Motorola today finally confirmed the Charm, its first fixed QWERTY Android phone. It combines a squat 2.8-inch, 320x240 touchscreen with a keyboard and should be uniquely suited to messaging. Simultaneously, it's the first device with both Motoblur and Android 2.1 in the US, and consequently gets not just Google's OS upgrades but much more customization of social network sources and widgets.
HTC's turn at MWC includes two mid-range but very important smartphones. The Legend replaces the popular Hero as HTC's bread-and-butter Android phone but borrows a pair of design cues from Apple. It uses an upscale, unibody aluminum shell much like a MacBook Pro and uses black plastic over the antenna section much like the first-generation iPhone.
HTC this morning made its presence felt at Mobile World Congress by launching multiple smartphones, including its new Android 2.1 flagship. Previously known as the Bravo, the Desire becomes HTC's version of the Nexus One without Google branding. It gets an upgraded HTC Sense with a unique home screen look known as "helicopter view:" somewhat like Apple's Exposé, a pinch gesture at a home screen shows all home screens at once to jump quickly to one of them.
Popcorn Hour has introduced its latest media device, the A-200 Networked Media Tank. The Tank allows users to stream digital content from a wide variety of devices such as computers, network-attached storage, digital cameras, or USB-attached storage. The Flash Lite interface also provides options to stream web-based content from sites such as Videocast, CBS, and CNN, among others.
Microsoft at its TechEd conference has confirmed the impending launch of Internet Explorer Mobile 6, the next major version of its cellphone browser. Originally announced in February, the significantly delayed update is available to test in emulator form and has also detailed all the major changes due with the web suite. The software aims to resolve many of the often-criticized features of the legacy browser from Windows Mobile 6 and starts with an accurate HTML renderer that displays websites the way they would appear on a desktop. Users can even change their user agent to force a desktop view instead of a mobile-optimized site.
Flash support for the iPhone should not be expected anytime soon, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has indicated. Addressing people at yesterday's shareholders meeting, Jobs insisted that Adobe's current Flash player for cellphones, Flash Lite, is insufficient for his goals. The iPhone needs something comparable to what can be run on notebooks and desktops, but this runs too slowly on Apple's cellphone processor, according to Jobs. "There's this missing product in the middle," he says. "It just doesn't exist. We enjoy a good relationship with Adobe."
