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Mobile World Congress 2012: Rumour round-up

Mobile World Congress 2012 is almost upon us. We’re expecting to see many many things announced, unveiled, revealed and shown off at the stands at Barcelona.

We’re expecting quad-core phones and tablets by the bucketload. We’re expecting phones with NFC chips, phones with lightweight, razor-thin bodies, 10.1-inch tablets and everything inbetween.

Naturally, we’ve got a good idea of what some of the devices we’ll be seeing. Or at least we think we do; here’s our round-up of the hottest rumours we’ve seen and heard in the run-up to Mobile World Congress 2012.

HTC – the HTC One X and HTC One S, HTC Sense 4.0 and HTC Music

We’ve heard plenty about the HTC Edge/HTC Endeavour and the HTC Ville, HTC’s first quad-core phone and a stylish dual-core counterpart that will spearhead the company’s Android portfolio for 2012.

Now apparently bearing the names HTC One X and HTC One S, these phones will run on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and showcase HTC Sense 4.0, the latest version of HTC’s custom UI.

We’re expecting things like a more measured take on the Sense experience, with the glowing weather animations and rotating widgets scaled back for a more modest, less showy finish and improved integration of third party services like Dropbox and Beats Audio.

Speaking of music, there’s also word that HTC and Beats Audio will be launching a Spotify-esque music streaming service. If so this could be a huge game changer, though HTC would be entering a platform war that’s already pretty crowded. Between Spotify, Pandora, Deezer and Sony’s own Music Unlimited platform, HTC would have a tough fight on its hands.

 

 

 

 

Nokia – Lumia 900, Lumia 910, Lumia 630 and Nokia 808 PureLive

Despite coming back strong at Nokia World 2011 and launching the Nokia Lumia 900 (aka Nokia Lumia AT&T Ace) at CES, Nokia’s not sitting on any laurels.

We’re hearing that the Finnish giant will be unleashing no less than six new handsets at Mobile World Congress 2012, one of which is expected to be a European/GSM edition of the Nokia Lumia 900.

As well as this, there’s also word of a Nokia Lumia 910 in the pipeline. Rumoured to be Nokia’s first Windows Phone that comes with a 12-megapixel camera, it could be the Windows Phone answer to the Nokia N8.

At the lower end of the price spectrum, there’s word of a Nokia Lumia 630. Following the naming and numbering convention of Nokia’s Lumia range thus far, we’d therefore expect the Nokia Lumia 610 to be less powerful (and therefore cheaper?) than the Nokia Lumia 710.

The Lumia 710 is Nokia’s cheapest Windows Phone offering to date, but it looks like it could have a new war buddy in Nokia’s beachhead assault.

We’ve also heard about the Nokia 808 Pure View. Thought to be running Symbian Belle, the Nokia Pure View looks to have an amazing camera, whatever software its running. The teaser video reveals that we’ll know more on the 27th of February and that it’s rather good at picking out fine levels of detail in areas flooded with light. The last high-end hurrah for Symbian? Elsewhere, we’re expecting that new additions to the Nokia Asha range could be unveiled too.

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1

The Samsung Galaxy Note was a latecomer to the market last year but we loved it and we love it even moreso three months on. Samsung has firmly said that there’ll be no Samsung Galaxy S3 fun at Mobile World Congress 2012, but details have leaked out about a follow up to the Galaxy Note that may or may not have a 10.1-inch screen.

The Sony Xperia U and Sony’s first Windows Phone?

Sony has been open to the possibility of making a Windows Phone phone since Microsoft announced the platform but hasn’t yet committed.

With the Ericsson portion of the brand now officially absorbed and the name rebranded to Sony Mobile Communications, it’s time for a fresh start and maybe time for Sony to debut on the Windows Phone stage.

We’ve also been hearing word of the Sony Xperia U – aka the Kumquat – for a while. We’ve a feeling that Mobile World Congress will bear some Sony fruit whether it’s a helping of Kumquat or Mango.


The LG Miracle

LG’s not been as active in the Windows Phone sphere as HTC or Nokia. We’ve heard thought that this could change at Mobile World Congress with the the LG Miracle, aka the LG Fantasy.

LG has already announced a comprehensive portfolio of Android phones as part of it’s new L-Style range along with the LG Optimus 4X HD and LG Optimus 3D Max (aka Cube). There’s also the LG Optimus LTE Tag, an NFC’d version of the LG Optimus LTE (which won’t be UK-bound) coming as well.

We heard something about LG bringing seven phones to Mobile World Congress this year; six have already been announced, could the LG Miracle be the seventh?


The Asus Padfone and Asus Transformer TF700

Less of a rumour this first one, we’ve got a fairly strong inkling that Asus will be taking the wraps off of the Asus Padfone at Barcelona. The combination phone/tablet with possible dock connections which we saw at CES has gotten us very excited indeed; we can’t wait to get a closer look at this bad boy.

This teaser video we spotted today also looks to hint at the Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF700. Marbles might not immediately mean much at a glance. But we know that the screen resolution of the TF700 is going to be higher than that of the Transformer Prime. So this leads us to think that we’ll be seeing this in greater detail at Barcelona as well.

ZTE’s eight phones 

ZTE has announced a brace of Android phones, the Mimosa X, PF200 and N910 and a tablet, the ZTE Light II ahead of kick off at MWC.

We’re expecting to see them all there and some more – we’re hearing that at total of eight ZTE Windows Phones and Android devices will be hitting the stands.

If these devices make up four of what’s already been announced, we’re expecting to see some smaller ZTE Android phones more akin to its San Franciso II and Vivacity efforts, and maybe some high-end Windows Phone companions for the ZTE Tania as well.


Fujitsu’s mystery quad-core Android phone

Fujitsu has announced that it’s going to be showing off a quad-core Tegra 3-powered Android behemoth with a 4.6-inch screen and a 13.1-megapixel camera at MWC.

It’ll also be water-resistant and dust-proof; other than that we don’t know much more about this mystery phone. We don’t even know what it’s going to be called yet – Mobile World Congress will reveal all this and hopefully more.

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