Mobile World Congress preview

With the industry's biggest mobile show, Mobile World Congress 2011, starting on Monday in Barcelona, Spain, a few leading manufacturers like Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Nokia had scheduled announcements for Sunday evening itself.

Grabbing the headlines was Sony Ericsson as the company unveiled three new phones. The much anticipated Play Station phone aka Xperia Play was officially announced by the company. Bringing together the best of smartphone functionality and gaming experience, it will operate on Android v2.3 and will be launched in a few selected market by March this year.

Following the Play was the Xperia Neo and Xperia Pro. Similar to the Xperia Arc, the Xperia Neo will have a 3.7 inch Reality Display with Bravia Mobile engine, 1GHz single -core processor and an 8MP camera. Whereas the Xperia Pro will have a slide out QWERTY keypad along with 3.7 inch touch screen.

The new announcements from Samsung's portfolio were about the much rumoured Galaxy S II and Galaxy Tab 10.1 inch. The Samsung Galaxy II will have a 4.3 inch capacitive touch display and a dual-core 1GHz processor with improved GPU for gaming. Packing in a 1650 mAh battery, it will be capable of capturing videos at 1080p resolution. On the other hand, the new Galaxy Tab will have 10.1 inch display and will feature an 8MP camera along with 1080p video capture.

Along with Sony Ericsson and Samsung, even Nokia had a press conference scheduled at the same time. But unlike the other two, Nokia just talked about their tie-up with Microsoft for the new Windows Phone 7 operating system. The company also specified that Symbian platform will be continuously renewed.

Last but not the least, even LG went ahead and officially announced their line-up for MWC. The star product from LG was the Optimus 3D with 1GHz dual-core OMAP4 processor, capability of capturing stereoscopic 3D images and videos and a glass-free 4.3 inch display. LG even talked about its touch tablet, the Optimus Tab for non-US market. This 8.9 inch tablet will operate on Android Honeycomb and will be powered by 1GHz dual-core Tegra2 chipsets.

As the MWC 2011 kickstarts on Monday, keynote from Steve Ballmer of Microsoft is scheduled for 14th February and the one from Google's Eric Schmidt of Google for the next day. Also, new launches from HTC and Motorola are expected to come in by the end of the day today.