Readers by now would have realised I have an obsession with mobiles - it frustrates me how much unexploited potential there is for the device yet device manufacturers don't seem to get it. But the pieces are finally coming together - Siemens (remember the SL45?), Nokia and Sony Ericsson brought multimedia to the table, Motorola brought cool physical design, Windows Mobile/Blackberry/Handspring brought office functionality, and now Apple's brought more cool physical design as well as UI design, but more importantly, its brought the 'user experience' factor.

The latest devices from the annual 3GSM convention show that Apple really just managed to the first out the door - it wasn't alone with its ideas (phone producers seriously can't turn around that quickly with a design - its only been a month and a bit since the iPhone announcement).

Samsung's attempt is the f700, and it looks damn slick. Its a touchscreen only phone with HSDPA, video-calling functionality, and a QWERTY keyboard among other things. Its apparently flash-driven too, which gives it a good push in the design direction.

Asus, who usually only just produces phones for other companies, has joined the party too with its concept phone. Again its a touchscreen only phone, but the interesting thing about this one is that it has a row of movable buttons that sit on top of the touchscreen. Presumably this is Asus's solution to the lack of tactile feel.

New-ish player Neonode unveiled their newest device too, the N2. Another touchscreen only phone, but this one seems aimed at the more general consumer market. The size of the screen though is a turn-off I reckon, but then again, the web doesn't seem to be a large part of this phone, so it won't be too bad. More pics here.

HTC's got its renamed HTC Advantage design coming out soon. Quite stylish and highly specced, though I'm not sold yet about how sturdy the connection is between the QWERTY keyboard and the rest of the phone.

O2's refreshed their 'mighty Atom' with a new name - Atom Life, another camera, HSDPA, a faster processor (624MHz) and more memory. I can't work out why O2's suddenly decided to go with black buttons though - they looked ugly on the Stealth, and now on the Atom Life.

Microsoft released the new Windows Mobile 6 at the convention too, the most noticiable 'feature' being a design refresh. Not sure of any phones announced with it yet though...

And finally, Motorola hasn't released a widely available touchscreen only device just yet, but it has improved on the slider form factor by curving the handset to better fit the user's face in the new MOTORIZR Z8. Motorola's handsets still look better and more distinctive (against competitor's phones) than its competitors I reckon.

Hopefully these devices will have given the user interface a bit more thought as well as the battery life, and do a bit more promotion than they've done previously, especially when left to just the carrier.

The mobile music/video revolution is gaining pace, and O2 finally catches up with its new O2 Xda Flame. From its successful Atom Exec design (barring some production and battery issues they had earlier), the Flame adds 3G capabilities (HSDPA unconfirmed though), wifi-g support, 2GB storage space, VGA resolution and a NVidia GeForce Fo 5500 graphics chip, plus a few more things. More info here.

It hasn't appeared on O2's official site yet, but advertising has already been put up (from HK's Mong Kok Computer Centre), so release should be fairly imminent.



I have to wonder though, who are they targeting? Business customers who some how have time to watch movies, listen to music, and play games? That's quite a small niche if you ask me. The Windows Mobile platform is far from suitable for the young and hip consumer crowd - its first and foremost goal was for business users and hence it was designed for that. Yet it is that consumer group that will utilise the multimedia abilities of this phone the most.

Windows Mobile revolves around an organiser (i.e. datebook, tasks, contacts, notes etc.) and phone, with other abilities mostly relegated to the back seat. The interface is designed for business users too - its virtually devoid of graphics except the home screen, and there's no animations at all. Nothing screams out multimedia or graphics apart from Windows Media Player hidden in the Programs menu and the camera (I hope they've improved it now). Windows Mobile 6 (aka Crossbow) improves this a bit, but ultimately these are two very different consumer groups and I don't believe its possible to target both with the same interface. One judges a device based on its business functionality, the other judges it on style and entertainment value.

HP has tried and largely failed I reckon with their Mobile Media Companions (never seen anyone with one yet). Its not a phone, but did run Windows Mobile. They went out of the way to design special software for it too to promote the multimedia abilities more. It did look physically ugly though.

O2's got a pretty good history of providing good additional in-house & 3rd party apps for their devices (e.g. O2 Phone Plus, O2 Media Plus etc.) - let's hope they manage to do something special for this; otherwise I can't help but think the multimedia improvements would be wasted.

The additional load on the battery would be interesting to see (is the tradeoff between battery life and multimedia features worth it?), given my existing Atom already struggles without the added stuff, but I've already rambled on enough about that here.