I had a humbling experience yesterday. I learned what it means to get old. It was a grim realisation.
I’ve always been interested in devices that allow elderly, infirm or disabled people the opportunity to enjoy all the benefits of mobile technology. In 2006 I bought a phone from Emporia, a little-known family-run Austrian firm, after [...]
Posted By Ben Wood On February 18th, 2010
In our preview of this year’s Mobile World Congress, we predicted there would be 50 Android devices on the show floor. In my spare moments, I’ve been taking pictures of as many of them as I can. The results are shown below. As you can see, the prediction was pretty accurate. There are 48 Android [...]
Posted By Digantam Gurung On February 18th, 2010
As someone who regularly changes his primary mobile phone, I’m always having to adapt to new devices. For me, the biggest change has been the shift from a hardware qwerty keyboard to a virtual touch-screen one.
I type a lot of text on phones, whether it’s for e-mail, text messaging or Twitter updates. The growing proportion [...]
Posted By Ben Wood On February 17th, 2010
I never cease to be amazed by the extraordinary things you come across at trade shows. Although it’s only day two of Mobile World Congress and I’ve not had a lot of time to look around, I think I’ve already seen the product that I’d label as the weirdest.
In the depths of Hall 2, I [...]
Posted By Ben Wood On February 16th, 2010
Today at Mobile World Congress, Sagem Wireless unveiled its Puma phone, the first results of a licensing deal announced in October last year.
When talking about the launch with colleagues in the industry, I generally got looks of disbelief that I would recommend going to see a product from Sagem Wireless. The company has been out [...]
Posted By Ben Wood On February 16th, 2010
This year’s Mobile World Congress featured some interesting accessories, including headsets and speakers. I’ve collected a few examples to highlight current trends.
The handset market is subject to strong (and transient) design trends; for example, touch screens and slider designs are currently the dominant fashion. At its zenith, Motorola’s Razr made clamshells and thinness essential design [...]
Posted By Tom Byrd On March 23rd, 2009
The week before I went to Mobile World Congress, I wrote about five things I’d like to see at the show. Sadly, I came across very little on my wish-list.
The event was as big as ever, even if attendance was down on previous years. So I may have missed an exhibition stand in a far [...]
Posted By Tom Byrd On March 13th, 2009
As I watched the news reports coming out of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and listened to all the announcements, I waited for this global collection of brains to indicate when we’d see a turning point in the recession. But I waited in vain. In fact, I got the distinct feeling that the [...]
Posted By Michael Walker On February 25th, 2009
It’s day three of Mobile World Congress, and I thought I’d highlight a few of the devices on display. If you’re in Barcelona, you might want to go and take a look at them. For everyone else, we’ve produced short video clips of the products.
I’ve seen plenty of interesting phones from the big names, including [...]
Posted By Ben Wood On February 18th, 2009
Talking to friends and colleagues who have attended Mobile World Congress (or 3GSM, as it used to be known) over the last decade, I was struck by a recurring theme: this year’s show is SO quiet!
Our suspicions that attendance would be down were raised in the second half of 2008, when we saw all [...]
Posted By Ben Wood On February 16th, 2009
