Smartphones

There have been hints for quite a few months now that Sony was working on a PSP phone, but it wasn’t until Sunday that Sony Ericsson finally announced the Xperia Play. It might look familiar to you; pictures were leaked months ago.

The Xperia Play has a 4″ (480 x 854) capacitive touchscreen and runs Android v2.3 (Gingerbread) on a 1 GHz Scorpion ARMv7. It has just the one camera (5MP) and it’s on the back. The Play also has Wifi, Bluetooth, a microSD card slot, and a headphone jack. It ships with Android Market (of course), and a bevy of Android apps.

Price hasn’t been mentioned, but it’s due out in select markets in March 2011. Also, network partners haven’t been named yet, but the press release suggests that there will be several models based on a couple different and incompatible networks.

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Nokia and Microsoft joined forces today and announced plans to work on Windows Phones together. Nokia says that the deal is still being worked out, but that they did line up some goals on their blog.

From the post:

• Nokia will adopt Windows Phone as its primary smartphone strategy, innovating on top of the platform in areas such as imaging, where Nokia is a market leader.
• Nokia will help drive and define the future of Windows Phone. Nokia will contribute its expertise on hardware design, language support, and help bring Windows Phone to a larger range of price points, market segments and geographies.
• Microsoft will continue to invest in the development of Windows Phone and cloud services so customers can do more with their phone, across their work and personal lives.
• Nokia’s content and application store will be integrated with Microsoft Marketplace for a more compelling consumer experience.

HP has announced a new smartphone called the HP Veer that fits in the palm of your hand, literally. It is only 3.25”, with a 2.6-inch touchscreen.

The device runs on the HP webOS platform, has a slide out QWERTY keyboard, and sports a 5-megapixel camera. Like other smartphones, it is web-enabled, supports audio and video files, and has apps.

Amazon already has a Kindle app available for the webOS platform, though it was designed more specifically for the new HP Palm tablet than this little phone. While it might not make the best eReading device, unless you have a great pair of reading glasses, it will give you more room in your bag for your eReader.

The device is slated for release this spring. The price has yet to be announced.

Today Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone 7, a new smartphone series that will use apps from Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

Explore the different options and carriers for the Windows Phone 7 at this link. Currently, the Windows Marketplace for Mobile has 27 book apps, ranging from Bible tools to eReading apps.

In addition, Windows Phone 7 can access and edit Microsoft Word documents on the phone.   Check it out: “Windows Phone 7 comes with mobile versions of all your favorite Office apps. So you can get stuff done, anytime or anywhere. Quickly view and edit documents, or add comments. Word Mobile handles tables, bullets, images, and other formatting flourishes with ease.”

At Mobile World Congress, going on in Barcelona now, T-Mobile announced a US-only entertainment package that will come pre-loaded on the forthcoming HTC HD2 smartphone, debuting this spring. The phone will come with installed apps for TV, movies, and eBooks, the last of which will be sold by Barnes & Noble through its app.

Here’s T-Mobile has to say about the B&N app: “Barnes & Noble eReader application puts the world’s largest eBookstore in your hand with access to more than a million eBooks, newspapers, magazines and your Barnes & Noble digital library everywhere you go. Enjoy reading on the largest screen available for eReader smartphone software.”

So is this a new frontier of eBook competition–various retailers competing to get their apps pre-loaded on different smartphones?