3GSM

Nvidia wants a piece of the exploding smartphone market, with its first major applications processor scheduled to arrive in phones next year.

The graphics chip company is showing off the fruits of its $357 million PortalPlayer acquisition with the APX 2500, its first attempt at building a true computing processor for mobile phones, said Mike Rayfield, general manager of Nvidia's mobile business unit. The APX 2500 is designed as a standalone application processor for multimedia phones where talking takes a back seat to watching videos and browsing the Web.

The applications processor in a mobile phone is akin to … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Nokia pushed its mobile navigation service to the next level on Monday with the announcement of the latest version of its Nokia Maps service at the GSMA Mobile World Congress here.

The initial version of Nokia Maps, which was announced at last year's edition of this wireless show, was developed for people who wanted navigation while driving, essentially replacing the need to have a separate navigation device, like those offered by Garmin or Tom Tom. On Monday, Nokia took the navigation service a step further by announcing Nokia Maps 2.0, which is geared toward pedestrians. This version … Read more

In addition to the Nokia N96, the N series welcomed another addition to the family today at GSMA 2008: the Nokia N78. Like the other models in the series, the N78 has a heavy focus on multimedia. It has a 3.2 megapixel camara with Carl Zeiss optics, an MP3 player, an FM transmitter that allows you to stream tunes to an FM radio, whether it be in your car or home, and it will be compatible with Nokia's Music Store and N-Gage gaming platform. The N78 is also outfitted with GPS, and what's really cool is that … Read more

Man, I could really use this cell phone right now. Today, along with a slew of other devices, Nokia introduced its Nokia 6210 Navigator phone at GSMA 2008. Like its predecessor, the Nokia 6110 Navigator, which was announced at 3GSM last year, the 6210 Navigator has built-in GPS (integrated and assisted) but adds the new Nokia Maps 2.0 application and an integrated compass for pedestrian guidance. There's also an accelerometer onboard to more accurately track your position on the map as you're walking around town. (Seriously, I wish I had this phone in hand right now as … Read more

It's the first day of the GSMA World Congress and the big players are already battling it out to steal the show. Nokia was one of the first companies out of the gate when it announced four new devices at a 10am press conference on Monday morning (that's just 1am for you West Coast folks). We've wrapped all the announcements up into a Nokia GSMA slide show.

Of the new phones, two are additions to the company's N-series line. The Nokia N96 is an update to the Nokia N95 and the Nokia N78 offers a raft … Read more

It's no surprise that at GSMA we're seeing a lot of cool things. Since the show is geared toward the worldwide market (Europe in particular), the phones on display are a lot more exciting than the usual sort we see at home. But on the other hand, there's no guarantee that any of the devices will come to North America. Drool as we may, we're also green with envy.

Take, for example, the Nokia N96. As a slicker, stronger update to the already powerful Nokia N95, the N96 has just about every feature you could want … Read more

Nokia already has the N95, so its no stranger to high-resolution camera phones. But now it's aiming to take that functionality to a broader audience with the Nokia 6220 Classic. Announced today at the GSMA World Congress in Barcelona, the 6220 takes is a somewhat scaled down version of the N95. Not only does it use Nokia's Series 60 user interface instead of Symbian, but also it sports a minimalist candy bar design (4.25 inches tall by 1.8 inches wide by 0.59 inches thick; it weighs 3.2 grams). It will be available in purple, … Read more

Sony Ericsson couldn't very well come to the GSMA World Congress and not give us a couple high-end camera phones. Since we've been fans of the Cyber-shot series ever since the K790a, we were hoping for a couple news models to examine. Fortunately, Sony Ericsson didn't disappoint us. The new C702 and C902 offer snazzy photo features, each in a candy bar design. We're not sure why Sony Ericsson is now designating its Cyber-shot handset model numbers the letter "C" (it makes more sense than "K" when you think about it), but … Read more

As the GSMA World Congress begins, Sony Ericsson has proven again that it can surprise us. While we expected that it would spend much of its time in Barcelona concentrating on its strong points, like a new Walkman phone, it instead introduced a completely new cell phone line with its G700 and G900.

Designed as "touch-screen organizers with a broad appeal," the G700 and G900 are Symbian smartphones that are designed a busy, on-the-go audience. The company said it was trying to snag a new segment of customers with the two handsets, and from I can tell, it … Read more