POWERFUL MOBILE handsets, faster broadband and new Android tablets were among some of the announcements made ahead of the Mobile World Congress event which opens in Barcelona this morning.
Mobile phone makers were lining up to announce their new quad-core mobile phones, with Huawei, Fujitsu and LG all revealing plans to beef up their mobile line-up.
Chinese firm Huawei unveiled its new quad core model, the Ascend D, which comes with a 4.5-inch high definition display.
The Android handset also includes Huawei’s proprietary power management system, which stretches the battery life to up to two days.
Sony, meanwhile, showed off the next generation of its smartphones, but stuck with dual core processors for the Xperia P and U. Instead, Sony concentrated on improving its display technology.
The company also talked up the entertainment aspects of the Xperia U, which will feature Sony 3D audio surround sound. Both of the next-gen phones include a new user interface and Sony’s Mobile Bravia-powered “reality Display”.
Meanwhile, Telefonica, the parent company of Irish network O2, unveiled its plans for a “smart” 4G network that provides download speeds of 100Mbps, and uploads of between 40-60Mbps. Indoor coverage has also been improved, and capacity can be quadrupled in high density data-traffic areas.
The company teamed up with Alcatel Lucent, using the company’s LightRadio technology to put 4G metro cells – small cell base stations – to work alongside conventional radio base stations. The small cell base stations also have the advantage of using less power than their predecessors.
Telefonica and its partners rolled out the high-speed network around the mobile exhibition to demonstrate its power to attendees. The operator’s chief technology officer Enrique Blanco dubbed it “future of mobile networks”. Mobile World Congress officially gets underway this morning. The conference and exhibition, which takes place over four days, is playing host to the world’s biggest mobile makers, operators, software companies and internet companies.
Although it’s usually the hardware that grabs the headlines, mobile software and services, in particular the mobile cloud, are expected to be a major talking point. The congress kicks off with a keynote speech from Ford’s executive chairman Bill Ford Jr.
