywhere, in all rooms), the reality may be diametrically opposed to what has been promised. This was a very unpleasant surprise with my hotel. There’s only Wi-Fi in the hall (for 5 euros an hour), but there aren’t comfortable chairs in there (just bar seats entirely without a back part), which pretty much rules out spending more than a few minutes in there.

OK, enough of the rants / Vodafone data plan-related discussions; let’s jump to the more interesting part: the Showstoppers party in the evening, showing some of the biggest names in mobility. Note that the following list is in no way exhaustive; due to lack of time, I don’t elaborate on other products I was less interested in.

Skype

Their forthcoming and pretty cheap (about 50 English Pounds / 150 US dollars) phone has also been showcased. For the time being, without a firmware. That is, they didn’t operate. Some comparative images & close-ups:

As can clearly be seen in the following shot, the memory can be expanded with microSD cards; swapping them, however, requires the battery to be removed, which can be quite a nuisance. However, the overall small size of the phone pretty much compensates this.

The phone uses no Wi-Fi at all; uses GSM voice (!!!) for voice calls – no data plans used for this.

Also, the PSP version of Skype has been presented:

Unfortunately, they didn’t have any specific information on whether the Skype protocol will be enhanced to allow for (very) low data rates so that their services can be used over even low(er)-speed EDGE connections, just like fring reviewed HERE (it's in there that I've thoroughly elaborated on these bandwidth issues and the reason Skype should try to introduce an alternate protocol to greatly reduce their bandwidth usage. It wouldn't be that hard.).

Opera

Of course, one of the biggest hits was the just-announced Opera Mobile 9.5. Therefore, it was at Opera’s booth that I’ve spent most of the time.

Hal Goldstein with the Opera folks:

With 9.5 (in addition to the complete core upgrade), two of the biggest omissions have been fixed: saving (complete) Web pages and finding text in pages.

Find in pages:

As can clearly be seen, highlighting works. I only wish they also implement “Search backwards”.

Saving pages:

Loading them from the file system:

I’ve forgotten to test the favourite synchronization features, which is another “big hit” (a very useful feature) with both the desktop Opera and Opera Mini 4. I’ll report on this later.

Generic (page) context menu:

Another ”big hit”of the new version is the ability to zoom in/out of the page view, which is pretty similar to how Opera Mini works in its default, non-fit-to-screen mode. Here (as opposed to Opera Mini, where you either press Action on a non-link, or just press button 5 on the dialpad anywhere), you use the stylus to quickly zoom in/out. As can be clearly seen, in addition to stylus, you can also instruct the Web browser to zoom in/out from the menu.

Scrolling is done pretty much the iPhone Safari (and Spb Pocket Plus 4) way – that is, the scroll accelerates.

The address auto-completion has also been enhanced; now, instead of the drop-down menu, a full “Known links” page opens containing both the title of the page (when set) and the URL. This is definitely a step ahead over the old approach:
OperaKnownLinksAutoExtension.JPG

Samsung

Samsung has also presented a new, very slick and cool phone. It’s really slim and very nice. They didn’t have any specific data on the screen resolution; I’d say it’s WQVGA (400*240) at least. They didn’t know whether it runs on Linux either. They stated they wouldn’t release it with Windows Mobile, let alone Symbian because they prefer their proprietary ("dumb") operating system. I fidn this a bad business decision ebecause their phone is really nice.

Here are some pictures of the phone:

The Bluetooth SIG folks were also present; however, as they’re “just” a standards body-alike, they didn’t really have any pulpable technology to showcase. It was just a “close proximity” demo that they have shown. As they’re pretty much independent of, say, Microsoft, I couldn’t ask them about, say, cooperating with Microsoft to enhance the quality of their A2DP implementation.

Smaato’s mobile advertising platform (that is, an application development interface, API) might also be worth mentioning. If you’ve ever seen for example the ads of other games in some trial games or freely downloaded Java MIDlets (mostly games), you know whwat I’m speaking of. If you’re a developer wanting to implement this kind of functionality in your own apps, so far, there really weren’t generalized, dynamic, licensable API’s to do this. Of course, just inserting some splash screens at the beginning / end of a game is pretty easy. If, however, you plan to do this with client/server communication (to always fetch the latest advertisements to reflect the changes done in the meantime), third-party libraries like these can become very handy. It’s available for both Java (J2ME) and native Symbian / Windows Mobile.

Kingston also showcased their latets products. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any information on when they would release the 12/16 GB mircroSD cards. You may remember that SanDisk has already been announced and sent samples of the 12GB card to hardware manufacturers for compliance /conformance testing. The Kingston folks only predicted ‘some time in 2009’.

Just another remark on Kingston. Some 5 years ago, when I’ve purchased one of their (then, current) 128M SD cards, I’ve found it very slow to write to. Fortunately, their current models are in no way worse than that of the competition. I’ll thoroughly test their 4GB microSDHC card for example in my Canon Ixus 960IS, which, when operated in continuous mode, is pretty much sensitive to the speed of the card. For example, my standard 2G microSD card isn’t able to sustain the flow of bytes and the camera is sopped every about 10 consequtive shot to finish writing out the rest of the material. (Incidentally, if you’re Finnish and subscribe to Tietokone, they have just published (in their 01/2008 issue) some related benchmarks, which also shows non-classed microSD cards can be VERY slow.) I’ll soon test the 4 GB class 4 microSD card (thanks for Hal for the card!) in my camera / with speed tests to see how it fares against Sandisk’s class 4 8 GB microSD card.

On my way home, along with finding Hal Goldstein’s hotel at first, my Nokia N95 has turned out to be a life-saver: while the 2006 version of iGo (on Windows Mobile) didn’t know the place of Hal’s hotel (it took me an entirely different location on the map), the latest Nokia maps did. Also, with its GPS, it was pretty easy to find a metro station in the evening. Without it, I would have been lost. The lock-on time was also acceptable (without assistated network). I should request a new version of iGo, it seems.