Rivals take on iPhone with both barrels

Beyond the iPhone
In addition to the new ROKR, Motorola also unveiled the MOTO Z10, which it is marketing as a full mobile film studio. The Z10 features a 3.2-megapixel camera with a “burst” mode for high-speed image capture, as well as a QVGA screen rated at television-quality 30 frames per second.

In the same iPhone-like vein, Sony Ericsson introduced the first “gesture” phone, the Z555, which it said can decode users’ intentions by reading their hand motions — by waving your hand over it, you can mute the ringer, ignore a call or activate the snooze function on an alarm.

Developments like these exemplify a fundamental shift in how designers think of mobile communications. For proof, look no further than Sony’s PlayStation Portable, which the company said would soon be able to make wireless calls through the voice-over-Internet carrier Skype.

The PSP, in other words, will become another multimedia device that happens to offer voice communications, like the iPhone, the Voyager and the MOTO Z10.

Mobile phones “for a long time were kind of a phone with another thing built in,” German said. Now, “you’re almost moving in the other direction.”

Component, accessory makers join the party
With the prospect of scores of cool new devices’ hitting the U.S. market, other companies are leaping to piggyback on them with chips, drives and accessories:

• Intel Corp., which joined the Android alliance, is at CES to showcase a new integrated microprocessor and flash memory chip for high-end cell phones based on its time-tested x86 architecture. It plans to shop the system, dubbed Menlow, to any interested handset maker.
• Intel is also showing off stackable solid-state miniature memory chips that can extend to 16 gigabytes, an obvious lure for handheld device makers who will need to cram more stuff into ever-smaller designs.
• Microvision Inc. is introducing its highly anticipated SHOW plug-and-play mini-projector for mobile devices, which it says is able to throw a high-definition 100-inch-diagonal image for 2½ hours on a single battery charge.

“People ask me, ‘Is convergence real?’ ” German said. “More than I’ve seen in the past few years, it is. ... [The industry] is really trying to make interesting devices.”

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