MWC 2012: Samsung overview

There was no Galaxy S III from Samsung, contrary to expectations, but they did show a new phone - the Samsung Galaxy Beam, with (you guessed it) a built-in projector. It shared the spotlight with two 10.1-inch tablets, the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 and the Tab 2 10.1.

The Galaxy Note 10.1 brings Samsung's S Pen stylus where it belongs - a big screen. We've no talent for painting whatsoever, but couldn't wait to try and sketch something on the Android version of Photoshop Touch.

The Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 should be a more affordable tablet (though pricing isn't revealed yet), with specs comparable to those of the original Tab 10.1. The Tab 2, however, tops the old version with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box and records FullHD video.

Samsung's earlier attempts to combine a phone and a portable microprojector fizzled out, but they're at it again. The Samsung Galaxy Beam is a fairly standard dual-core droid, with the notable exception of the nHD projector. It can project an image with a 50" diagonal.

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MWC 2012: Various brands overview

This year's MWC is a busy place, with pretty much every maker and every type of mobile device you can think of on display. We've covered the headliners, but now it's time to visit some of the less popular names, many of which had some very interesting gadgets to show.

We're kicking off with ZTE, who have a droid flagship to rival any of the top dogs here in Barcelona.

We're still roaming the MWC floors, scouring for exciting new gadgets and we'll be posting them here as soon as they're ready, so keep an eye on this space, as we'll be updating it with new info as it becomes available.

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MWC 2012: HTC overview

HTC's press conference shows us what the Taiwanese maker has been working on, and they certainly impressed. HTC unveiled its new One series of smartphones, all four have Beats audio optimizations and feature enhanced video and photo capabilities.

We also heard news about the upcoming release of HTC's Sense 4.0 UI, which holds some neat improvements over the previous 3.0 iteration.

HTC is also offering several incentives to encourage consumers to buy more of the upcoming devices, including free Dropbox cloud storage, where users can store up to 25 GB for two years after purchasing their phone.

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MWC 2012: LG overview

LG came with a new tagline to the MWC - "LTE, it's always LG". LTE is one of the main attractions of LG's new mobiles and they proudly call themselves the first and foremost choice for LTE phones and promise that the revolution continues.

They also didn't forget to remind us they were first to put out a dual-core phone, but quad-core is king now. We got our hands on the Optimus 4X HD and will be benchmarking it shortly.

The phones that LG is showing off range from the small Optimus L3, through the 4.3" and 4.7" screens of the L7 and 4X HD, all the way to the 5" screen of the LG Optimus Vu phoneblet.

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MWC 2012: Sony overview

Sony's back in the mobile game and it brought three phones with it to Barcelona. The Xperia S was uncovered at CES and has now started shipping. The other two are brand new - the Xperia P and Xperia U.

Both of those feature NovaThor U8500 chipsets with two 1GHz cores and Mali-400MP GPUs, while the Xperia S uses a more traditional Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core.

Sony also showed some PlayStation games running on the Xperia S and talked about improvements on the Xperia P display (spoiler: it's brighter).

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MWC 2012: Huawei overview

Huawei's press conference marks the beginning of the quad-core smartphone era at this year's Mobile World Congress, which for yet another year is held in sunny Barcelona. The Chinese have raised big expectations and bet big to raise awareness of their presence in the Android world.

The big small player has grown ambitious to play in the same ballpark as the big Droids from Samsung, LG, HTC, Sony and Motorola. Huawei's punchline is "Incredibly fast and about to take off" put next to their impressive looking pegasus made up of smartphones.

But words alone won't be enough for the Chinese to truly rise above the competition. They need something truly jaw-dropping. This is where the Ascend line-up comes in.

At the stage, Huawei's top men presented the company's flagship - the Ascend D quad, the Ascend D quad XL, the Ascend D1.

And here's the jaw-dropping moment - Huawei have built their own quad-core chipset, which they say smokes everybody else's hardware out of the game and is the fastest quad-core processor the world has seen. Now Huawei proudly stands next to Texas Instruments, Samsung, Nvidia and Qualcomm in the system-on-a-chip manufacturers list.

Smartphones aren't Huawei's only strong hand. The hiding ace in the sleeve of the Chinese is a 10.1-inch MediaPad, which in Huawei's world, proudly stands against the iPad in its tablet market dominance.

And we've been out there on the showroom floors to see if their statements hold any ground or is it just catchy phrases for the press release. Let's get to the hands-on.

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