This week, some lucky members of the Mobile Fun team jetted off to beautiful sunny Barcelona to attend the world’s largest exhibition for the industry, Mobile World Congress. Or at least, this was the idyllic picture painted in the envious minds of the rest of us left behind back in Birmingham – apparently it was actually raining in Barcelona (this makes us feel a little better)!
The team brought back some interesting bits and pieces of news about the most cutting-edge in upcoming gadgetry, as well as a few videos of stuff in action.
Krusell have launched the Krusell SEaLABox, a truly waterproof smartphone case which allows you to continue using your phone in the wet – and even underwater! The SEaLABox is available in a range of seven different colours, and works for a range of smartphones – our team saw it used with an iPhone and an HTC Desire Z, though the HTC HD2 and Desire HD proved a little too large. The case is certified to IPX7 standard, and test duration was 30 minutes at an immersion depth of 1m. Great news for swimmers, sailors, skiers and just about anyone else who gets soggy on a regular basis. See the video below for the amazing sight of an iPhone being fully submerged in a bowl of water – eek! The iPhone in the video can also be seen working with a case on – the one shown is a Gaia case.
A few weeks ago we told you about the BeeWi Mini Cooper S Bluetooth Controlled Car, which got loads of interest around the blogosphere. The drawback to it, though, was that it only worked with certain Android and Symbian phones – not with iPhones. Apparently there’s good news on this: a new red version just for the iPhone is on its way. BeeWi have also been working on Bluetooth-controlled helicopters, which sound like they’ll be less costly than the gorgeous-but-expensive AR.Drone RC Quadricopter.
Sony Ericsson released the very nifty, very chic-looking MS430 speaker stand which is housed in an unusual aluminium tube. Small enough to put in your pocket, the MS430 can go wherever you go and works with any device that has a 3.5mm headphone jack – the one downside is that it doesn’t have a charge option and runs instead on AAA batteries. Our team also saw the speakers being used in tandem with the Sony Ericsson MW600 Bluetooth Headset, which means that you can play music remotely from your phone via Bluetooth – see the video below for what we mean.
SIM-based NFC payments using your mobile phone look to be just around the corner as Visa and DeviceFidelity announced plans for their innovative solution that lets you use any phone with a MicroSD memory slot as a contactless payment device.
MWC saw people getting their first hands-on glimpse of HP’s new tablet device, the TouchPad; the device runs WebOS (the operating system used on the Palm Pre mobile phones), has a 9.7 inch capacitive touchscreen (like the iPad) and supports Flash (unlike the iPad). Our team also got a glimpse at the TouchPad Charging Dock, which like the TouchStone Charging Dock for Palm Pre is an inductive charger that works using the special magnetised non-stick battery cover, meaning that there’s no need to plug the TouchPad in – you just stick on and it charges away.
The team managed to catch a glimpse of some official HTC docks – it looks as though some HTC-branded HTC Desire docks/ HTC Desire HD docks may be on their way at last:
And there was also a Sony Ericsson Xperia Play dock on show, which switches your phone into slideshow mode once it’s plugged in. It looks a bit temperamental, though, as you’ll see from the video:
Were you there too? Let us know about anything exciting you laid eyes on!