The Mobile World Congress is still on in Barcelona, but a certain conference fatigue appears to be creeping in. Yesterday there weren't that many new announcements any more, and today will hardly see any. While waiting for juicy gossip from the Nokia party, I ran a blog search on MWC and found some interesting stuff. (I said this before, but there is a benefit for taking part in the conference virtually, I might have not found these from the show floor).

Are Solar phones the future? Well, if you know my enthusiasm for nanotechnology the answer is 'you bet'. Samsung and LG have announced their solar powered phones, let's take a closer look.

Samsung Blue Earth is made of recycled plastic bottles and has built-in technology that knows when to turn the backlights up and down, or when to power peripherals. The solar panel on its back is said to produce enough energy to make a phone call. This is interesting. You may recall that I made a concept for Nokia called Eco Sensor Concept. During that work our energy people calculated that a pouch made of standard silicon solar cells would be enough to power a phone's standby, or the wrist band of the sensor unit, covered with solar cells could power the sensor unit alone (although in that concept we were envisioning using dye sensitized solar cells on transparent polymer films for flexibility and transparency. Unfortunately these won't be in commercial quality before a while). I would really like to find more information about the technologies behind sensing its environment for controling the backlights, as well as on the solar power calculations. If anyone finds out, please send this way.

LG seems to be taking the solar energy a bit more seriously at this stage, as they launch two products (if I understood correctly). Their solar powered phone is similar to Samsung's, i.e. silicon based photovoltaic panels on the back of a phone. However, they also seem to have a removable back cover that can power any LG device. That's genious.

                                                                                   

Did Microsoft kill Android at MWC? asks one blog. This is a nice and thorough article on Microsoft's behavior in recent years, and their attempt to be the king of the mobile hill. The article starts with wondering where Android is, and rightly so. Others are asking the same question. "Android expectations for the Mobile World Congress haven’t been met". "We're at MWC but where's Android?" (this one is written by Android Central, a blog dedicated to following Android news).

FierceDeveloper newsletter sent this to my inbox:"Something strange is going on with Android. Many industry wags forecasted Mobile World Congress 2009 would introduce a wave of new devices powered by Google's Android mobile OS, but it appears that several planned Android announcements were scrapped at the 11^th hour, and no one is saying why."

To answer the question if Microsoft killed Android, my answer is no. I don't think anyone's killed anyone, but if you read that article carefully it says that Samsung swopped Windows Mobile for Symbian/S60 in their new OmniaHD, and Sony Ericsson's flagship Idou is also built on Symbian/S60. Shouldn't someone make some conclusions already?

Speaking of which, check out the Symbian Foundation presentation at MWC.

Have a good one.