Introduction
Since a few years ago the beginning of every year means that we’re visiting three major expositions in three months time. The first is CES, which is organized in the city of Las Vegas at the beginning of January – this year we didn’t make it here, primary issue was money; well maybe next year. The second is the former 3GSM, which now runs under the name Mobile World Congress: this event in Barcelona is the most important for us, it is only about mobiles and, by the way, the venue is fantastic, as well as the time and weather (cool 20 °C), the surroundings are beautiful, so we just couldn’t miss this one.
A pavilion’s view from above – photo taken by rudi
CeBIT is in March, which is a bit too early compared to MWC. Mobile phone manufacturers announce all their new devices in February; in such a manner that many large companies don’t even come to the exhibition in Hannover. There is no Nokia stand, for example, and although Sony Ericsson was there, they have only announced a single device, while Samsung didn’t construct huge pavilions just to show some phones, although we could have seen some new pieces over here too.
Crowd - photo taken by rudi
Then why did we visit CeBIT? Hannover is quite a cold place in March, there is 11 hours of driving to be done to get there, there are lots of people and furthermore, simple tourists are also present, while only professionals were present in Barcelona. Well, what was missing from MWC’s Mediterranean environment, had two pavilions over here: this is navigation. That is what we came for, and we weren’t disappointed.
Mobile stuff
There were some phones here too. Although Nokia wasn’t here as an exhibitor, we could have taken a look at their 6650, made exclusively for T-Mobile. The Symbian-based device will only be available for purchase at the magenta network operator. Although Nokia announced a phone for Vodafone (6124 Classic), we were looking for this in vain in their pavilion. Instead we have seen a Huawei product, which will be hitting stores under the name Vodafone 810 and it seems a really promising phone at first glance.
Nokia 6650
Vodafone 810
Sony Ericsson’s stand was absolutely huge, and really purple. After we fought ourselves through the whole portfolio (all of their phones announced this year were there), we had to sadly note two things. On one hand the Xperia, announced with much ado, still didn’t function. There were two dummy devices for the public, which is no promising sign regarding the phone’s availability this year. The other surprising thing was that we couldn’t find the T303, but finally a guy in the press corner took it out from under a desk, so we could take some photos.
Sony Ericsson T303
Samsung brought two new phones. One is the G400,which puts the style of the U900 in a clamshell. One of the interesting features of this device is the external display, which is a 2.2” touchscreen. We aren’t really sure if such a large external display has any meaning but sales will tell. The other new handset is the entry-level M310, which will probably be a star of prepaid campaigns in the near future. It doesn’t know anything extra, but the presence of Bluetooth is worth to mention. We couldn’t try the F480’s renewed touchscreen in Barcelona, but we had the opportunity now, and we made a short video while we were there:
And this is the famous external display of G400
Asus, Gigabyte, Meizu
Asus, not being present in Barcelona, timed its mobile announcements to CeBIT. It’s worth mentioning the P527 of all the PDA-phone combos (as it has a standard keypad), the very small P320 and the beautiful ZX1, which is designed by Lamborghini. But M536 and P560 were also there. The M356 was especially interesting, because in the middle of the navigation buttons there is a fingerprint sensor that can be used for walking around in the menu, just by stroking this sensor. Almost all new Asus devices have GPS, the software is supplied by Nav N Go.
Asus M536...
...and P560
We’ve been waiting for some kind of new gSmart device at Gigabyte’s stand, but we have “only” seen two UMPCs. The smaller M528 might be even more interesting as because in spite of its small size it supports two SIM cards, so we can surf the net on HSDPA networks too. HTC was not present at the exhibition, but it’s still worth mentioning because of the T-Mobile MDA IV: currently we know that that a not yet announced model from “Touch” series serves as the base for this version. Although T-Mobile’s spokesperson had forbidden to take photos of the handset, still others have done it:
MDA IV - source: Engadget
Gigabyte UMPC with HSDPA support
Meizu has again stirred up some serious interest. We naively believed that we’ll be seeing a stand from last year, full of M8s, but we have mistaken. The company has only rented a small corner, which has been closed down by German police on Wednesday. Of course the news has swept around the world, stating that the probable cause for shutting down Meizu is the resemblance between M8 and the iPhone, but it didn’t happen that way. They had to close down because they were illegally using an MP3 compression standard, but after removing the incriminated product, there was a girl sitting at the table with an M8 prototype, so we stood in the line in order to take a look at it.
Currently the Meizu M8 is still big and ugly
To tell the truth, the Meizu M8, announced a year ago, is still not done. The prototype was sitting on a circuit board as large as a motherboard; still it was somewhat functional, although the multi-touch interface has some problems. The hardware, however, is fast (such a large one should really be) and the GUI is almost a 1:1 copy of the iPhone’s. According to a representative of the company, the final M8 might be coming to Europe this fall, until then they are trying to compress it to its final size. Its presence in network operators’ offer is still questionable, as they are not even talking about the phone until a functional model is not done. Still, a video is available about this one too:
There is one last company worth to mention, this is General Mobile. This is an American manufacturer, who has brought seven devices to CeBIT, five of these being able to handle two SIM cards. We had some hands-on experience with the handsets: nice exterior and good-looking menus are characteristic of the devices (pictures below). And then we have started asking some questions. It turned out that the models are produced on the Far East and that the company wants to make them available in Europe. When we asked about how they think the cooperation with network operators they have answered sincerely: it’s sure that there will be operators to take the devices in their offers. We just nodded and wished that this would be true.
One can have a WCDMA, while the other a GSM SIM
The menu was surprisingly pleasant
Mio vs. iGO
The greatest news at CeBIT – at least for us – was that Nav N Go, creators of iGO, and Mio, an important company on the navigation market, had a quarrel. They weren’t throwing chairs at each other, but Nav N Go cancelled all cooperation saying that Mio broke the agreement between them. We have been informed about this while we were having a coffee at Nav N Go’s stand, holding an iGO 8 SD card in our hands, and talking with the officials there about how great it is that the stand is surrounded by Nav N Go’s partners like Mio. Well, did you see their latest products? No, why? Go over there and have a look.
This has a Navman now
We had a look. Mio’s latest family of products uses Navman as a navigation system, so we were only looking curiously. At 4 PM we were writing the article about Nav N Go not wanting to be Mio’s partner anymore, and although they couldn’t disclose any details because of a secrecy engagement, it was quite clear that the use of the Navman system was the reason. This raises a lot of questions that weren’t answered that day, but we went back the next day.
We’ve been asking questions from someone at Mio’s stand until the company’s European director appeared - he was finally willing to answer our questions in this delicate matter. Although we have already written these in the news, it’s still worth concluding the situation:
Mio bought Navman. From here it’s very clear that because of financial considerations they resolved the development of navigation software without a third-party company. The only problem is, that the millions of Mio users, having iGO-based maps, cannot upgrade their software, as Nav N Go is not giving out any more data to Mio, so all users need to start using the Navman system. They can download this (just a really small amount: 2 GB) or get it somehow on an SD card. This is an expensive procedure for Mio, but they have probably thought of the savings they can make by developing the software for themselves. They still won’t be able to do anything with the users who won’t be at all happy after getting used to iGo’s interface (although Mio’s president states that the Navman system is much better, from some points of view, than iGO) and about the fact that they will lack iGO’s famous map database of the Eastern European region.
On our way home we have received a call from Nav N Go: Mr. András Fazakas (COO), would have liked to share his thoughts about the topic. This has finally completely cleared up the situation. Users having a C310 Mio won’t be having any problems, as that has genuine iGO software. All other Mio’s, however, have MioMap, which is to be upgraded by Mio, so these users are forced to change to Navman, no matter they like it or not. Nav N Go has a contract only with Mio, not with the users, so displeased users have to complain at Mio. It’s a good question that how many users will do so, and if this has any importance at all. That’s because Mio does provide a kind of software for the navis, but if this is as good as the previous one… only time, and fortunately reviewers, will tell.
The box of the new iGO 8
Now that finally the new iGO is available, the situation gets more and more interesting. And it will get even more interesting as the first reviews get on the web (we are hurrying too), as iGO 8 seems to be a real hit at first glance. We came home from Hannover using this as navigation software and we were completely satisfied, it was worth waiting for the software, as it is simply good. Nav N Go and Mio will both feel the financial consequences of this quarrel, that’s sure. Mio believes that the savings made by developing the software themselves will be in balance with possible expenses, while Nav N Go concentrates their free resources on their other partners. Asus has also announced that they will also be using new iGO-based software in the future. They gave us an R700, on which the application ran at the speed of light.
Other interesting stuff
It’s impossible to visit everything at CeBIT within two days. Of course our crew split up; me and my colleague Gubro visited the three large network providers. There were lots of things at T-Mobile’s huge stand, but the best fun was the video wall, that functioned with a touch interface, just like in Minority Report. It was hard to take me away from there, here’s the video:
The other interesting thing was at Telenor, where we have seen two men sitting at a wooden table, heavily concentrating with a headband on their heads, while there was a ball rolling on the table. There were all kinds of curves visible on the monitors above their heads, so we went on a round just as they have finished. We have both thought that this is some kind of brain activity meter and the winner is the one who “thinks better”.
Video: from about the fifth minute there is a video about the device, I just couldn’t find anything else about this Mindball. There is something about the brother of this device, (although not exactly this one), here.
We were wrong. The goal is to use your brain the least possible, that is not to think about anything. The ball rolls in the direction of the one who has a greater brain activity. The fact is that this is a really hard task. Finally Gubro lost because he thought about what would happen if someone from our crew would be wandering about, seeing us sitting at a table with a completely dumb look on our face. As for me, I zoomed in on the blue carpet and was repeating in myself that this is blue. With this I have won, so I can now be proud of having a weaker brain activity than my colleague. Hooray.
On our way home...
So we were at CeBIT this year too. If navigation devices shall be exhibited in Hannover in the future, than we are sure to be there.
Bog
Translated by Szaszati
