The mobile phone is becoming less phone and much more a multi-functional device since many announced phones now act as a: GPS device, music player, mobile internet device, agenda, photo and video camera. But what is maybe more important is the announcements of all different Application stores, where each OS has its own. Nokia announced OVI. Samsung announced a few weeks earlier its Samsung Application Store, where the main emphasis seems to be on Windows Mobile users. Apple, Android and Windows Mobile have proven the concept of a fully integrated and easy to use application store.

This year the type of features are not revolutionary. As shown in the diagram, the features included seem less important. More emphasis is on user interface (GUI and touch screen) and the application stores.

Nokia announced a very strict number of devices, where all 6 devices run Symbian S60, in 4 categories: Classic, Navigator, XpressMusic, N/E-series. A few weeks before the GSMA, Nokia announced their low-end (not running Symsbian OS) devices. The E75 is the stylish business focussed, full QWERTY slider-phone, which features a complete mobile office including Exchange and navigation.

Sony Ericsson announced their first “all-in-one” device the Idou. The Idou is a touch-screen device featuring a high-resolution 16:9 widescreen with a resolution of 640×360 pixels together with a 12 Megapixel camera.

One month before the GSMA, Palm already announce the CDMA version of the Palm Pre. Against everyone’s expectation Palm didn’t make any major announcements, although they announced that there will be a GSM version of the Pre. The Palm Pre will be the first phone to run  on the WebOS, designed to be powerful but easy to use. It tends to have the intuitive GUI like the iPhone has, featuring a sliding full QWERTY keyboard.

LG announced a number of phones and positioned its alliance with Microsoft for Windows Mobile the chief operating system of the company’s smartphones. It was announced by LG that as part of the agreement, a tenfold increase of WM devices would be launched in 2009 by LG. As a spin-off LG introduced the GM730, a Windows Mobile 6.5 device featuring LG its own S-Class 3D user interface, with finger interaction instead of a stylus.

Samsung announced, as mentioned earlier, by far most devices. Most of these devices are focussing on the low-end market, like the E1070 and the E1100, devices brining many features for a low price. Next to the low-end devices, Samsung came up with a new range of ‘Ultra’ and ‘Beat’ devices and last but not least the Omnia HD. With this range of devices Samsung tries to serve a broad market, from the basic users to the music-freak and power users. No less than 6 of the 23 devices are equipped with Active-Matrix OLED screens, which don’t require backlight and thus saves battery life.