Mobile World Congress Barcelona: The Mobile World Playground

Our intrepid reporter (and Tesco.com Mobile Product Manager) Rebecca Pate concludes her visit to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with this despatch, ending with a message for Android users:

The second day spent at MWC started with the developer event with HP introducing webOS, there's some really cool UI stuff going on here, like 'Just type' and coupling of browser screens. After a stop-off at the Blackberry stand to experiment with the Playbook and the HTC stand to check out the new HTC Flyer; the Android 'park' was next on the list. It couldn't have got more exciting with Doughnut, Gingerbread and Honeycomb smoothies coupled with a giant Android slide, yes you heard me and there is photographic evidence to prove it.


The number of tablet devices here at MWC is striking, almost every stand has got one on (it's hard to differentiate between all of them too!). What's interesting is that HTML5 is the common factor to all of them, indicating that this is the future platform for apps, both web and mobile. It opens an interesting debate here at Tesco for what we deliver to our customers and their expectations over the coming months.

The third and last morning was spent roaming around the conference hunting for variations of the collectable Android pins of which there are 86 in total, they were located (or sometimes hidden) at the stands of companies that are using Android in some form. It was serious business mind, with the more "duller" kind being traded and swamped for those more unique in the collection; I managed a grand total of 20 which wasn't too bad for a couple of hours work...

I arrived at the airport still seeing mini Androids (see photo above) so I think their clever marketing paid off.


As for our Android customers reading, we have something just around the corner for you!

Mobile World Congress Barcelona: The Revolution Has Begun!

My colleague from our web/mobile development team is Rebecca Pate, who is spending a week as our eyes and ears at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where she is Techfortesco's intrepid reporter!

As a quick intro, my name is Becky Pate (@rpatey) and I am the Mobile Product Owner here at Tesco.com. Mainly, I am responsible for the ‘what’ for our mobile apps and sites that have launched over the past 12 months (all featured on Nick’s blog of course!). I work closely with the @ribot team on the design side, @nicklansley and @anexplodedview on the innovation and technology front and our development and test teams to get stuff out to customers and also help us review, improve and update our products. My role also requires me to keep close to customers and the technology to understand how we can improve the Tesco mobile experience.


So in a nutshell, that’s how I’ve ended up in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress and, given that I’ve be meaning to hijack Nick’s blog for a while, this seemed like the perfect opportunity!

With over 50,000 visitors, an exhibition space of 365 square metres of floor space (which is larger than 40 Tesco Extras put together!) and a 6am start to avoid the queues, it’s hard to know where to start.

The day started with 3D face animation, personal handwriting and gesture technology alongside 3D Smartphones and a touchable 3D display (a gecko ‘jumped’ out of the device and almost bit me!). I also saw an impressive app on a tablet device that sits in your car and enables you to start the car engine, change gear, adjust the temperature and everything else that your car would need to do, as well as syncing with your Smartphone to capture any disastrous images if ever you were stuck in a tricky situation!

Android Honeycomb on the Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, are also ones to watch - a camera on the device really makes a difference and they are so simple to use. HP’s webOS was really cool with its “touch-to-share” technology allowing users to share information such as URLs from Smartphone to tablet devices (if they have the same webOS account).

And so the world is "shifting from a battle of devices to a war of ecosystems”, as Stephen Elop stated in his keynote. It feels like the change had begun...

I’m looking forward to finding out more tomorrow.