mwc2012

BARCELONA, Spain--The momentum for Android continues to build, with 850,000 phones and tablets getting activated each day.

That's according to Google Android chief Andy Rubin, who unveiled the statistic on his Google+ page today. Like most other major wireless players, he was in attendance at Mobile World Congress, the world's largest wireless trade show.

"Walking around Mobile World Congress and seeing the Android ecosystem at work is quite impressive," Rubin said.

He also dished on a few other impressive stats, including the activation of 300 million Android phones in total so far and the arrival … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Asus struck a high note when it introduced the one-of-a-kind Transformer Prime last year, but that device was only the beginning.

Today at Mobile World Congress, Asus finally released its long-awaited Padfone. Though the device first made an appearance last May in a promotional video, sightings of the actual device have been rare. And after skipping an official unveiling at CES last month, speculation mounted that Asus would use Barcelona as the stage instead.

At its most basic level, the Padfone is a candy bar Android smartphone with high-end, though hardly revolutionary, specs. You'll find a 4.3-inch … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain - A year into its partnership with Microsoft, Nokia is filling out its Windows Phone smartphone portfolio and differentiating devices with Nokia-only features and apps.

On Monday, Nokia kicked off the Mobile World Congress tradeshow here with a new low-end Lumia Windows Phone smartphone, the Lumia 610. This is now the fourth Lumia Windows Phone in the portfolio, and it will sell for 189 euros ($254) in Europe before subsidies.

Microsoft announced the Lumia 710 and Lumia 800 in October. These were the first Windows Phone devices for Nokia, and they were initially only available in Europe. Now, … Read more

BARCELONA--Half of Telefonica's customers are in Latin America, where smartphones are scarcer than in wealthier parts of the world. But the mobile network operator hopes Mozilla's new browser-based operating system, B2G, will change that.

"What we're selling the most in these countries is feature phones, which is ridiculous, said Carlos Domingo, Telefonica Digital's director of product development and innovation, in an interview at the Mobile World Congress show here in Barcelona, Spain. "We think we can bring smartphones to the masses in developing countries with this approach."

How affordable, exactly? The B2G phone … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--The cell phone manufacturers have been bringing it at MWC, and ZTE is no exception. The Chinese manufacturer announced several Android handsets and hinted at others in the weeks leading up to the show, and today, revealed the rest of their global plans.

Out of the 15 smartphones and tablets is ZTE's flagship phone for the year, the ZTE Era. It runs off an Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core 1.3GHz processor, has a 4.3-inch qHD display, and a profile of just 7.8 millimeters thick. It will launch in the third quarter of the year.

Android phones … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Not everything is rosy in the wireless industry.

That's an unusual thing to say during the kickoff keynote address at Mobile World Congress, the world's largest wireless confab. Yet that's exactly what Franco Bernabe, CEO of Telecom Italia, said during his prepared remarks today.

"I don't want to say we're an industry with problems," Bernabe said. "We're still growing and we have a lot of opportunities. But we have a lot of challenges we need to face."

Bernabe was joined by China Mobile CEO Li Yue, Vodafone CEO Vittorio … Read more

Well, it looks like we finally get to know what that vague snow video was all about.

A few days ago, Nokia released a 22-second teaser trailer hinting about something so "pure," it mentioned the word at least three times.

Now we know it's in reference to the manufacturer's newest device, the 808 PureView. A phone that has so many megapixels, its megapixels have megapixels. Okay, that may be an exaggeration, but the Symbian-powered phone -- unveiled at Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona, Spain -- does have a whopping 41-megapixel camera. And that makes our … Read more

Startup Audience currently specializes in improving audio quality for higher-end phones--the iPhone 4 and 4S, most notably--but now it's going down market.

The company sells small chips that process phones' microphone signals with technology it calls EarSmart designed to identify the person speaking and filter out everything else. It's good for voice calls, obviously, but also for newer uses, such as issuing voice commands to a phone, videoconferencing, or capturing the soundtrack for a video.

Audiences's technology reproduces audio signal processing that humans use--processing that relies on our having two ears and therefore that works on … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Mozilla took a big first step in making something real out of B2G, its browser-based mobile operating system, by signing on mobile network operator Telefonica as a partner.

In addition, the Firefox maker discussed another step, a close relationship with mobile processor maker Qualcomm to create the hardware for the first phones, expected to launch later in 2012.

Those are two very important steps. But they're only one of dozens that it must take to create an operating system competitive with Apple's iOS and Google's Android, much less one that fulfills Mozilla's grander ambition. The … Read more