Samsung SGH-F480

Samsung launched a plethora of new mobile phones at Mobile World Congress, one of which is a little similar to the Samsung-Armani phone launched last year. The 2.8-inch touchscreen SGH-F480 phone offers 7.2Mbps HSDPA.

It has a 5 megapixel CMOS camera complete with auto-focus, "power LED" flash, image and video stabilisation as well as slow motion/video-editing capabilities.

Additional features include an FM radio with RDS, video messaging, email, Mobile Tracker, mobile blog, Bluetooth and USB 2.0.

Motorola Z6w

At the Mobile World Congress, Motorola announced Z6w, a slider phone that uses UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) technology, Wi-Fi-calling technology that T-Mobile calls Hotspot@Home.

Z6w runs MOTOMAGX, Motorola's Linux-based OS which first appeared on RAZR2 V8. It has a 2 megapixel camera, a 2 inch, 320 X 240 display and an MP3/WMA player that syncs with Windows Media Player.

The phone weighs 110g and measures 45.25 x 105.47 x 17.3 mm; battery is claimed to support 420 minutes talktime or 400 hours standby.

Nokia N78

World's largest cellphone maker Nokia launched a number of new devices at the Mobile World Congress, including N78 multimedia computer.

The phone comes packed with a 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, 8 GB of internal flash memory, microSD card slot, integrated A-GPS, Nokia Maps, WLAN, high-speed HSPDA 3G connectivity.

It also includes an integrated FM transmitter that allows music to be played on any FM radio. The Nokia N78 is will start shipping during the second quarter of 2008, for a price of $507 (350 euros) before taxes.

Spice

Indian conglomerate Spice unveiled "People's Phone", a cellphone model priced below $20 (Rs 800 approximately), which comes without a screen, to target surging demand for cheap phones in emerging markets in Asia.

Spice will start selling the phone in Asian markets from Iraq to Indonesia from March, and plans to introduce more phone models in the $10 to $20 price range in the near future.

So far the sub-30 euro ($43.5) market, which represents 20 per cent of all phones sold globally, has been dominated by the world's largest cellphone maker Nokia.

The company has managed to cut down cost as they have not added screen and other features in the phone.

Google Android

A handful of chip makers at Barcelona showed how a mobile device running Google Inc's Android operating system might look.

Android is based on open-source code, unlike competing operating systems from Microsoft Corp, Research In Motion Ltd, Palm Inc and Symbian, owned by Nokia Corp, the world's largest mobile phone maker, and other major phone makers.

Google has lined up about 30 phone, chip and software companies to help develop momentum behind Android.

Among the companies that demonstrated use of Android at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona was Texas Instruments Inc, the largest maker of chips for cell phones. Its prototype offers "one-button access" to Web browsing, email, messaging and video.