LG’s MWC 2012 booth tour (video)

MWC’s over for this year, but while all those HDTVs, tethered phones and Android costumes are lovingly stored for the next big tech event, we reckon you need to feel what the biggest mobile event of the year encompasses. So we braved another packed product booth to give you a taste of what the week’s been like. LG’s getting the treatment this time, with visits to the Optimus Vu, Optimus 4X HD and the Optimus 3D Max. Move on after the break for the full guided tour.

Hands-on demo with TI’s OMAP5 platform at MWC (video)

It’s TI’s time to brag. We first met OMAP5 when the company’s VP of the OMAP division, Remi El-Ouazzane, unveiled the developer’s reference platform on our stage at CES. While there, he boasted OMAP5 as “the greatest platform on Earth right now,” but we were given only a few insights into the platform’s capabilities. Now, TI is back with a new wave of demos that better show the prowess of OMAP5 — a system-on-chip design that houses a dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 CPU clocked at just 800MHz, two Cortex-M4 cores for low-power processes, along with a PowerVR SGX 544 GPU that handles 3D compositions, and a number of accelerators such as TI’s IVA-HD, which supports both video encoding and decoding and plays 1080p video at a whopping 60fps. We were shown a demo of all these capabilities humming in unison on a 1080p display, along with a complex HTML5 mashup that adds credence to the company’s latest benchmark report. Photography geeks should know the system supports up to 14 megapixel cameras, and is able to process ten shots per second at that setting. We’re told to expect devices based on the OMAP5 platform by the end of the year, and if you’re anything like us, it’s going to be one hell of a wait. Hop the break for the demo.

Microsoft’s Windows 8 Preview event videos now available

Still not satisfied after our minute by minute liveblog of Microsoft’s Windows 8 Consumer Preview event this morning from Barcelona and detailed hands-on impressions? Video of the entire presentation, along with a few demo trailers are available on the company’s press site so you can feel that Sinofsky magic for yourself. One of the preview videos is embedded above, press play or hit the source link to download the 688MB 90 minute long version for repeat viewing (Update: Also available embedded after the break, just in case hard drive prices have cut down your storage space).

Microsoft

HTC One X hands-on at MWC 2012 (video)

Mobile World Congress has already brought a lot of great phones, and the show floor hasn’t even opened yet. But there’s just something about Peter Chou’s latest creation that has us more eager to play with it than anything else we’ve seen so far (and perhaps for the rest of the show). We’re talking, of course, about the One X, the absolute top of the line model of HTC’s trio of One series devices announced tonight. The “superphone” (Peter’s words, not ours) is packing the entire deck of cards: a 1.5GHz quad-core Tegra 3 CPU (for the global version; the LTE version uses Qualcomm’s S4 Krait processor), 1GB of DDR2 RAM, 4.7 inches of 720p Super LCD 2 non-PenTile gorgeousness, Ice Cream Sandwich with HTC Sense 4.0 on top, 8MP rear camera with f/2.0 lens and 1080p HD video, to name a few.

First impressions? In a nutshell, we’re blown away. It feels wonderful to hold in our hand, it’s got the full suite of specs we like to see, the camera’s as quick as HTC claims, and the device flies — in fact, we’d be amiss not to mention the fact that the vendor’s ICS-backed Sense UI is much lighter than any of its predecessors and doesn’t bog down the performance at all. And keep in mind that this is in all likelihood still running on pre-production firmware. Impressive, to say the least. Our only beef with the device is the lack of a physical shutter button, especially given the firm’s commitment to providing stellar camera performance. We’re not ready to crown the One X as the best of the show yet — we have four days’ worth of MWC left, after all — but it’s one device we’ll be returning to spend more quality time with on the show floor. If you want to share in the enjoyment, head to the gallery below, or the video after the break.

NVIDIA Says Tegra 3 “Superphones” Will Ship This Quarter

We have already heard about a number of quad core smartphones that will be powered by NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 processor, many of which are expected to be announced at MWC 2012 later this month.

During their recent earnings call NVIDIA’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced that they expect the first Tegra 3 powered smartphones to be announced at MWC and they will start shipping before the end of the quarter.

This means that we will see the first quad core smartphones will hit the store by the end of March at the latest, and we are expecting to see the devices launched my manufacturers like HTC, LG and more.

As soon as we get some more information on which companies will be launching quad core Tegra 3 powered smartphones at MWC 2012 we will let you guys know.

Source Droid Life