Samsung has always been in head to head competition with Apple, and with the introduction of its Wallet App today during the developer’s conference at MWC, it has taken another stance on yet another Apple’s services – Passbook app for iOS. Samsung Wallet app will work as realtime service allowing users to store and manage event tickets, boarding passes, membership cards and coupons all in one place. Samsung Wallet app API is available for developers from today.

The app API can be used by developers to bridge in their coupons, tickets, cards and more with the Samsung Wallet. Not just this, the Wallet will also update the users with constant notifications on the relevant coupons and tickets provided by these associated app developers.

Apart from this, the Wallet will help in sending get realtime updates on membership card points and changes to boarding passes as well. Moreover, the bar codes on the passes on the Wallet can be scanned at various payment terminals.

The Wallet app clearly works on the line of Apple’s Passbook app, while it somewhat hints at the Google Now Boarding Pass launched last month as well.

Besides these, Samsung provides it the marketing angle by introducing co-marketing coupons to partners associated with Wallet service, which will increase traction at both ends.

Mobile World Congress this year has been all about mobiles and tablets with bigger and better displays crammed with as much performance power as possible into those small packages. Now Broadcom has taken the mobility factor to an all new level when it showed a device called ‘PC-on-a-stick’ at its booth at MWC.

The device shown at the event was in its barest form – a circuit board connected to a monitor. Essentially this device is a PC that can be connected to any monitor or a display device using a USB or an HDMI port. It uses cloud technology to store any OS or essential files, use Wi-Fi to gain access to them from the Internet and can be operated using a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

The PC-on-a-stick is targeted at corporate or education institutions where PCs or laptops are bought in huge numbers. By opting for this device which Broadcom says will cost less than $50 (Rs 2,700 approximately), an institution will only have to invest heavily on secondary devices like monitors or keyboards, etc and save a lot of money in the process.

The PC-on-a-stick is a revolutionary product with huge potential and we are excited to see how Broadcom will market it. In a country like India, where the government has been trying to introduce computers in rural areas and classrooms all over the country, this device could be an ideal and cost-effective option.

Last week Nvidia announced the Tegra 4i, its latest LTE-capable mobile processor along with a reference handset called Phoenix. Earlier today in a video shot outside the Mobile World Congress convention center, Nvidia gave a small glimpse into the handset and its performance.

The Phoenix is a handset that Nvidia provides to companies as a reference model to design new handsets suited for the Tegra 4i processor. The handset is only 8mm thin, sports a 5-inch HD (1920×1080 pixels) display and features a 13-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, volume rocker on the side, 3.5mm audio jack and connectivity options like mini-HDMI and mini-USB ports. The video shows high-def game and a 1080p video working flawlessly on the phone.

The Tegra 4i processor boasts of 4 plus 1 Cortex A9 cores, support for up to 60 GPU cores, LPDDR3 RAM and 4K resolutions and a top clock speed measured at 2.3GHz.

Nvidia has said that mobile users can expect phones running on the Tegra 4i processors by the end of this year to early next year. In the meantime you can see the Phoenix in action in the video below.

Wireless chargers are slowly making their mark in the mobile market, and companies around the world are providing built-in support for wireless charging in their flagship phones. With the future in mind, LG today announced WCP-300, the world’s smallest wireless charger at the ongoing Mobile World Congress.

LG says that the WCP-300 though on 6.3cm in diameter provides a charging area 1.7 times wider than the company’s previous generation wireless charger. The charger is Qi certified and is compatible with any smartphone with the same certification as well as any charger that uses a 5-pin micro-USB. The WCP-300 works on electromagnetic induction technology that produces a magnetic field which in turn generates an electric current to charge the batteries in devices placed on the charging pad.

The WCP-300 will support Nexus 4, LG Spectrum 2, Optimus G Pro, Vu II and LTE II smartphones among others. It will be available in South Korea as early as next week and should be available at other countries soon after.

Along with launching the ZTE Open, the company’s first Firefox OS phone at the ongoing Mobile World Congress, ZTE has also launched the Grand Memo phablet. The 5.7-inch phablet is one of the first Android phones to be powered by Qualcomm’s flagship quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor.

The Grand Memo is no baby as it measure nearly 6.3-inches in height and is 3.25-inches wide, but it is remarkably thin at only 8.5mm. The LTE capable phablet sports a massive 5.7-inch HD (1280×720 pixels) display and is powered by a quad-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon 800 processor, Adreno 330 GPU and 2GB RAM. Other features included are a 13-megapixel rear camera, 1-megapixel front camera, 3,200mAH battery and has 16GB of internal memory. On the software side of things, the Memo runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean topped with ZTE’s Mifavor UI.

The Grand Memo will be first launched in the Chinese markets in the second-quarter of this year, followed by a launch in the European markets.

Towing the line of our earlier reports, Asus has announced the 7-inch FonePad Android tablet at the Mobile World Congress which will have a price of $249 or Rs 16,105 in Europe alongside the PadFone Infinity. The FonePad is noteworthy because it runs Intel’s Lexington chip, which was earlier seen in the Lava Xolo X500 smartphone.

Specs wise it has a 7-inch HD IPS display with a 1280×800 pixel resolution, 3G support and is powered by Intel’s new Atom Z2420 chipset that is clocked at 1.2GHz and is based on its new Lexington paltform. Additionally, it has a PowerVR GC540 GPU, a 3-megapixel rear camera, a 1.2-megapixel front camera that can shoot 720p video, 1GB of RAM, microSD card slot and will be offered in 16GB and 32GB variants. It runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, just like the PadFone Infinity.

Apart from this one of the main reasons for the FonePad nomencalture is its ability to be used as a cellular phone just like the recently announced Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0.

Asus has announced that it will be available in the US in March and will come to Europe in April. That said, there is no word on an Indian launch and pricing.

Asus has been in the limelight for its probable launch of next generation PadFone today at MWC. The Verge has spotted some information displayed about Asus’s new variant of PadFone which they report will be called as the PadFone Infinity.

As reported earlier, the device will supposedly come in a sleeker body and will feature an aluminum alloy chassis with a brushed metal finish. It will feature a 5-inch smartphone docked inside the 10.1-inch tablet both of which offer 1080p resolution. Apart from this, it will run on a 1.7GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, which has lately been seen to power many  powerful smartphones and tablets from multiple OEMs.

Besides the PadFone Infinity, there also are reports on a FonePad to get revealed at the Asus event today. As per our reports earlier, the FonePad can be Asus new tablet featuring a 7-inch HD display offering 1280×800 pixels, 1.2GHz Intel Lexington Z2420 Atom chip with hyper threading technology, 1GB RAM, 3-megapixel rear camera, a 1.2-megapixel front camera and an array of other features. Just like the Asus PadFone, this device is also expected to boast of a metallic finished body. Stay tuned for more on this as Asus will hold its MWC press event at around 4:30 IST.

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Nokia wants to really well in the smartphone space, but the one area where its dominance is still unparallel is in the area of low cost candy bar feature phones. At MWC today, the company announced two new devices that borrow some of its technologies from Windows Phone – the 105 and the 301.

Both the phones are derivatives of Nokia’s color scheme for the Lumia line of smartphones and they come with a bag of tricks of their own. For starters the 105 features a flashlight, FM radio and a brilliant month long battery life. The real kicker is the price point of $20 or Rs 1,081.

The 301 is a more high-end device and boasts some interesting imaging capabilities owning to its 3.2-megapixel camera which borrows features from its more illustrious Windows Phone cousins like panarama, sequential shots, and a voice guided self portrait mode. Other features of the device include Mail for exchange support, the Nokia Xpress browser wihich compresses data by 90 percent, HSPA connectivity, and Nokia’s ‘Slam’ feature. It will be offered for $85 or Rs 4,596. Both the devices will be launched in Q2.

After grabbing the spotlight at the CES when it launched the Xperia Z smartphone, Sony today grabbed the headlines again by launching the world’s thinnest 10.1-inch tablet called the Xperia Tablet Z. The tablet is remarkably thin at only 6.9mm and weighs in at 495gms.

The Xperia Tablet Z sports a 10.1-inch full HD (1920×1200 pixels) screen and is powered by a quad-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor; 2GB RAM.  It includes features like an 8-megapixel rear camera, 2-megapixel front camera and comes in 16GB and 32GB internal storage variants with a microSD slot for cards up to 64GB. Sony says that the tablet is dustproof and also waterproof in up to three feet of water for 30 minutes.

On the software front, the Tablet Z runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which will be upgraded to 4.2 soon after launch. It also includes an IR blaster that works as a remote control for your TV and also works with an app called TV SlideView that allows a user to see a TV guide in the app itself.

The Xperia Tablet Z is priced at $499 (Rs 26,946 approximately) for a 16GB Wi-Fi version and $599 (Rs 32,346 approximately) for 32GB and will be available in the global markets. There is currently no word on when the Japanese company will release the tablet in India.

As expected Nokia has announced the Lumia 720 and Lumia 520 Windows Phone 8 smartphones at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The main intention of these devices is to bring Nokia’s high-end Windows Phone 8 expereinces to emerging markets at lower price points. Nokia also has managed to pack a lot of the innovations it heralded with the likes of the Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 in both these devices with the difference being lower price points and slightly toned down specs.

The Lumia 720 for starters has a 1GHz dual-core processor, 512MB of RAM, a 4.3-inch WVGA display, and 8GB of internal storage. At 9mm it’s also one of the slimmest Lumia smartphones Nokia has made and it drops LTE support as it targets emerging markets like India. Nokia has again innovated on the imaging front has it has a 6.7-megapixel camera with a f/1.9 aperture that Nokia say will deliver brilliant low-light performance. Even on the front camera Nokia delivers a 1.3-megapixel snapper with a wide angle lens similar to what HTC offers with the Windows Phone 8X.  It will have built-in NFC and microSD card support. Additionally users will be able to add a wireless charging plate to the back cover. It will be available in Red, Yellow, Cyan and Black.

The Lumia 520 further lowers the entry point to Windows Phone 8 from the Lumia 620. It has a 4-inch WVGA LCD display, 512MB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, a  microSD card slot, a 5-megapixel camera, and super-sensitive touch. Essentially, its an upgarded version of the Lumia 510, but there is no NFC so that means it will not support the ‘Wallet’ feature in Windows Phone 8.

The Lumia 720 will have a starting price of $341, while the Lumia 520 will cost $183. Both devices will be launched later this quarter in China and Asia Pacific region.

After offereing support for single-SIM Nokia Asha phones, popular messaging app WhatsApp will now support dual-SIM Asha phones. According to Nokia and WhatsApp, the app will be deeply integrated with S40 platform. In addition to this WhatsApps says that it is commited to developing for Windows Phone 8 and it will keep adding new features and user expereinces. Only on Friday we had reported that WhatsApp was now updated for new features on Windows Phone 8 that poweres the latest Nokia Lumia smartphones.

“Nokia has been an important partner to WhatsApp for many years,” said Neeraj Arora, VP of Business Development, WhatsApp Inc. “Delivering WhatsApp on Asha dual SIM smartphones in early Q2, while building on the momentum with Nokia Lumia for Windows Phone 8 fulfills our goals of ensuring that our customers around the world can continue to communicate seamlessly with the most important people in their lives. We look forward to great things ahead with Nokia.”

After teasing its latest generation Atom chips geared for smartphones, Intel has officially launched three new CloverTrail+ mobile chipsets – the Z2580, Z2560 and Z2520. The three chips are clocked at 2.0GHz, 1.6GHz and 1.2GHz respectively and all of them have twin cores. Intel combines these CPUs with PowerVR SGX 544 GPUs which make them more competitive than the Medfield chips it launched last year. That said, these chips retain the 32nm manufacturing process we saw in the original Medfield chip, which puts these new chips at a disadvantage when compared to chips made by Qualcomm and Nvidia both of which leverage a 28nm process.
Intel for its part states that these chips will maintain competitive battery life but that will only be tested once products using these SoCs are available. All three chips integrate DC-HSPA+ along with 11.5MBPS HSUPA. As of now Intel does not have an integrated LTE solution, but it has a new chip in the works that will be built on 22nm process and will integrate LTE to boot.

Like Nvidia, Intel has also released a CloverTrail+ reference design that is powered by the Z2580 processor, and has 2GB of RAM, 256GB of NAND Flash memory, a 16-megapixel camera and a maximum display resolution of 1920×1200 pixels.

Mozilla Firefox OS makes its first landing on ZTE Open and Alcatel One Touch Fire smartphones, both of which are flaunting the new OS at the MWC. While announcing the launch of the Firefox OS, Mozilla also disclosed its partners including ZTE, Alcatel, Huawei and LG as phone manufacturers, Qualcomm for providing Snapdragon chipsets, and so far 18 operators for bundled services. The ZTE Open and Alcatel One Touch Fire initiate the Firefox OS journey in the mobile market, while LG and Huawei will join in a bit later latter. Here we tell you more on, besides the OS, what all do these phones hold for the users.

As announced at the launch, the OS has been essentially developed for budget smartphones, and thus both the Open and OT Fire come as mid-level feature phones with nothing exceptional in terms of features.

The ZTE Open comes with a 3.5-inch HVGA screen with 480×320 pixel resolution, a Qualcomm MSM7225A processor, 256MB RAM and 512MB internal memory along with microSD card slot, a 3.2-megapixel fixed focus snapper at the back and a 1,200mAh battery. On connectivity front, it is a 3G enabled phone with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and FM Radio.

The One Touch Fire come similar in features with a 3.5-inch screen, 1GHz Qulacomm processor with 256MB RAM, 512MB storage and microSD card slot, 3.2-megapixel camera and also offer 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS connectivity.

There is no word on date of launch yet, however these devices are announced to first come in Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela. Additional markets will be announced soon.

South Korean mobile maker LG it seems is treating the Mobile World Congress as nothing less than a battle to take over the mobile world and today gave a look into its arsenal. It has announced four series— G, Vu, F and LII, under which it will launch smartphones at the event.

Under the G series, LG will announce its next flagship model the Optimus G Pro. This LTE enabled phone will support a 5.5-inch 1080p full HD IPS display, a powerful 1.7GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, Android v4.1.2 Jelly Bean, 2GB RAM, a 3,140mAh battery, 13-megapixel rear snapper and a 2.1-megapixel front camera. It will also feature advanced UX features like dual-recording allowing users to shoot video from both the cameras simultaneously and Virtual Reality Panorama to capture panorama shots at 360 degree, QSlide, Live Zooming and QuickMemo.

In the Vu series, LG will launch the Optimus Vu. The Vu is aimed at users who enjoy big screens to read and surf the Internet and is equipped with a 5-inch screen supporting a 4:3 aspect ratio.

The F-series gives a boost to LG’s portfolio of 4G-enabled phones with the LTE capable Optimus F5 and the Optimus F7. The Optimus F7 will feature a 4.7-inch True HD IPS (312ppi) display, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 2GB RAM, 8GB internal memory with a microSD slot for up to 32GB card, an 8-megapixel rear camera, 1.3-megapixel front camera, and a 2,540mAH battery. The Optimus F5 will carry a 4.3-inch IPS (256ppi) display, a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, a 5-megapixel rear camera, 1.3-megapixel front camera, 1GB RAM, 8GB internal memory with a microSD slot for cards up to 32GB, and a 2,150mAH battery. Both the phones will feature Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean and will have features like QSlide, Live Zooming, QuickMemo, QTranslator and Video Wiz among others.

Finally the L II, the successor to the L-series, gives more importance to the design of the phone which is its most distinctive factor. The smartphones that comprise of the L II series include the 3.2-inch Optimus L3 II, 4.0-inch Optimus L5 II and 4.3-inch Optimus L7 II. The L3 II will feature a 1,540mAh battery and the Optimus L5 II will come with a 4-inch WVGA display and 1,700mAh battery. The L7 II will come with features like an 8-megapixel rear camera, 4GB of internal memory and 768MB of RAM and features a 2,460mAh battery. It will run on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and 1GHz dual-core Qualcomm MSM8225 processor.