Nuance Communications bags India's only award at the MWC this year

Kudos to Nuance Communications for winning India's only award at the Global Mobile Awards at the MWC 2009. For the uninitiated, Nuance Comm. is the company behind the omnipresent T9 predictive text dictionary in mobile phones.

Nuance was awarded in the category of ‘Best Use of Mobile for Social and Economic Development’ for the Airtel-T9 Vernacular Messaging Campaigns in various Indic languages. Three Cheers to that!

LG unveils world's first 'Transparent mobile phone'

The tag for the 'world's first' always has some interesting twists and turns, right from the gimmicky to the bizarre. This time its LG who has come up with the world's first transparent mobile phone, which has a glass like see through keypad. No word on pricing or other details though.

LG enters the Arena

LG has introduced its latest touchscreen device at the MWC - the LG Arena. The phone features a 3 inch WVGA screen with S-Class user interface. (Nothing to do with the Merc, of course, it's LG's new 3D touch interface). Also worth mentioning is the 5MP camera, a FM transmitter to hook up the phone with your car audio system and Dolby Mobile.

HTC & Vodafone create 'Magic' with Android

The speculations have come true! HTC & Vodafone have announced the HTC Magic - the latest phone on Android platform. The HTC Magic has a 3.2 inch QVGA touch screen display and features a trackball and navigational buttons for quick, easy access. The HTC Magic includes a variety of email options such as Google Mail™, POP3 and IMAP as well as Google Talk™ for instant messaging. The device looks strikingly similar, but does not sport a slide-out QWERTY keypad like its earlier avatar, the T-Mobile G1. It will be available exclusive to Vodafone customers initially in UK, Spain, Germany and France and non-exclusively in Italy with more countries to follow.

Methinks the HTC Dream will come to India with Airtel (due to HTC's recent alliance with Singtel to launch it in South Asia) and the HTC Magic through Voda. What say?

Nokia comes up with a slew of announcements in MWC

The big daddy of mobile phones is surely in overdrive as far as announcements, launches and alliances goes. The company has launched its first 8 megapixel cam phone, the N86, and claims that the phone "is comparable to that of a high quality, stand-alone digital camera." The 2.6 inch screen is a bit of a dampener though, when compared to the recent launches by other smartphone manufacturers.

Nokia also launched 2 business-centric devices - E55 and E75, to spruce up their enterprise device portfolio, an upgrade to their Navigator - the 6710, which has been integrated with Ovi and the latest in the Classic series - the 6720.

In the meantime, the company has also announced its alliances with Skype, Qualcomm & Adobe apart from launching their app store on Ovi. Phew!

HTC beefs up the Touch Pro, Touch Diamond

HTC too has created a flutter by launching newer versions of the Touch Pro and Touch Diamond (calling them HTC Touch Diamond 2 & Touch Pro 2), with massive all-round upgradations, both in looks and specs. The beauties are currently on the Windows Mobile 6.1 platform, but can be upgraded to WiMO 6.5 later for free! The devices also feature HTC's new Push Internet technology, that promises faster access to the net.

The Touch Diamond 2 incorporates a larger 3.2-inch high-resolution wide-screen VGA display for a greater viewing area in a design just 13.7mm thick. The phone also includes a new touch sensitive zoom bar for even faster zooming of Web pages, emails, text messages, photos or documents.

The Touch Pro2 features a high-resolution 3.6-inch widescreen VGA display for an expanded viewing area and large finger-friendly QWERTY keyboard, which can be tilted at an angle.

Microsoft's swanky new Windows Mobile 6.5

Well, this one was a long time coming! Microsoft launched its latest Mobile OS - the Windows Mobile 6.5. From whatever can be made out from the pics so far, the interface looks definitely sleeker, with the 'honeycomb' style menu and bigger icons. Will it shrug off some of the sluggishness that WiMo is notorious for? Remains to be seen. Here are some screenshots and a video.

Samsung unveils the stunning Omnia HD

One of the best phones (spec wise), to be launched thus far at the MWC, the Samsung Omnia HD is no ordinary upgrade. Sporting the Symbian S60 (5th edition), instead of the Windows Mobile 6.1 that the earlier Omnia featured, this stunner also flaunts a 3.5 inch display and a 8 megapixel shooter. What's more, Samsung claims it can record HD videos at 720p. Truly a powerhouse!

MWC: Acer jumps on the smartphone bandwagon, launches the 'Tempo' series

Wow, It's my first post. Will start the first few posts with the biggest and the latest from what is as huge and as significant as he CES for telecom companies - The Mobile World Congress, being held in Barcelona from 16-19 Feb. 

Taiwanese PC/Notebook major, Acer just upped the ante in the already hot smartphone market by introducing 4 new mobile phones at the MWC. The company, which happens to be among the top 3 PC vendors in the world, launched its Tempo series with 4 brand new devices - The M900, F900, X960 and DX900. While none of these phones sport features to make the other biggies lose any sweat, but the entry of this heavyweight sure spells interesting times ahead.