Earlier this month at the mobile phone industry’s most prestigious award show, the Mobile News Awards 2005, the Motorola A1000 was crowned the winner in the Technological Advance category for its truly fantastic 3G functionality. The judges believed the handset was, “the best 3G phone on the market - big design advance. A small, usable phone that utilises all 3G features.”

Mobile News is one of the UK’s leading mobile magazines and the awards are now in their eleventh year. This year’s panel of judges was a hand picked collection of respected dealers, industry veterans and other mobile industry specialists.

Samsung introduced its first “file viewer” phones (model names: SPH-V6500 and SCH-V650) that allow users to view document and image files over the mobile phone. This phone is expected to enhance productivity of businesspeople that are constantly on the go but need to view business-critical information, such as PDF files, at anytime and anywhere. The file viewer phone supports various multimedia functions. Users can watch VOD programs and find the words to their favorite songs.

Data can be easily downloaded on the phone in its original file format through a PC connection, similar to an external storage device. Files that are readable on the phone include Microsoft Word and Excel, as well as PDF, JPG, and TXT files.

While file viewing isn’t new in the mobile space, the two phones have a pretty neat remote control feature that provides universal control of home appliances including the air conditioner, PC, game console, TV, DVD, VCR and even the car.

Specifications:

The E725 is a new high speed music phone from Motorola. It’s interesting that it comes with a standard 3.5mm mini jack. Unlike other high profile “music phones” (including the Sony Ericsson W800i), you can plug in your own regular headphones into the E725. Since most users interested in a high-end portable music device have better headphones than a phone maker could hope to ship, this is a very appealing feature. Additionally, with its roller navigation disc and media player keys, the Motorola E725 allows you to skip from track to track quickly and easily.

The E725 delivers the music you want in just seconds. Advanced EV-DO network capability lets you wirelessly download your favorite music tracks and videos to your handset. Sync it with your PC and take your music collection wherever you go or hit the streets and download over-the-air. The ultimate audio experience is in the palm of your hand via integrated dual-speakers, stereo headset port and advanced 3D stereo surround sound. With dedicated music keys, 5-band graphic equalizer, audio synchronized rhythm lights and up to 1GB of storage on the optional removable memory card for music and multimedia content, the Motorola E725 has everything you need in a mobile media device. It is expected to be available in the Americas in the first half of 2005.

Key features:

• EV-DO high-speed data
• 41MB internal memory plus MiniSD card slot for up to 1GB extra storage for media files
• 3D surround sound
• EMU/USB connectivity/docking station port
• Audio sync rhythm lights
• VGA camera
• Standard 3.5mm stereo headset jack
• Mini SD removable memory music and multimedia content
• OEM BREW APIs for MoD/VoD apps to read/write to the memory card
• Dual 16mm stereo speakers
• 5 band graphic EQ

KDDI Corporation announced a new line-up of 3G CDMA 1X mobile phones, with compact, color bodies resembling sweets such as mousse and jelly. This new range of cellular phones, called Sweets, offers convenient, fun features that can be safely used even by teenagers. Made by Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd., the new models will be launched from late March onward.

The phones will be available in three fresh, vivid colors reminiscent of sweets: Cassis Mousse (pink), Vanilla Beans (off-white), and Mango Pudding (orange). Five unique stickers, including “flower” and “hologram” varieties, are also provided to match each color. The stickers can be affixed around the display and scroll keys to personalize the phones, which come preset with illustrations by Ado Mizumori, whose designs are popular among all age groups.

In addition to convenient features, such as Schedule, Money Manager, and Diary, the phones feature a Teens Mode, which prevents overuse and access to unsuitable content via spam. This feature ensures that Sweets phones can be safely used by children.

Sweets feature a 2.1-inch QVGA, 260,000-color, 220-candela display and high-resolution QVGA LCD, plus Flash™ capability. As well as fine-line text on the standby screen and in e-mail, the phones can display photos, taken with their built-in 330,000-pixel CMOS camera. In addition, they can handle EZ NaviWalk and barcodes (QR codes), plus EZappli (BREW®) [3] and EZ ChakuUta® (full-audio ring-tones). These cell-phones deliver, not just a cute design, but features that are fun, convenient, and safe to use.

Tele2 AB announced that it has launched the first worldwide free TV station available on 3G mobile phones, via its own TV channel Tango.TV (TTV).

The development center located in Luxembourg is in charge of applying the convergence strategy and has also created an Internet radio, Sunshine Radio Luxembourg, also available on 3G phones. The streams are available to any customer from the new wap portal T.TVMobile (wap.ttv.lu).

Nokia today announced that it has started deliveries of the Nokia 6680, introduced just one month ago at the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes. The device will be available in markets across Europe, Middle East and Asia-Pacific.

Even though we avoid mentioning relatively slow devices that run on CDMA2000 1xRTT (max bandwidth 144kbps) or EDGE (max 384kbps) enabled networks, we will make an exception with the Treo 650 due to its great features and huge popularity.

Treo 650 comes in two versions, depending on the carrier. One is the slower CDMA2000 1xRTT (Sprint) which includes gpsOne hybrid A-GPS support. The faster one runs on GSM enhanced networks with GPRS class 10 and EDGE support.

The Treo 650 smartphone simplifies your life by combining a compact mobile phone with email, an organizer, messaging, and web access. Theres also Bluetooth technology so you can connect wirelessly to other Bluetooth devices. Not to mention an MP3 player, a digital camera that captures video, and a vibrant color screen that brings everything to life all in a device thats still small enough to fit in your pocket. Seems like Treo smartphones just keep getting smarter.

Check out these great reviews for more information:

MobileTracker Treo 650 Review
Mobiledia Treo 650 Review