I spent Monday and Tuesday in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress. It's Europe's must-attend annual gathering of the mobile industry. Spread over four days, usually over 50'000 people visit it.
On day one, i explored the massive exhibition area looking at some Impressive new mobile hardware:
- Samsung Galaxy S II Phone: 4.3ā³ Screen, Dual-Core Processor, 116g, 1650mAh Battery
- Samsung Galaxy Tab: 10.1ā³ Display, Dual Core Processor
- LG Optimus Pad: 8.9ā³ Tablet, OMAP4 Processor, 3D-Camera
- Motorola Xoom Tablet: 10.1ā³ Display, Dual Core Processor, 1GB RAM
- Motorola Atrix Phone: 1930mAh Battery, 4ā³ Display, Dual-Core Processor
- HP Touchpad Tablet: 9.7ā³ Screen, Dual-Core Processor
- HP Veer Phone: 2.6ā³ Screen, 800Mhz Processor, 103grams
- HP Pre3 Phone: 3.6ā³ Screen, 1.4 Ghz Processor
It's amazing if you compare a 5 year old PC with today's smartphones in terms of available computing power .. and you can carry that computing power around with you all day and hope that the battery will last.
On day two, i explored the software side more:
How can a phone possible replace a PC, a notebook or even a Settopbox for our TV? At the Motorola booth, i saw a possible answer:
The Atrix Phone can be docked to a docking station or even a notebook shell (just keyboard and screen). You then start a separate work environmentĀ on the Phone (called WebTop) that comes with a Browser, OpenOffice and other Applications. When the Phone is removed from the dock, the state of theseĀ applications is saved. When the phone is docked to a docking station connected to a TV, you can start the Entertainment Environment, which is basicallyĀ a MediaCenter interface, but also running on your phone and controlled with a remote.
At HP's booth you could also see interesting ideas how to interconnect different devices (Phones, Tablets):
ā āTouch-to-Shareā let's you place your phone on your tablet and then the URL of the website that is currently open on your tablet is transferred instantly to the Phone.Ā
ā After tablet and phone are paired and share the same account, you can read SMS received on the phone on the tablet or even make/receive phone calls on the tablet (routed through the phone)