Mobile phones morphing into hi-tech gizmos

NEW DELHI: Don't just talk on your phone. That was the message loud and clear at the three-day Mobile Asia exhibition which took-off on Friday. The big daddies of the cellphone world Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG and many more tried to outdo each other on almost every feature on their cellphones, except voice.
And for good reason. As you walk through the noisy stalls, screaming for attention through fashion shows, quizzes, TV-celeb singers and blaring music, one thing you know for sure, what used to be your humble little phone has grown up to be quite versatile.Now, it is all these things — music player, camera, radio, e-mail/IM device, computer, pedometer... Here is a glimpse of things to come over the next year or so.
From being a device with a camera, cellphone is set to outdo standalone cameras. Samsung showed off one with 10 megapixel. Two 3-megapixel camera phones were zooming around the stalls. Nokia tried to consolidate its mind share in the music arena with enhanced sound quality on the phones to come.
Another special focus was business phones that offer improved e-mailing and net-surfing. It showcases a sports phone that would monitor your calories burnt as you exercise and let you focus on work-out with text-to-speech technology so hat your message is read out to you.
Motorola has a corner at its stall where it demos that through your 'bluetooth gateway', you can connect to your amplifier and listen to the music stored on your phone.
Better still, there is jacket for you to wear that has speakers on collar/hood and bluetooth device embedded on its sleeve, so that you can listen to the music on the move, rain or snow.