Top Ten Gadgets From Mobile World Congress

Top Ten Gadgets From Mobile World Congress

The massive tech love-in that is Mobile World Congress has drawn to a close for another year.

The stars of 2012 include the new HTC One range of smart phones, the massive 41 pixel Nokia 808 PureView camera cum smart phone and the Sony Xperia.

One of the biggest themes was phones that do much more than hang about generating immense bills and sucking up apps.

If MWC is right, powerful smart phones will increasingly be used as portable workstations - plug in a bluethooth keyboard, mouse and a nice big HDTV and you're ready to work.

The phone also becomes your dongle, and your portable source of films, memes and general amusement when synched to your TV with a simple HDMI cable.

Worried you don't have a smart phone yet? Eric Schmidt from Google says the price of smart phones will come down to the current prices of feature phones within the year.

Asus took smart phone integration one step further. The remarkable Padfone - the smart phone and tablet in one - makes tablets affordable, and brings the third screen experience to the 60% of smart phone owners who are yet to buy tablets (according to Asus).

The Padfone has no hard-drive - the phone is its dongle. Plug it into the back and you've got a tablet. Yes, you can answer calls while it's in there, either Facetime-style or using a bluetooth stylus with directional mike provided.

HTC said that taking photos is the second most popular thing customers do on their phones, and Nokia seemed bump that up to first. The Nokia 808 Pureview is almost a digital camera first, mobile phone second, with 41 megapixels and a lens twice as big as on any other mobile phone.

Charging, touching and listening gadgets were also hot at MWC. The Nokia portable charger comes in cute colours, and gives 3 full charges to the new Nokia 900. The Duracell charge pad gives cordless charging in a very Apple-esque design of slick, white simplicity.

Bluetooth headphones from Supertooth were up there with the new Sennheiser models, and the ones we tried were lighter - perfect for smaller heads and ears.

BlackBerry showed no news phones, but they did share some of their wild plans for the future. Using BlackBerry Playbooks, their secret Swedish development team came up with a whole new way of sharing during meetings and creating presentations.

Touch the Playbooks together and you can share notes, images and contacts. Get a tricky question during a pitch meeting, and using BlackBerry's conceptual presenting tool, you could add a new slide by adding an image and copy straight from your phone.

Take a look through our slideshow below and rate your favourite MWC gadget.

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