The Coolest Tech at MWC 2012
Mobile World Congress 2012 has just wrapped up, leaving our heads spinning in the clouds as we wait for all of the newly announced products and technology to make it to consumer shelves. While MWC always has more mind-bogglingly awesome devices than we could possibly list in a short blog, there were a few items that we think you should keep an eye out for as they’ll be releasing this year.
The HTC One Series Smartphones
HTC used MWC as a chance to announce a new line of smartphones, the One Series – three Android powered phones.
HTC One X – Leading the pack is the One X, HTC’s new flagship smartphone. It will have a 4.7-inch 720p HD display, 1.5GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor (possibly the dual-core Snapdragon S4 in some markets), and 32GB of internal storage. If all goes as expected, it should be available by the end of April. This is definitely a phone to keep an eye on.
HTC One S – The One S will be the X’s little brother, weighing in a bit lighter with a 4.3-inch qHD display. Under the hood, it will have a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, so it ought to keep up with the X pretty well.
HTC One V – Intended as an entry-level device, the One V dials things back considerably. It will have a 3.7-inch display and only a 1GHz single-core processor, but despite its lackluster specs, this has the potential to be an excellent phone, as long as they get the price right.
When we tell you about the 808 PureView, you’re going to think we’re nuts. Basically, it’s a smartphone with a 41MP camera – no, that’s not a typo. If you’re a regular reader of our blog, you’ll know that megapixels aren’t always everything, but as the PureView demonstrates, having a lot can be useful.
The 808 PureView actually only takes 5MP photo by default. For a smartphone, the ability to take giant 41MP photos that are typically 10MB in size isn’t exactly practical, so PureView uses the extra megapixels for a different purpose. All those extra pixels go towards things like lossless digital zoom and increased light sensitivity. This may very well be the first camra phone that can truly replace a point and shoot.
We’ve seen those pocket-sized projectors; we’ve even seen Nikon stick one into a camera, but until now, we’ve never seen one in a phone. That’s exactly what the Galaxy Beam is, a 1GHz dual-core Android smartphone with an integrated projector. The projector unit itself only has a resolution of 640×360, but can project up to a 50 inch screen.
The Fancy New Mobile Processors
Both Intel and Qualcomm had a strong presence at MWC this year, and both had good reason. Intel got to showcase their brand new Medfield processor in an actual production phone, the Orange* Phone, built by Gigabyte.
In its current form, Medfield is only single-core, but don’t let that fool you. It uses x86 architecture, which is considerably more efficient than ARM. In terms of performance, the single-core Medfield processor is actually on par with some quad-core ARM chips. It will be very interesting to see how they truly perform when Intel powered smartphones hit the shelves later this year.
Qualcomm’s new processor is the Snapdragon S4. They’ve only so far announced dual-core versions, but quad-core variants will be out before the end of the year. But again, don’t let the core count fool you. The S4 processors showcased at MWC this year actually kept up with (and even out performed) Nvidia’s latest quad-core Tegra 3 offerings.
