[Mobile World Congress] The Touch Pro2 features a high-resolution 3.6-inch widescreen VGA display, a sliding QWERTY keyboard, an improved battery life, expandable memory, 2 speakers, 2 microphones, a touch-sensitive zoom bar and gravity, proximity and ambient light sensors. HTC is introducing the HTC Straight Talk that delivers an integrated email, voice, and speakerphone experience: users can transition from email to conference calls and thanks to its new and innovative acoustic design using asymmetric speakers, noise suppression and full-duplex acoustics, the Touch Pro 2 become a conference room speakerphone when it is flipped over. The Touch Pro2 will be available across major global markets beginning in early summer.

[Mobile World Congress] HTC is unveiling its new Diamond 2 in Barcelona. Follow the press conference live on live.ubergizmo.com. The new smartphone has a better battery life than its V1 (50% more), a 3.2-inch high-resolution wide-screen VGA display (800x480), a 5 MP auto-focus camera and is 13.7mm thick. According to HTC, the TouchFLO 3D experience combined with the new Push Internet technology, the Diamond 2 offers a touch experience optimized for the one-hand use. To get even more sophisticated, this stylish mobile is equipped with a gravity sensor and an ambient light sensor. The HTC Touch Diamond2 will be available in Europe and in Asia in early Q2 2009, global availability will come later in the year.

[Mobile World Congress] Nokia has announced the content store called Ovi Store that will serve not only applications, but also content in general to S40 and S60 users. There are two goals: the first is to make it easier for consumers to find relevant content. The second is to allow developers to have a good publication/distribution mean. The Nokia N97 (avail. In June 09) is currently the first phone to have access to the store, and we guess that Nokia will work with wireless carriers for the potential upgrade of existing phones. As usual, the carriers will be the ones deciding and announcing any updates.

The Nokia E75 has been leaked to death: it should be particularly good at email as it is compatible with virtually all the popular online (Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, Pop, IMAP) and the enterprise email services (Exchange and Lotus). Several email accounts are supported simultaneously, and they can even be split into “Business” or “Personal” screens. There’s support for GPS navigation, thanks to A-GPS and Nokia Maps, the integrated navigation software. We like just about everything in this phone, except for the low-resolution display. If it is meant to be a text phone, we think that it should have a display that is on-par (or better!) with low-end BlackBerry phones like the Curve 8900 (480x360). The E75 should cost around 549 Euros (unlocked) - specs in the full post.

[Mobile World Congress] As its name indicates, the Nokia 6710 Navigator is built to be a perfect guide in cities or elsewhere. It has Maps, the GPS navigation from Nokia which features a pedestrian mode – the most useful mode on a cellphone in our opinion. What we like the most is that Nokia Maps will interact with OVI to sync not only content but also routes that you have created on your PC. This is really cool, building routes on a PC and doing a “sync” over the air (OTA) is the way to go. Of course, that doesn’t prevent users from entering the route/destination directly from the phone. The second thing that we like about Nokia Maps is that the mapping data is on your memory card – there’s no need for (stinky) data downloads as it is often the case with other mobile mapping apps. Also, you probably need a map the most when you’re traveling far and fetching mapping data over the air means potential expensive data roaming charges.

[Mobile World Congress] Mobile internet devices (or MIDs) have not had the success that Netbooks have enjoyed. It might be because they are in an awkward category: too small to be a laptop and too big to be a PDA/Smartphone. NVIDIA thinks that it can help the MID category by giving it more (graphics) muscle, while lowering the price and the overall power consumption to boost the battery life from “hours to days”. (btw, Intel claims a similar power efficiency improvement for its Moorestown platform). The Tegra 600 Series (Launched at the last Computex) is the chip of choice: it runs at 650 to 750Mhz and can decode 1080p video or encode 720p video in real-time. Not bad for a handheld device, no? MIDs built on this platform are expected to run on Windows CE (wait, did you say CE?!) at the moment, but we wonder how long it will take to have Android up and running (see today's NVIDIA/Android announcement)

[Mobile World Congress] NVIDIA aims for a big entry into the MID world by providing one of the most, if not the most powerful multimedia platform for handheld devices, based on its upcoming Tegra APX 2600. In a PowerPoint deck, NVIDIA was referring to a “Strategy Analytics” report which predicts that Android will have more market share than Windows Mobile by 2012 – this would not be a small accomplishment.

[Mobile World Congress] We were among the first to see a demo of Opera Turbo at MWC. To make a long story short, Opera Turbo uses a server-side rendering engine. Basically, the page is rendered on a server then sent to the client (handset or else) in less and smaller elements than it would normally be. Elements are also compressed. The net result is faster page load. In the demo (running on a PC), Opera Turbo was 3.5x faster than a browser not using their technique.

Opera will make money by selling Opera Turbo (as a pre-installed browser) to wireless carriers that can’t keep up with increased bandwidth usage. It is much cheaper to by software than to upgrade the infrastructure, so this is an interesting business proposal.

Users will experience faster page downloads because Opera Turbo generates less HTTP requests. Each request introduces a lot of latency, which is a common problem with mobile networks. All in all, this seems to be a win situation for everyone involved. Now if Opera could have a sexy pinch and zoom…

[Mobile World Congress] Today, Adobe is announcing the Flash Player 10 browser plug-in for Smartphones. Smartphone users will be able to have a full desktop web flash experience and access rich applications, interactive content and web videos. The first operating systems to be supported will be Windows Mobile, Android and Nokia S60/symbian, and it will be available to OEMs end of 2009. The first Flash Player 10 enabled devices are expected to ship in 2010.

[Mobile World Congress] Today Adobe is launching its new over-the-air mobile runtime, Flash Lite 3.1 Distributable Player (beta). The strategy behind this announcement is to enable developers to create and distribute applications for the phones and provide a better on-device experience, similar to the user experience provided on the desktop with Air-based applications. Windows Mobile and Nokia S60 are the first supported OS and Flash Lite 3.1 is automatically installed and updated while the apps are downloaded.

[Mobile World Congress] In its effort to push Flash as the first mobile software solution for content delivery, Adobe partnered with Nokia to offer $10 Million initial seed money for mobile Flash developers as part of the Open Screen Project Fund. The Open Screen Project was launched in May 2008 as an industry-wide initiative to enable a seamless experience for web browsing and standalone applications across broad spectrum of devices and PCs, the second goal of this project comprising over 20 leading consumer tech companies is to support the designers and developers community that develops content applications across all screens.

[Mobile World Congress] Today, Adobe is announcing the availability of new Adobe Reader Mobile SDK that provide reflowable PDF, eBook (ePUB file format) and DRM support for mobile phones and reading devices. Bookeen, iRex Technologies, Lexcycle, Plastic Logic, Polymer Vision Ltd., and Springs Design announced plans to ship devices or applications integrating the Adobe technology in 2009.

[Mobile World Congress] The new Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) will be based on Intel’s next-generation MID hardware platform, codenamed “Moorestown,” and will run on Moblin 2.0, a variant of Linux. LG believes that MIDs are good for LG: “The MID segment will drive growth at LG Electronics. We chose Intel’s next-generation Moorestown platform and Moblin-based OS to pursue this segment because of the high performance and Internet compatibility this brings to our service provider customers” (Jung Jun Lee, EVP of LG’s mobile division). Note that Ericsson has been chosen by LG to work on the 3G connectivity (Ericsson will announce more partnerships today…).

[Mobile World Congress] Some were expecting a new CyberShot or a new Walkman phone, but Sony Ericsson went ahead and merged both categories into IDOU, a phone that has a 12.1 Megapixel digital camera and all the capabilities of the Walkman. A 16:9, 3.5”, display should be great to watch photos and videos, although the Sony Ericsson presenters forgot the actual resolution… we’ll get back to you on that one. Sony Ericsson also mentioned gaming as part of their legacy (we take that as a reference to the PSP/PS3), but we wonder how good of a game machine it will be. Time will tell.

IDOU is connected to other devices via DLNA, a standard home multimedia networking protocol used in the PS3, PSP but also PCs and many set top boxes or network attached storage. IDOU is powered by Symbian Foundation +, in case you wonder. Sony Ericsson had no Android news to share tonight.

Head to the official site: sonyericsson.com/idou/

Hint: Follow MWC Live with us at live.ubergizmo.com – this topic was covered there an hour ago. There’s a link to a twitter feed and RSS as well.