mwc

BARCELONA, Spain--Huawei took the wraps off its latest high-end, superskinny Android phone, the Ascend P2 on Sunday. It has a 720p 4.7-inch display, a 1.7GHz quad core processor and a 13-megapixel camera, all stuffed into an 8.6mm body. I was given an early hands on with the P2's camera to see how it stacks up against the Nexus 4.

Shooting outside the Mobile World Congress center, the P2 was off to an unimpressive start. It didn't have quite the level of control over its exposure that I'd like, resulting in blown-out highlights in the … Read more

Though most of the big players chose Sunday or Monday to make news and drop their newest devices, Day 2 of Mobile World Congress didn't slow down in the least.

Mobile operating systems have long been a popular theme at the word's biggest wireless trade show and the 2013 confab is no exception. Sunday brought us the announcement of the new Firefox mobile OS, and today the Tizen Association entered the game, as well. The group showed its new operating system at a press conference that closed the day. CNET's Luke Westaway and Rich Trenholm got their hands on an early device … Read more

If you want to beat Android, try, try Tizen again. After years of false starts, we've gone hands-on for our first proper look at Tizen, an operating system backed by Samsung and Intel as well as other major mobile players, and one that could help the mobile industry cut its ties with Google.

It's clear from the moment I picked up the Tizen demo phone that the software is a long, long way from release. Samsung, Fujitsu, and Huawei will all make Tizen phones eventually, but the demo device we used is not a phone that will reach … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--It's Tizen's turn for the spotlight.

The upstart mobile operating system, shepherded into development by Samsung Electronics and Intel, made a splashy debut at an event at Mobile World Congress.

The operating system is seen as a potential alternative to the dominance of Android, and has been driven in part by demand by carriers for a more open OS that they can tinker with.

Beyond the two key players, the night was a celebration of other partners, including Huawei, which is joining the steering committee of the Tizen Association, and European wireless carrier Orange. Orange said that … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--"They call me the UI guy." This is Dennis Poon speaking, Huawei's global UI design director for device-maker, and the man in charge of the new Emotion UI interface that all but completely re-envisions Android on smartphones.

Sporting a textured brown blazer and collapsing comfortably onto a couch in Huawei's meeting room, it's apparent that Poon is a different breed of executive, easily cracking jokes and sharing stories as he discusses Emotion UI, the Android layer Huawei uses in its Ascend P2 and Ascend Mate.

Like the debut version shown this past summer, … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Swinging past the Telefonica booth at Mobile World Congress I came across these two phones sitting in a case full of Firefox phones. First up is a mystery device from Huawei:

The reps on the stand wouldn't comment on the specs, availability, or, well, anything really, but it's a good sign that Huawei is working on a model. Judging by the size of the screen, it looks like a slightly higher-end model than the other Firefox phones we've seen, but that's as much as I can guess for now.

The same Firefox case also contained … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--One of the big news developments at MWC 2013 is Mozilla's big push of its Firefox operating system for mobile phones. Based on the few devices which are expected to run it, however, I'm not impressed.

Software maker Mozilla certainly generated a lot of buzz when it announced a slew of mobile carriers (18 in all) which have jumped on board the Firefox phone operating system. Big-name handset manufactures have also hinted at supporting the fledgling mobile platform or have expressed outright plans to sell their own devices running Firefox themselves.

Besides heavy-hitters such as Sony and … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Time for a new meaning to "plug and play": the BeeWi Mobot is a power plug that not only controls the gadgets in your home, but also tells you what's going on while you're out, thanks to a SIM card and an iPhone app.

The Mobot is a prototype shown off here at Mobile World Congress by smart toy-builder BeeWi. Plug the Mobot into a power socket, then plug an electrical appliance or gadget into the Mobot, and the Mobot will control that gadget. What makes it more than just a boring old timer plug … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Opera Software has dropped the new engine into its browser and now has begun revving it up.

At the Mobile World Congress show here, the company began showing for the first time its new WebKit-based version of Opera for Android. That browser is the first product from a completely overhauled product line and technology strategy for the company based in Oslo, Norway.

Opera is changing the browser engine at the core of its software, dumping its own Presto for the open-source WebKit used in Chrome and Safari. It's a radical change in many ways: many engineers are changing … Read more