Samsung's Green Blue Earth Phone

You can always rely on Samsung to constantly innovate. In terms of uniqueness and originality, one of the most unusual handsets in its lineup is the Blue Earth, which the company bills as 'the first solar-powered full-touch phone.' It has a solar panel on the back, and comes with a couple of eco-conscious applications, including an eco-walk calculator that uses a built-in pedometer to figure out how many steps you've taken -- and then calculates how much CO2 emission you've saved by walking instead of driving.

Even the packaging for the phone is eco-friendly (made from recycled paper), and its charger (for when there's not enough sun to power the device) is rated 5-star energy efficient and uses less than .03W of standby power.

The Blue Earth is made from recycled PCM plastic, extracted from water bottles, and, according to Samsung, is 'free from harmful substances such as Brominated Flame Retardant, Beryllium and Phthalate.' Kind of makes you wonder whether the rest of the phones we use have this diabolic ring to them.


Omnia HD Takes High Def to New Highs

If high-defintion video recording is your thing, you'll definitely want to check out Samsung's Omnia HD, a full-touch handset which can record and decode 720p video (for playback on an external HD display). The device itself boasts a roomy (3.7-inch) 360-by-640 Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode (AMOLED) display, a technology known for its brilliance. Based on the Symbian S60 5.0 operating system, the Omnia HD is one of several phones at the show that sports a high-performance 8-megapixel camera; it also has GPS. The Omnia HD is a quad-band GSM handset that supports the fastest HSDPA and HSUPA data networks.


Sony Ericsson Goes for the Big-Pixel Experience

The Walkman W995 (left) camera has 8.1 megapixels (plus all the top-of-the-line multimedia playback features you expect of a Walkman), and its upcoming Idou boasts an amazing 12.1 megapixels, the most we've seen on any unit at the show to date. Then again, the Idou at this point is a concept camera that might well be released under a different name. It's cited to come out at the end of the year so watch out for that one!


HTC's Touching Experience

Taiwanese phone design powerhouse High Tech Computers, the company that created the first Android handset, is also focusing on touch with a pair of new handsets that refine and expand upon previous models. The HTC Touch Diamond 2 will be one of the first phones to introduce Windows Mobile 6.5 , but like other vendors, HTC has developed its own custom overlay, TouchFLO 3D, which the company believes is more user-friendly. Among other things, TouchFLO 3D is highly customizable so you can organize your information the way you want it, keeping important contacts and content close at hand.


LG's Touch-Based Multimedia Marvel

LG Electronics' assault on the iPhone is led by the new Arena (LG-KM900), which sports the company's new 3D S-Class touch-based user interface. One unusual feature is its Reel Scrolling, which put various menus (contacts, settings, etc.) on horizontal strips that you scroll through by dragging them to the left or right. These reels in turns live on four home screens that form the faces of a virtual cube that you flip through to access.

The Arena features Dolby Mobile surround sound and a 3-inch WVGA touchscreen. It provides a 5-megapixel camera, 8GB of internal storage (plus support for 32 more via SDHC card). The handset supports high-speed (HSDPA) GSM networks and Wi-Fi, plus assisted GPS. All this, in a package less than 12mm thick, has been shipped to Europe this March.


Acer Two Phones In One

Acer, a company best known for notebooks, wants to parlay its success into a mobile phone business -- and it kicked off the campaign by announcing eight handsets it intends to ship this year. The new Acer Windows Mobile model, the DX900, can accept two SIM cards, essentially functioning as a two-line cell phone. One of the slots can support HSDPA high speed data networks, the other accepts only a slower EDGE card. Who would need a two-line phone? Acer suggests that it might be useful for customers who want to keep their professional and personal calls on different accounts, or for people who live in areas where no single network provides adequate coverage -- near a border, for example.

The DX900 features a front-side VGA camera for video calls as well as a 3.2-megapixel autofocus camera with flash. It has a 2.8-inch VGA touchscreen display.