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One of the cool (and painful) things about GSMA Mobile World Congress is that you get to see some of the best mobile devices available around the world. I say painful because often these products aren't available in the United States and probably never will be, unless you find them online and buy them unlocked for a hefty price.

If you're a glutton for punishment or just plain curious, then take a look at these international Windows Mobile smartphones that I saw while touring the Microsoft booth.

Windows Mobile smartphones you can't have--photos

LG Arena

(Credit: Bonnie Cha/CNET Networks)

LG had a rather action-packed Mobile World Congress, making several product announcements including the high-end LG Arena multimedia phone and choosing Windows Mobile as the primary operating system for its smartphones. As a result, the company's booth was buzzing with a steady stream of visitors, and we stopped by ourselves to take a look at some of the company's offerings.

The one thing I came away with is that LG loves its touch screens. Everywhere I turned, there was a touch screen staring back at me. Not that I'm complaining, but it got to the point where the phones were almost indiscernible to me. It would have been nice to see a little variation in LG's design.

The biggest crowd pleaser was, not surprisingly, the LG Arena. It was a battle to get some hands-on time with the phone, and I can understand why. The Arena's S-Class 3D user interface makes quite impression. The cube layout and Elastic Lists and Reel Scrolling make it quite fun to use the phone, and certainly takes full advantage of the touch-screen capabilities. To be honest, though, I'm still on fence about whether the user interface is really helpful or all style and no substance. I mean I can see some advantages of the UI (the Reel Scrolling feature really comes in handy for going through photos and other files), but does it make phone navigation that much easier? I have yet to see it.

To be fair, I only had a few minutes with the device so I reserve the right to change my mind when we actually get to review the phone. Featurewise, the LG Arena is impressive with a 5-megapixel camera, 8GB of internal memory, Wi-Fi, 3G support, and more. Let's just hope it makes it way to the States.

The LG-GM730 smartphone was also at the booth, but unfortunately, it seemed as if all of the display models were frozen or not fully functioning, so I didn't really get a good feel for it. Still, I'm happy to see that the company is committed to developing more smartphones, though I know there are certainly some strong feelings about the choice of Windows Mobile as the chief operating system.

To get a closer look at these handsets and LG's other products, check out our hands-on photo gallery.

LG phones at GSMA

Update: This story has been updated to clarify that Apple was not named in the list of handset makers that have agreed to use a new universal charger standard.

BARCELONA--After I've spent years scrounging through drawers looking for the right charger and kicking myself every time I forgot my charger while traveling, the mobile industry has finally decided to make one device that can juice up any cell phone.

The Micro-USB connector used on this Motorola cell phone charger will soon be the standard for all chargers.

(Credit: Motorola)

On Tuesday, the GSMA trade association announced at its 2009 Mobile World Congress here that it has brokered a deal with the world's leading handset makers to come up with a standard for charging cell phones.

All the major handset makers, including, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson, have agreed to use the Micro-USB technology as the common universal charging interface, Rob Conway, GSMA CEO, said during the opening keynote speech Tuesday. By 2012, the GSMA promises, most cell phones will use the same kind of connector to charge their batteries.

Seventeen mobile operators, including Vodafone, Orange, and Telofonic, announced they are committed to implementing the standard for the universal mobile phone charger.

The GSMA said that going to this single standard will not only make life easier for the more than 3 billion mobile phone users in the world today, but it will also help the environment.

Conway said that the GSMA will push cell phone manufacturers to develop chargers that consume about 50 percent less power. The organization also believes that eliminating the need for people to replace lost chargers will significantly reduce greenhouse gases emitted in the manufacturing and transporting of these extra chargers. It will also mean less waste in landfills because people won't simply throw away chargers when they stop using their old phones.

All in all, it's huge win for the planet and for me--the consumer. It's such a no-brainer. It makes you wonder why no one thought of this sooner.

UPDATE: One mobile phone maker is conspicuously missing from the GSMA's list of partners: Apple, maker of the popular iPhone. It shouldn't come as a shock that Apple isn't following the rest of the industry on this one, considering that the company has been marching to the beat of its own drummer in mobile from the beginning.

The good news for iPhone users has always been that the connector that's used to recharge the device is the same one used for some Apple iPods. But annoyingly many iPod docking stations and accessories made by third parties for previous generations of iPods don't work with the iPhone.

(Credit: Skype)

BARCELONA--Skype is racking up deals with mobile handset makers here at GSMA Mobile World Congress 2009.

On Tuesday, the company, which is owned by eBay, announced a partnership with Nokia, the largest cell phone maker in the world, to put the Skype Internet calling software onto its phones. Nokia will initially offer Skype on its high-end smartphones, the N-series. The N97, Nokia's flagship device that goes on sale in June, will be the first to have Skype embedded. The Skype feature will start shipping on the device in the third quarter of 2009.

Skype will be integrated into the N97 address book, enabling users to see when Skype contacts are online. It will also let people use Skype's instant-messaging client. Most importantly, N97 users will be able to make free and low-cost phone calls over the Internet whether they are on a 3G cellular network or a Wi-Fi network. The Skype-to-Skype voice calls are free. And the SkypeOut service, which allows calls from Skype to landlines and mobile devices, offers low rates.

Nokia's not the only handset maker to announce a deal with Skype at Mobile World Congress. On Monday, Sony Ericsson announced it would be offering a Skype "panel" on the Windows Mobile Xperia1 device.

Adding Skype to smartphones is a great benefit for consumers, especially people who travel internationally or have friends and family overseas. While pricing on domestic voice services has been dropping like a brick from a third-story window, international rates have remained high.

As a consumer who likes to travel and who happens to be traveling internationally right now for this trade show, I am annoyed and almost angered at the outrageous prices mobile operators charge when customers roam in other countries or make international calls from the U.S. They all try to sell "international" plans to help defray the cost, but the plans themselves cost consumers an extra fee every month regardless of whether they're traveling that month or not.

Skype and other VoIP services offer users a more cost-effective alternative. And Skype on a mobile phone, when accessed on a low-cost data network, could help people who travel frequently or make lots of international calls save tons of money.

Of course, the two smartphone makers Skype has announced as partners here are manufacturers that are already struggling to get their high-end devices on American mobile networks. And my guess is that adding Skype won't do much to convince these operators to offer these phones and subsidize them so that American consumers will buy them.

The reason is pretty simple. AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile USA know that a wide-scale deployment of Skype on their phones could cannibalize their international voice services and potentially hurt their domestic voice service.

So if by chance, Nokia or Sony Ericsson manages to win approval from a U.S. operator to get these phones on their networks, I wouldn't be surprised if the Skype feature is stripped from the device in the U.S. version.

That said, AT&T is allowing some voice over IP applications to appear on Apple's iPhone App Store. And Skype users are able to make free and low-cost calls through applications, such as Truphone. But for now, AT&T and Apple seem hesitant to allow Skype's powerful brand, which has more than 400 million registered users, to make it onto the iPhone.

We knew it was coming, and sure enough the LG Arena made its glorious debut on the opening day of Mobile World Congress 2009 here in Barcelona. The Arena is LG's flagship model of 2009 and includes a number of high-end multimedia features and more noteworthy, a cool 3D user interface called S-Class.

(Credit: LG)

The S-Class UI was designed to further the advantages of touch-screen phones and also make them easier to use by providing four customizable home screens. The system uses a cube layout so you can program all four sides of the cube to include shortcuts for your favorite applications. To rotate between the screens, you simply flick your finger on the screen similar to HTC's TouchFlo interface.

In addition, there are a couple of other UI tricks. First, LG offers something called Elastic Lists, where you can touch any cataloged or listed item, like a contact, and the Arena will blow up that item so you can view and edit more information right on the spot, rather than having to open up another screen. The other feature is called Reel Scrolling. It places menu items on a film-like reel and you can then just drag your finger across it until you get your desired point.

Turning our attention back to the LG Arena specifically, the cell phone is all about multimedia. It's the first handset to use Dolby Mobile technology to enhance the sound quality of music and video, no matter what format. The Arena also has a 3.5mm headphone jack, equalizer settings, and a built-in FM transmitter so you can wirelessly stream your music from your device to your car or home stereo.

With a 3-inch, WVGA touch screen, photos and videos also take center stage. The LG Arena can play DivX or Xvid movies and is equipped with a 5-megapixel camera with video recording. The Arena has 8GB of internal memory, which can be expanded up to 40GB with the microSD expansion slot. Other highlights include Wi-Fi, 3G support, and a rated battery life of up to 30 hours of MP3 playback and up to 12.5 days of standby time.

The LG Arena will initially be available in Europe starting in March and then make its way to other parts of the world. North America was not specifically mentioned--blast! I did stop by LG's booth on Monday to check out the Arena as well as the company's other phones. When I was finally able to make my through the throng of people, I was quite impressed with the S-Class UI. Check back soon for my hands-on photo gallery and have a look for yourself.

This is a mock-up of the Google Android phone Huawei is showing at its booth at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2009. Design-wise, it looks pretty similar to the iPhone.

(Credit: Marguerite Reardon CNET News/CBS Interactive)

BARCELONA--Chinese handset maker Huawei Technologies said Monday at the GSMA Global World Congress 2009 here that it plans to start selling phones using Google's Android operating system later this year.

Details about the upcoming phones are still scarce. But the company said it's partnering with a design consultancy company. The device is still in development and is expected to hit the market in the third quarter of this year.

Huawei is a large telecommunications equipment maker that has been manufacturing handsets it sells to wireless operators, which then resell the devices under their own brands.

To date, the company has had little presence in the U.S. market. It currently sells one handset in the U.S. called the M328, which is sold through low-cost regional carrier MetroPCS.

Edward Chen, head of Huawei's devices unit, told Reuters that the company is also considering phones that use other operating systems, including Symbian, the leading smartphone operating system on the market. The company has also considered using Linux from the LiMo Foundation.

While the rest of the cell phone market is contracting amid the global recession, Huawei told Reuters it expects sales to grow. Chen said he believes the company will sell between 40 million and 45 million phones in 2009, compared with 33 million in 2008.

Chen also told the news service that Huawei is readying a phone for late this year or early next year that operates on the 4G wireless network technology called Long Term Evolution (LTE). AT&T and Verizon Wireless in the U.S. have each announced that they plan to use LTE to build their next-generation wireless networks.

Expect to see more Windows Mobile devices from LG, like the LG Incite.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET Networks)

Alongside the introduction of Windows Mobile 6.5, LG announced on opening day of the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2009 that it will make Windows Mobile the primary operating system for its smartphones and promised to significantly increase the production and distribution of such devices in the years to come.

In addition, Microsoft and LG have committed to creating joint research and development teams to work on these phones and ensure a tight integration between hardware and software.

To show its seriousness, LG said it will increase the number of Windows phones available in 2009 tenfold and will bring up to 26 new devices in 2012 alone. This means we could see more than 50 new Windows Mobile devices from LG, thanks to this agreement.

LG only released its first Windows Mobile smartphone in the United States last year (the LG Incite), so we'd be happy just to see anything beyond that, let alone a tenfold increase. In fact, the company has already announced its second device at GSMA 2009: the LG GM730. This will be a Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone that will be released in the first half of 2009, but LG added that it plans to ship Windows Mobile 6.5 devices in the second half of the year. We're still gathering more details about the LG GM730 so check back soon for a dedicated post.

By the way, do you think this is a good move for LG? Let me know your thoughts.

Niklas Savander, executive vice president of services and software for Nokia, talks about the new Ovi application store at a press conference in Barcelona.

(Credit: Marguerite Reardon CNET News/CBS Interactive)

BARCELONA--Nokia is taking on smartphone rival Apple with its own version of an application store.

On Monday, the world's largest cell phone maker, which has been losing market share at the high end to devices like Apple's iPhone, announced here at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2009 that it will follow Apple and a few other handset makers in launching a virtual storefront where developers can upload applications and consumers can easily download them.

The news of Nokia's Ovi Store is hardly a shock. Several news agencies had reported that the company was expected to announce the store here at MWC.

Nokia said at the press conference that the store will be open for business starting in May. Nokia's flagship smartphone, the N97, will be the first Nokia device to have the application store software pre-integrated. The N97, which was announced in December, goes on sale in June.

The company added that other Nokia phone users, including those using S40 and S60 phones, will be able to download the application storefront starting in May.

Developers, who will get a 70 percent cut of revenue from the store, will be able to start loading applications to the Ovi.com Web site starting in March. Several content owners have already started working on applications for the store, including AccuWeather, Facebook, Rough Guides, Lonely Planet, Electronic Arts, Fox Mobile, and MySpace.

Nokia says it will eventually make the application store available to all of its Nokia phones, and it will begin rolling it out globally in the fall.

Nokia's announcement follows the big success of Apple's App Store, which provides applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Other smartphone makers have also jumped on the bandwagon with their own application stores. Google launched one for its Android phones and Research In Motion plans to have one up and running for its BlackBerry devices. Microsoft, maker of the Windows Mobile operating system, is also expected to announce its application "bazaar" at Mobile World Congress this week, too.

But Niklas Savander, executive vice president of services and software for Nokia, said at a press conference here Monday that the Ovi application store is different from the others.

"This is not just a place to find applications," he said. "It's a smart store. That is not just for smartphones. It actually suggests things you might like and adds social location dynamics to show you relevant applications. And it shows you what your friends have bought. And it changes the inventory based on where you are."

For one, the store is not limited to providing applications for smartphones. Eventually, all Nokia devices will be able to access some applications from the store.

"It's not only about smartphones anymore," he said. "We must address the range of devices we have in the market from the high end to the low end. This is not necessarily about getting the 2 percent of mobile users who are already using applications to switch. But it's about addressing the 98 percent that will soon start using applications."

More importantly, Savander said Nokia plans to provide a more relevant and contextualized experience through its store than its competitors have done. For example, Nokia will use GPS technology built into phones to provide location relevant content.

The store will also track applications that users are downloading and it will be intelligent enough to suggest other applications that might be of interest. And finally, it will also provide relevant applications based on what friends have downloaded.

BARCELONA--A full-fledged version of the Adobe Flash player is coming soon to a whole slew of smartphones. Unfortunately, Apple's iPhone isn't one of them.

Adobe announced at the GSMA Mobile World Congress here Monday that Flash Player 10, which is the full version of Flash that runs on PCs, will be available on smartphones running Windows Mobile, Google's Android, Nokia S60/Symbian, and the new Palm operating systems. Devices with Flash Player 10 are expected to hit the market starting in early 2010.

The company has worked for years on a lightweight incarnation of its Flash technology for mobile phones. Adobe executives said that about 40 percent of all phones that are shipped today use this version of its technology. But because Flash Lite doesn't allow for the same functionality as what's available on the Flash 10 desktop version of the technology, mobile users are missing out.

In November, Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch told attendees at Adobe's Max conference in San Francisco that the company would bring the full-fledged Flash Player 10 to smartphones.

Even though Flash 10 will be available for most smartphones early next year, the technology still remains on the wish list for iPhone users. But Adobe executives say that it's coming.

"We would love to see it on the iPhone, too," said Anup Murarka, director of Technology Strategy and Partner Development for Adobe. "But it's Apple's decision on when and how they support any new technology. So we will continue to work on it."

Adobe's CEO Shantanu Narayen alluded in comments he made to the Bloomberg news service at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, earlier this month that the company has had technical difficulties finding a workable version of Flash for the iPhone. But he said the two companies were continuing to work on it.

"It's a hard technical challenge, and that's part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating," Narayen told Bloomberg Television. "The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver."