3GSM World Says: Sony Ericsson K800 and Samsung D900 true winners!

Curious about who won what for the 3GSM World Congress? Here is the list of winners for the 3GSM Awards this Valentine’s Day.

samsung-d900.gifIn the phones category, the best GSM handset was awarded to the Samsung SGH D900. This phone won because of its slim form factor, bright screen and stable user interface. This phone simply “works” as it comes packed with 60MB of internal memory and microSD expansion for storing photos, videos and music. The autofocus 3MP camera tops the phone as icing to its already impressive list of features.

sony-ericsson-k800-cyber-shot-is-wilma-2.jpgNow the best 3GSM handset goes to the Sony Ericsson K800 CyberShot wins a dozen roses for being the best 3GSM handset for 2007. Again, a high quality 3MP camera, fast operating system and a compact form factor are what truly makes this phone shine.

Should companies take hint as to what makes a phone a winner in this beauty contest?

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What makes a phone sexy?

Over the years of writing technology reviews of devices I always come upon the following six word phrase when reading or writing product descriptions:

“It has a sexy form factor”

But is this the real meaning of sexy when we take a look at phones? I honestly think that the word “sexy” has more to do with the aesthetic value of the unit (hence the form factor element) more than anything else. The Motorola KRZR for instance is sexy because it is small and thin. But I would never buy it as it lacks several sync features — practical features that outweigh the sexy.


Are there instances where sexy should take priority over features? What does it mean for a phone to be sexy anyway?

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Blackberry Pearl Hands On

The Blackberry Pearl is the latest handheld device from RIM. This device has been cut clean — it is smaller than most fashion phones, lighter than the rest and it comes with a few new features which truly makes the Blackberry an attractive lifestyle device. The stigma of the Blackberry was that it was labeled as a “corporate device” because of its bulky design and the no-camera feature.

The Pearl has the following highlights:

* 1.3MP camera
* 1 1/2 days worth of battery life
* Built in GMail Chat and Yahoo! Messenger
* Voice recognition dialing (you do not need to pre-program recordings)
* Video playback
* EDGE connectivity
* Light sensor (detects low light levels and switches on the backlighting)
* Trackball navigation (a small trackball at the center serves as the navigation, replacing the joystick)

With the addition of a camera, enterprise IT departments can actually have the camera feature disabled from their servers for security purposes. Cool!

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Cell Phone: Art and the Mobile Phone at Baltimore

The museum is the first US exhibit to showcase an entire collection devoted to the cell phone. The show, dubbed Cell Phone: Art and the Mobile Phone, features more than 30 international artists, from video great Nam June Paik to new media collective, Informationlab. The mix of programmers, mixed-media and urban artists highlight the impact of cell phones on everyday life. The exhibit, on display until April 22, shows off a mash-up of camera phones, videophones, global positioning systems, Bluetooth technology, ring tones and messaging tech.

WIRED did a coverage of the “cellphones turned art” show over at the Baltimore Museum. You can view the full gallery here and the full article here.

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HTC S310 Windows Mobile Smartphone

The S310 is HTC’s budget smartphone running on Windows Mobile 5. In spite of its being labeled a budget device, HTC was able to pack some neat features into this handy smartphone. Features include:


* Windows Mobile 5
* Quadband
* GPRS and EDGE compatibility
* Microsoft Push Email
* Windows Media Player supports MP3, MWA and WMV
* 1.3MP camera
* A2DP Bluetooth Support (you can use this with Bluetooth headsets)

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Google Phone Knows You Better than Your Ex

Here’s the scoop from Phoneyworld:

The application is near scary in the fact that it shall be able to know you better than anybody else and then pre-empt searches based on this data, which would include your likes, dislikes, time of the day and location and suggest to you that since you are likely to be hungry at this time of the afternoon, and since it is a holiday, you would perhaps be better off going down to the nice mexican place just around the corner from your current location for a quick meal.


In other words, Google will be embedding Spyware onto their phones.

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The Blank OLED Phone: Ultimate in Phone Customization

This is the Blank, a touch screen OLED phone that is … well … blank. To facilitate the ever changing fickle taste in fashion and personalization, the Blank concept allows owners to use the touch screen as a slate to place their own custom designs.

The full coverage OLED has a number of other benefits over traditional phone screens as well, such as a much lower power consumption compared to LCD’s, a higher contrast ratio and the ability to customize the interface and eliminate unneeded functions from sight. When you want to text, bring up a full QWERTY keypad, when you’re dialing, only numbers appear on screen. The removal of a dedicated keypad also allows you to watch media in true widescreen format. [source]

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