14 DAY TRIAL // With the Mobile World Congress come and gone last week, the mobile phone industry was rather quiet this week, and most of the interesting stories we came across during the past seven days were mainly follow ups of what was announced in Barcelona. Some of the most engaging stories were related to the Flash Player 10.1 solution from Adobe, set to soon make an appearance on handsets, but we also learned new details on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 Series, as well as on various handsets unveiled at or before MWC.
Adobe and its Flash Player 10.1 solution for mobile phones created quite a stir this week, since the solution was demonstrated on Nexus One by Adobe itself, as a response to another video published earlier, which showed Nexus One running Flash courtesy of a leaked HTC Desire ROM, and since we also learned that not all handsets out there would receive it. We already knew that Flash Player 10.1 wouldn't come to the entire range of mobile phones on the market, but now Adobe has narrowed the list of supported devices even more, eliminating all Windows Mobile 6.5 devices from it, as well as Android handsets with low hardware specifications.
Motorola DROID / MILESTONE users are among the happy owners of a compatible device, it seems, and the same applies to Nexus One users too, both those who already purchased the phone and use it on T-Mobile's network, and those who will get it as soon as it lands at Verizon or Vodafone in the following months. However, the owners of a Motorola CLIQ are not as fortunate, for example, not to mention that some of them were also hit by some issues created by the newly delivered software update 1.3.18 for their handsets, as Motorola itself stated.
Microsoft's mobile client was another hot topic of the week, as a series of new details on it emerged recently, including the fact that LG Electronics might launch its first Windows Phone 7 Series device in September (the company is working on Android phones too). Although the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series handsets and the new OS will be the main focus at the upcoming Microsoft events, the older Windows Mobile 6.x OS won't be left outside either, and the company is set to help the development of apps for it, it will push the Windows Phone Starter Edition to emerging markets, and it also allows OEMs to upgrade Windows Mobile 6.5-based devices to Windows Phone 7 in case they want to (though the move was said initially not to be possible).
In the software updates area, this week was a beneficial one for some of the handset users out there, including those owning devices powered by the Windows Mobile OS, which can enjoy Facebook 1.2 on their handsets, while those owning an HTC HD2 on Vodafone can taste a new ROM upgrade. We also spotted a leaked Android 2.1 ROM for Samsung Galaxy Spica, as well as newly leaked OS flavors for BlackBerry Tour 9630, Bold 9000 and Curve 8900, along with the official webOS 1.4 platform, which was pushed by Palm to webOS device users on Sprint's network in the US, and on the O2 UK, O2 DE, O2 Ireland, and Movistar networks in Europe.
Among the mobile phones that caught our attention this week, we can count the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, which is already available for pre-order in Indonesia, Acer's Liquid e, which is set to land at Rogers in Canada, the HTC Legend, which received GCF and FCC approvals and should soon arrive at Sprint in the US, while Desire is expected to arrive at AT&T, or the Samsung Jet 2, which was launched in India. HTC Magic should receive an Android 2.0 update from Vodafone, while LG GW620 was launched in Italy as LG LinkMe.
Other stories of interest include the launch of Ovi Maps 3.04 Beta for Mobile, the introduction of Google Earth for Android 2.1, or that of a Dex One Android application, along with a pre-order availability of Sony Ericsson Vivaz at Vodafone UK. Nokia remains the mobile phone market leader, while Palm has rather hard times keeping its head out of the water. DROID by Motorola owners might be interested in music applications highlighted by Verizon for them, while UK mobile phone users should learn that the Orange-T-Mobile merger was approved by the European Commission, and that there are new tariffs put in place by O2.
