Windows Mobile is not quite Widows Mobile, yet

BESIDES the usual big names, many other had their niche presence in specific areas of mobile phone/PC market.

Ever heard of ZTE? Well, get ready to hear more. The Chinese telecom brand was present in full force here, with some interesting stuff to show. The most interesting to me was their MF362 7.2 GBps HSDPA ExpressCard - mobile PCI-Express - for new notebooks. with a nice webcam and array microphone, you can now do your PC videoconferencing either over the Net or over the, well, phone line.

Based on the MSM7200 chipset, the thingie can also do UMTS, GPRS and tri-band GSM for your voice, SMS and data (the last one only if no WiFi, I assume) under WinXP, Vista and MacOS X. The antenna is internal, so there is no need to pull anything out to get things done.

From across the Taiwan Strait, E-TEN brought their Glofiish - yes, two 'i' - X800, claimed as the world's first Pocket PC phone with full HSDPA, full VGA 640x480 screen, WiFi, GPS, dual cameras and Windows Mobile 6 - all in one! The little wonder really has razor sharp screen, I have to say. Now I just miss a full sliding QWERTY keyboard to say that there's justice in this world, at least for fat-fingered people unable to comfortably SMS on those little numeric keypads.

Even farther from here, the Oz office of the Dubai-based i-mate brought along their Windows Mobile-based phones from the Ultimate series. While not exactly the slimmest, these units do have quite unique design, I have to say. Also, they come with i-mate suite of remote device management apps.

The Ultimate 8150, shown here, is a 3G plus quad-band GSM machine with full VGA screen, Windows Mobile 6 Professional (oh no, Micro$oft started segmenting it even here?), 2MP camera plus frontal conferencing VGA cam, and, something I like in particular, XGA digital video out - now, you can directly connect the phone to a projector and do your Powerpointing at the client's site without lugging a notebook. Look out for their 7150 version with full QWERTY keypad too.

In summary, many vendors from all ends of this world are in a hot, tightly fought race for the best little phones around, and it's only going to get hotter. Remember, VGA screens of E-TEN and i-team phones could in theory show digital TV at full quality - OK, only on WiFi or HSDPA, but still, the time is coming. Then, how soon till WiMax joins in as a standard feature, too? µ