Mobile World Congress has been and gone for another year and as usual it brought us loads of exciting new handsets. I\u2019m not going to go through every single handset in detail as there were so many, but I thought I\u2019d take a look at some of the handsets that stand out to me as potential stars of 2011.<\/p>\n
I used to be a massive Sony Ericsson fan, but then the iPhone came along and that all changed. Sony Ericsson went from being one of the best phone manufacturers to someone who kept churning out the \u2018same old, same old\u2019 month after month.<\/p>\n
Fortunately though, that\u2019s all changed. They\u2019ve jumped aboard the Android bandwagon and are now producing some really exciting phones. Four new handsets were announced in total, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo<\/a>, Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro<\/a><\/a>, Sony Ericsson Arc<\/a> and most importantly the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Xperia Play<\/a> has been rumoured for years as the PlayStation phone<\/a>, and although it doesn\u2019t carry the PlayStation branding, it will run PlayStation certified game and is set to be the first in a long line of PlayStation Certified handsets.<\/p>\n The Xperia Neo and Xperia Pro are very similar handsets, the main difference being that the Pro features a full slide out QWERTY keyboard.<\/p>\n HTC were one of the last of the big manufacturers to announce their new handsets, but it was an announcement worth waiting for. HTC revealed 6 new devices \u2013 5 phones and a tablet.<\/p>\n The Desire S<\/a>, Wildfire S and Incredible S are all upgraded versions of existing phones. Most have had processor and memory tweaks, with the Wildfire S getting a much needed screen upgrade. Adding the \u2018S\u2019 to the name is interesting too \u2013 after all, that\u2019s what Apple did with the iPhone 3G when that received a fairly minor overhaul 18 months ago. It worked for Apple, but will it work for HTC?<\/p>\n The other two handsets have more focus on social networking \u2013 Facebook in particular. Both the HTC Salsa and HTC ChaCha have a dedicated Facebook button. I\u2019m not entirely sure that it\u2019s all that necessary as it\u2019s normally only a swipe or two and a tap to launch the Facebook App.<\/p>\n The Salsa features a full QWERTY keyboard and is similar to BlackBerry phones in appearance. The HTC ChaCha is a slimmed down version of last year\u2019s HTC Legend.<\/p>\n The HTC Flyer is the device that got most people talking. It\u2019s a 7\u201d tablet with a 1.5 GHZ processor. The Flyer will be running the HTC Sense UI on top of the standard Android OS. The Flyer will be running the same version of Android as mobile phones do (Android 2.x) rather than the tablet focused Android 3.0, but a future upgrade might change that.<\/p>\n The stars of Samsung\u2019s announcement were the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Samsung Galaxy S 2<\/a>. The Galaxy S was and still is, one of the most powerful smartphones you can get your hands on, but the Galaxy S2 is set to take it to the next level. It\u2019s incredibly thin at less than 9mm, has a 1GHz Dual Core Processor and 1GB RAM. That\u2019s a lot of power for such a small device, but it means that it can record HD video at 1080p and 720p. I love my iPhone, but the Galaxy S2 is sounding very, very tempting.<\/p>\n The Galaxy Tab 10.1 isn\u2019t a second generation Galaxy Tab, it\u2019s a larger version of it and is more likely to be a strong competitor to the iPad. Unlike the Flyer, theTab 10.1 will be running Android 3.0, a version of Android that\u2019s been created specifically with tablets in mind.<\/p>\n LG made most of their announcements back January at CES, but their stand out handset is the\u00a0LG Optimus 2X<\/a>. It\u2019s pretty closely matched to the Samsung Galaxy S II<\/a>, it has a similar 1GHz dual core processor, 1080p video capabilities but has a slightly smaller 4\u201d screen and less RAM.<\/p>\nHTC<\/h3>\n
Samsung<\/h3>\n
LG<\/h3>\n