Your Future Phones Are Being Demoed Now

Right now you can't get a hotel room for love or money in Barcelona. Apartments seem to be out as well. The annual Mobile World Congress has landed there, and the Mobile mailing lists have been abuzz for days with people trying to get last-minute tickets and accommodations. Yesterday the major manufacturers did their major announcements, the demo handsets are touchable on the conference floor today, and the gadget blogs are going nuts.

Two years ago when the iPhone came out I got asked if Apple had finally and truly changed the baseline now? In the media phones, in the smartphones segment, has innovation finally been pushed to the forefront by a manufacturer who started kicking ass and putting the best there was in a device at an affordable price? I said yes, yes I was sure that Nokia and Samsung and LG indeed looked up at this launch and gulped and gotten off their ass. I knew it then, and I know it for sure now: new phones are being shown that look like there's finally a dialog of one-upmanship going on in the segment again, after years of the LG Prada and the Nokia 7700 (oh god in heavens) being the flagships of tech for their respective years while RIM's black plastic chicklets cleaned up underneath.

Here's your new media player phone, the Samsung OmniaHD. It plays super-smooth video on a gorgeous screen (AMOLED), and the resolution is beyond hot:

Also, 8MP camera with 720p video recording, Nokia-Symbian S60 5th gen OS. More at Engadget Mobile. I believe it also makes calls or sends text messages.

Nokia is showing it understands now what a businessphone looks like after years of watching RIM hit their targets, the E55. Smooth, seriously slim, good software, good connectivitiy, no weirdness, accessible, but also designed to look the sleek part when being pulled out of the inside pocket of a Hugo Boss suit:

Also more info and pictures at Engadget.

The future is not flimsy black matte plastic anymore. And it should never have been.