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BARCELONA, Spain--Nokia is going green.

The No. 1 cell phone maker in the world is showing off a conceptual cell phone design at the GSMA Mobile World Congress that is made of entirely renewable and recycled parts. The phone, called "Remade," was unveiled here during a keynote speech given by Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo on Tuesday.

The phone is being developed in Nokia's labs. And yesterday was the first time the thin, silver handset, had been shown publicly.

The device, which has an outer case made of renewable materials rather than petroleum-based plastic, doesn't yet make … Read more

BARCELONA--Research In Motion's co-chief executive officer, Jim Balsillie, doesn't seem too worried that the second major outage of the company's BlackBerry service in 10 months could hurt its reputation with corporate customers.

"It was an intermittent delay, a couple of hours," he said. "It's old news. It happened days ago."

Balsillie's comments were in response to a question about Monday's outage and how it might impact the company's relationship with corporate customers. Balsillie had just given a keynote speech and participated in a panel discussion at the Mobile World Congress … Read more

With its international focus, the GSMA World Congress offers great opportunities to see what smaller handset manufacturers are up to. We get enough Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Nokia news, so it's nice to see a different perspective. Our U.S. readers might remember NEC's brief entry into the American cell phone market. In 2003 and 2004, the Japanese company put out two phones for the old AT&T Wireless, the 525 HDM and the 515 HDM, before departing the States for good. Their brief stay was disappointing, since we liked the two models we saw (the 525 … Read more

At last year's CTIA cell phone show, French telecom giant Alacatel announced that it was entering the U.S. and Canadian handset market. It showed off a gallery of phones and even staged a fashion show. But now almost a year later, none of the handsets have hit the market (AT&T was supposed to be in a testing phase) so at the GSMA World Congress to check out the company's booth. On display were many of the same models we saw last year, including the OT-C707A and the OT-C717A (not the best naming conventions, I know). … Read more

Just to tease myself I stepped into the Vodafone pavilion at the GSMA World Congress. I knew I'd come out with pangs of jealousy, but it's important to see what the rest of the world's carriers are up to. The pavilion is certainly impressive enough by itself. Set out in a plaza between two show buildings, it's a two-story, glass-walled affair. Inside there's the usual reception desk and meeting areas, but there's also a wall of phones that Vodafone carries. Though quite a of the few handsets were no different from what we get … Read more

Samsung gave us a lot of look at the GSMA World Congress and we've rolled them up here in a Samsung slide show. The company unveiled a long list of handsets, with the star attraction being the new Samsung Soul. As the company's "flagship product" for 2008, the Soul offers a sleek slider design (not that Samsung gives us much else these days) and a unique navigation touchpad with icons that change depending on the feature you're using. We gave it a test run, and it seemed to work pretty well, though a thorough shakedown … Read more

Google's Android platform has emerged as one of the sleeper hits of the GSMA World Congress in Barcelona. Though it exists only in prototype, show attendees are flocking to the Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, and ARM booths were demos are available. The TI booth was was packed to the gills when I passed by, so I headed to the ARM booth instead. There, I got a short demonstration of a prototype. As my colleague Maggie Reardon reports, there's not a lot to say at this point. The welcome screen featured a plain black background with a series of generic … Read more

While scanning the Sony Ericsson booth at the GSMA World Congress, we noticed this eye-catching item in the accessories case. The ball-shaped Sony Ericsson MBS-100 Bluetooth speaker goes far beyond what we normally see in cell phone speaker design. Designed for use with any stereo Bluetooth music phone (it doesn't have to be a Sony Ericsson handset, even though the company might prefer it to be), the MBS-100 can wirelessly broadcast your tunes to the world. And in case Bluetooth isn't your thing, it also comes with a 3.5-millimeter headset for connecting to a stereo. At 3.… Read more

As is its usual custom, Samsung has made quite a killing at the GSMA World Congress. Though its announcements aren't quite as exciting as those from Nokia or Sony Ericsson, it certainly made a respectable showing. Besides its new Soul, the company also unveiled the G810 and the P960.

Samsung SGH-G810: The G810 offers a slider design similar to the Samsung SGH-G800. Its feature set is also similar and includes a 5-megapixel camera with auto-focus, a 3x optical zoom, a xenon flash, GPS navigation, Bluetooth, TV out, USB 2.0, a 3.5mm headset jack, Geo-tagging for photos, Google … Read more