Mobile World Congress Day 1

The mobile world experts are getting together again in Barcelona these days. Today was the first official opening and even if the location got much bigger than before it was fully crowded. Waiting in lines was the only way to get registered and also some food on the the fairground nearly all over the day.



Just started right up with a meeting with excito.com, a Swedish startup focussing on the connected home experience and working on a combined approach offering hardware and some real advanced apps to interact with the video and audio adapters and their NAS devices.




All boxes are based on Android and should allow good performance and acceptable prices for the hardware.

One of the few real new devices is the HTC ONE, a real attractive device, but just another smartphone with this larger screen size. It is getting really complicated to differentiate between all these new smartphones offering for sure anything you actually need or desire.



It was also my first hands on with the new SONY flagship phone, the Experia Z. The one you can even give a shower ;-)  A real "slab" device. Very light and thin. Sony still uses the Walkman Logo for the music app.




Sony is also one of the few really showing integrated solution concepts over all platforms: Smartphones, tablets and Windows 8 devices.


What really took off this year is the support of wireless mirroring, a new standard defined by the WiFi Alliance also called Miracast. Sony shows the most integrated solution with a TV and its remote control supporting the Sony One Touch NFC concept. So you just bring the remote an the phone together and the whole setup is done. Really cool and one of the most intuitive setup solutions I ever saw.



But also Alcatel Lucent and HTC fully support the mirroring feature with special dongle devices or HDMI sticks.





The direct screen mirroring feature allows the content to be displayed with just the apps installed on the smartphone. Simple substitution of HDMI cables. I think, the users will love it.



Motivated by this new trend even a German startup Dream Chip defined another protocol making use of vectoring and graphic controls to even further optimize screen mirroring in a complete different way. First demo samples running on a Nexus 7 we running at astonishing speeds.


Another highlight is the ongoing implementation of the next generation of codecs HEVC or H.265. NTT docomo shows working samples using sowftware codecs on actual smartphones. Impessive quality improvements at video speeds of just 1 Mbit/s.




And not to forget the Fraunhofer HHI guys showing their implementation based on the actual Core i7 INTEL chipsets built into the Samsung ATIV tablet.



NFC based payment maybe coming real soon to a broader usage. GD shows an actual implementation.


As I mentioned in the beginning, cueing was just everywhere...



Much response at the ARM booth. Much of their concepts are fully implemented and used in many actual chipsets running in tablets and smartphones.



Some open air snack bars on top of the exhibition halls. It was still chilly even in the sunshine.



INTEL has a large booth and also quite active motivating deleveopers to make use of their tools to optimize the user experience on INTEL driven devices.


Also supported by many carriers - including Deutsche Telekom - the first active demos of Firefox OS devices at various locations. Lots of consumer interest, even if the reference device built by ZTE is a quite small one.



From head to toe: The most product addicted staff seen on a MWC booth ...




Two more specific product highlight wanted: What about the GPS tracker for pets?





Or, if Apple doesn't get around with it, than just take a look on the i'm watch. Thick and a bgit bulky, but still wearable and with a good color touchscreen.





Belkin showed is home products and announced the WeMo app for Android coming soon.


This was just naturall and smelled intense.


And not5 to forget the UBUNTU people showing off their first demos of their smartphone OS under development.




Even GSMA does its daily reports from the MWC. Just in the middle of the crowds.



Never understood how some women survive the fair visit in those shoes...


And one last thing - the loudest one - at least this is their promise.



Or should one just scan one of the moving T-Shirts...


In the end all visitors are happy the get back to the exits...


just for more MWC  days to come.


Just dropped of the Metro in front of the Apple store Barcelona.


The buildings are often quite impressive here.


End of my first day report. More to come.

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