Snoog Mobile is offering a prepaid price plan with low rates for mobile phone calls and SMS as well as free instant messaging with the ICQ client for free within Germany. Instant messaging is only free of charge with a compatible Nokia or Sony Ericsson cell phone, with the ICQ client installed on the mobile phone and when using the APN “wap.vodafone.de”. With other phones, other clients or other internet access settings users of the Snoog Mobile SIM card pay EUR 0.29 per megabyte for instant messaging or for using any other mobile data services over the network of operator Vodafone.

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.

At first glance, you wouldn’t expect so much power under the hood: The new design cell phone Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness sports UMTS and HSPA support for fast mobile data transmissions, a web browser and an email client with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support, a media player for music and videos, and up to 8.5 hours speaking time. But actually, this new phone is all about the liquid crystal display: The small 1.8-inch monochrome and scratch-resistant TFT screen is transparent so that you can look through. At rest the screen appears like a translucent frosted glass window. Thus, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness is at least a real eye-catcher. It is now available at selected stores in Berlin and Munich.

Sony Ericsson took long until launching the touch screen smartphone Satio after having announced it in February at Mobile World Congress. The Sony Ericsson Satio is the first handset of the new “Entertain Unlimited” series in which the two brands Walkman and Cybershot are put together. It features a 12.1.-megapixel camera and a media player and supports fast mobile data transmissions. Now, the Satio is available in Germany for prices beginning at EUR 460.00 without contract. Is the new smartphone worth the money? Find out by reading this review.

The Sony Ericsson Yari is a new kind of gaming phone. Users can play gesture-controlled games such as Fitness, Bowling or Tennis like with a Nintendo Wii or a Sony Playstation. The movements are registered by the mobile phone either by the integrated accelerometer or by the secondary camera above the display. However, you shouldn’t buy the Sony Ericsson Yari just because you love mobile gaming because the gaming fun is limited and telephone, messaging and mobile internet features and applications are not impressive and with limited purpose.

The quality of pictures does not just depend on megapixels. However, the new 12-megapixel smartphone Sony Ericsson Satio makes better photos that lots of other camera phones. Video quality of the Sony Ericsson Satio is quite impressive as well, I think. Here you can see a short video I shot with the camera of the Sony Ericsson Satio in Berlin at the river Spree.

One week before the official presentation of the Sony Ericsson Satio (a.k.a Idou) in London, Sony Ericsson invited some German to a special preview event in Salzburg. This way, I had the chance to have a closer look at the first smartphone of the “Entertain unlimited” series which Sony Ericsson had announced earlier this year at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. We can expect the Sony Ericsson Satio to come out for the christmas trade for an estimated price of 700 euros without contract.