While movie fans have traveled to Berlin this week, the mobile industry met in Barcelona. At the Mobile World Congress 2010 show manufacturers, providers and network suppliers presented latest devices and upcoming trends. Some of it – like eye-controlled earphones by Japanese operator NTT Docomo – seems weird, other things like higher data transmission rates over 4G networks or efforts to introduce standards to the world of smartphone apps sound rather promising. And, of course, handset manufacturers showed lots of new devices with new features. Here is a short wrap up of the most interesting phones and platforms of the show.

The Samsung B7620 Giorgio Armani is the third fashion cell phone made by the Korean manufacturer. Supposedly, it is designed by Giorgio Armani himself. True or not, at least the smartphone bears the fashion designer’s name in big letters on the front. With the Fashion Weeks in Milan, Berlin and Paris in mind, I have been taking a closer look at the Samsung B7620 Giorgio Armani. My conclusion: This is definitely not a phone for a bag of bones on the catwalk, but rather for a techie or a show-off who likes to spend his money before it burns holes in his pocket. The Samsung B7620 Giorgio Armani is almost as expensive as the Apple iPhone 3G S – and it is even more powerful.

Samsung Electronics has announced its full touchscreen smartphone Samsung M5650. This handset for young mobile phone users is already available in Portugal and will be available at other European markets soon. The Samsung M5650 sports the same contoured exterior as seen in the Samsung Corby S3650. The new cell phone is equipped with an one-touch key for listening to music as well as enhanced social networking features for those who are actively digitally connected through means such as email, instant messaging and blogs. New features that can’t be found on the Samsung Corby are 3G connectivity, WiFi and a 3-megapixel camera.

Discount supermarket chain Aldi is selling a cheap smartphone that sports most of the features of the Samsung Corby S3650 but comes with a real QWERTZ keyboard. The Samsung B3410 is available now at Aldi Nord supermarkets for EUR 129.90 and will be available at Aldi Sued supermarkets on December 17th. This is a very special offer because usually Aldi does not offer smartphones that have just been launched. At Aldi supermarkets the smartphone Samsung B3410, which is suited for mobile messaging services such as SMS, email and instant messaging, is slightly cheaper than at German online stores.

When I had the chance to take a first glimpse at the new Samsung smartphone Omnia II I8000, I was excited about the phone: It offered all up-to-date functions, had a well responsive touchscreen and was easy on the eyes. Now that I had the opportunity to take a closer look at the Omnia II I8000 and after having found several weaknesses of the phone, I have to revise my first opinion. Please read this review in order to get to know more about the strong and the weak points of the new Samsung smartphone.

The first Vodafone 360 smartphone Samsung H1 is available for EUR 569.90 without mobile phone contract at Vodafone stores. In addition to its specific user interface it sports a 3.5-inch widescreen touch screen display with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels and a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash light and a video capture mode with a resolution of 1,280 x 720 pixels – just like the Samsung Omnia I8910 (read the review of the Samsung Omnia I8910). While shutter speed of the Samsung H1 is good, saving the photo takes a bit too long. The following video shows the video capture quality of the Vodafone 360 smartphone.

Cell phone manufacturer Samsung will launch its own open mobile platform and make a software development kit (SDK) available in December. The new platform will be called Bada OS which means “ocean” in Korean and is supposed to convey the limitless variety of potential applications which can be created using the new platform and to allude to a commitment to a variety of open platforms in the mobile industry. The official website www.bada.com opened today and features a range of information on Bada OS including updates on product launches, features, and event notices.

Samsung will launch two new dual SIM mobile phones in Europe in December. The touch screen dual SIM phone Samsung B5722 measures 104 x 54.9 x 14.4 millimeters and comes with a 2.8 inch screen with 320 x 240 pixels resolution and 262,144 colors. Both SIM cards inside the device can be used for phone calls, SMS or MMS messaging, email and mobile internet access via GPRS or EDGE without rebooting the phone. One of the two SIM cards can be used to make phone calls on GSM networks of 850, 900, 1,800 and 1,900 MHz, the second SIM card just in GSM networks of 900 and 1,800 MHz.

Samsung Corby S3650 is a new cell phone for users of mobile internet and social networking services such as Twitter, Facebook, MaySpace, Flickr, Picasa or Youtube. Supposedly, it is younger people who use such online services and often they want to do this on the road and they are short for money. With the Samsung Corby S3650, there is a cell phone for these young people for a comparatively small price. In Germany, the Samsung Corby S3650 will be available at stores for less than 200 euros. At IFA 2009 in Berlin I had the chance to put my hands on the Samsung Corby S3650, here is a first review of the mobile phone and a short comparison to the Nokia 6760 slide that Nokia announced recently for the German market.

The highlight of the new cell phone Samsung I8910 is its AMOLED screen and touchable user interface. You’ ll see that once you take the cell phone in your hand and switch it on. Even though the Samsung I8910 sometimes carries the name affix HD, the screen with a size of 3.7 inches has got only a resolution of 360 x 640 pixels and shows 16.7 million colors. But: Pictures on the screen are sharp, colors are bright, and contrast is strong. Even from an angle of up to 160 degree you can still recognize what the touch screen displays.

To sum it up: The Samsung I8910 is a great entertainment phone with a very good touch screen and a huge memory.