MWC 2012 roundup

Saving the best for last is always a good idea, and what many of our readers might be surprised to know is that the Chinese handset maker, Huawei, surprised all of us with its fantastic lineup at MWC this year. The handset maker has so far been known for its midrange smartphones and tablets, but its high-end launches at MWC makes it clear that the company is deciding to up the ante on its reputation. The Huawei Ascend D quad features the company’s own quad-core K3V2 processors with 1.2GHz and 1.5GHz clock variations and 1GB RAM. The 4.5-inch IPS+ display features a 720p HD resolution, Dolby Mobile 3.0 Plus sound, 8-meg rear camera and HD recording 1.3-meg front camera. The phone runs Android ICS out of the box. It’s 8.9mm thickness and sleek looks give the Galaxy S2 a run for its money, in our opinion. The dual-core Ascend D1 is not powered by a Huawei chipset but clocks 1.5 GHz and specifications and an identical screen and cameras to the Ascend D quad. Unlike the very average Huawei MediaPad we reviewed in last week’s edition, the MediaPad 10.1 runs on the same Huawei K3V2 processor, but wait for it, has FOUR cores! How’s that for super tablet? The rear features an 8-meg camera with 1080p video recording, a rarity on a tablet. Storage is limited at 8GB but hold on, there’s a micro SD slot for expansion. The 10.1 inch Full HD IPS display could give the iPad 3 some serious competition.

LG surprised us with the number of new launches at MWC this year, most notably in the LG Optimus Vu. This device with a 5-inch IPS display and rather odd 4:3 aspect ratio features pen-input, and is LG’s answer to the Samsung Galaxy Note. Although we found that the device did look a tad boxy, its specs which include a 1.5GHz dual-core CPU, 8-meg camera and 2,080 mAh battery were impressive. The Optimus Vu runs Android Gingerbread but an ICS update is said to be in the making. Other notable launches were the Optimus 4X HD, which as its name suggests is another quad-core smartphone. It features four 1.5 GHz cores, a 4.7-inch IPS display and 8-meg camera. The Optimus 3D Max is the sequel to the Optimus 3D, and although we found the glassless 3D capabilities much improved, it still has a long way to go. LG also launched another trio of handsets, the Optimus L3, L5 and L7 which will run Android Gingerbread and have mid-range specs. The LG Optimus LTE Tag is similar to the Optimus LTE announced earlier but this phone comes with NFC capabilities.

Nokia has been in the news a lot since the launch of the Lumia Windows phones. Apart from the Lumia 900 that was shown at CES this year, they also displayed the Lumia 610, the first ‘budget’ Windows phone to be launched. The company also focussed a lot on its S40 range of Asha phones. The Asha 303 and 302 in particular were noticeable, with great build, integrated Mail for Exchange, Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp. However the winner from Nokia which also won the Best of Show award at MWC was undoubtedly the PureView 808. Miles ahead of any camera phone in the market, Nokia even outdid the N8’s hefty 12-meg camera with a 41-megapixel clicker. The funky device lacked the thin profile of other smartphones but outshone with amazing photographic capabilities and drove us techies mad at MWC. The phone runs on an updated Symbian software, Nokia Belle and features a 4-inch AMOLED ClearBlack display and 1.3 GHz processor.

Samsung successfully disappointed us all when they chose not to launch the Galaxy S3 at MWC this year, but that didn’t prevent the company from making a couple of big launches. The most ‘notable’ of course being the 10.1-inch Samsung Galaxy Note! Samsung seems to have got the formula right with its tablets so far, and the bigger Note created plenty of buzz at the Samsung stall. The Note 10.1 runs Ice Cream Sandwich, unlike the Gingerbread running Note and features a 1.4GHz dual-core processor, rear 3-meg camera and front 2-meg camera and of course, the same S-Pen input we loved so much on its smaller cousin. Samsung also launched the second editions of their existing tablets, the 10.1 and 7.0. While the 10.1 has near identical specs to the Note 10.1, the 7.0-inch Galaxy Tab 2 features a 7-inch IPS display with a resolution of 600x1024 pixels. Both run Ice Cream Sandwich. Samsung was relatively quiet on the smartphone front but the Samsung Galaxy Beam which has an inbuilt projector did create its fair share of buzz. Not as speccy as the other smartphone launches at MWC, the Beam does ok with its Android Gingerbread OS, 1GHz dual-core processor, 4-inch Super AMOLED display and 5-meg camera. The projector features a brightness of 15 lumens and can project a 640x800 pixel image with a 50-inch maximum screen size.

In our ‘What to expect at MWC’ story a couple of weeks ago we talked about the possibility of an Xperia P and U in addition to the already launched Xperia S. Looks like we were right! We got close and personal with the phones and were completely blown away by Sony’s innovation in design. The Xperia P with its unibody aluminium design, 4-inch Reality Display with WhiteMagic technology for brighter viewing and 8-meg rear camera was a thing of beauty. What really stood out was a transparent strip with LED lighting above the control buttons which makes this beauty look like something out of a sci-fi flick. The smaller Xperia U has a 3.5-inch screen with a 5-meg camera. It features the identical transparent strip but this one lights up in different colours and unlike the Xperia P, the plastic casing at the bottom can be interchanged with different colours. Both the phones run Android Gingerbread with an Ice Cream Sandwich update scheduled later this year and feature NovaThor U8500 chipsets with dual 1 GHz cores.