What´s new in mobiles?

Want a "life partner to hold"? To play the music you like and give you a "rousing climax"? To touch? This is what Samsung promised for its mobiles at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

But before you start wondering why your current mobile is underperforming in this area, the "life partner" is a phone that will help you blog or record the important aspects of your life in photos, thoughts, schedules and texts.

And that "rousing climax", that´s how music sounds when you listen to the Bang & Olufson improved sound quality on some of its mobiles, claims Samsung, the Taiwanese company.

"With 11 new phones, Samsung is also aiming to attack some of the lower tier markets, but the focus at the moment remains mid to high tier," says Richard Windsor, communications hardware analyst at brokers Nomura. "This makes sense as Motorola continues to languish, making it much easier for Samsung to reach its goal of 16% market share."

Samsung´s stainless steel flagship phone called Soul, has a 5 megapixel camera with stabiliser, fast data speeds, amplifier by B&O and is 12.9mm thin.
"It´s not only beautiful, it has the full range of functions," says Samsung´s Yong Ho Shin, who is clearly in love.

Judging by the amount of footfall on its stand, Nokia, the Finnish handset giant, also has a major hit on its hands with the N96, essentially a tiny computer that is the next step on from its existing N95. Its stand was the busiest of the handset makers on the first day of the show.

All four of Nokia´s new phones running the Symbian operating system "incorporate assisted-GPS powered navigation, imaging and music functions but only the N96 is optimised to do them all at an optimum level of performance," says Windsor.

But the overriding trend in new handsets was touch, touch and more touch. Or in mobile jargon: touchscreens. This trend shows just how much Apple´s touch-operated iPhone has influenced mobile phone design.

LG really emphasised ease of use at its press conference and in its products. Its top-of-the-range LG-KF700 has a choice of three different types of control: pictures you press or browse through with a finger; a dial at the side of the phone you can scroll with a thumb; or a keypad.

This gives the user real choice about how to operate the phone and in its shiny chrome-look casing, is right on trend. LG also demonstrated a prototype of a watch phone but was reluctant to give details on a release date.

And of course, its marketing features the word ´touch´ again as in "Smartly touchable, more usable." But despite the hype, life partners in the traditional sense do not yet come packaged into a phone.