The world's biggest cell-phone trade show, Mobile World Congress, aims to stay in Barcelona through 2012, GSM Association spokesman Daniel Lowther confirmed this morning.

"The GSMA has signed an agreement which will keep the Mobile World Congress in the city of Barcelona for an additional three years following the 2009 event," Lowther said in an e-mail.

There's a lot of buzz around whether Apple will show up at CES in Las Vegas next January, but for the mobile-phone guys, MWC is where it's at. It's safe to say that everybody who's anybody in the mobile industry has to keep an eye on MWC, which has grown over the past few years from a regional European show into a globe-girdling behemoth.

Last February I filed more than two dozen stories from MWC; if you're doubtful about the value of trade shows in general, you might want to read my column championing them.

Siting very large trade shows is a difficult task; there are only a few cities that can handle a really huge crush of people. That's what keeps CES in Las Vegas, though periodically they murmur about leaving if hotels don't lower their rates. Smaller trade shows have more flexibility; my other major show, the biannual CTIA (the US mobile phone show) has bounced between Las Vegas, Orlando, Atlanta, San Francisco, San Diego and New Orleans over the past several years.

And I had such high hopes. At a quick run-by of the Sonim booth here in Barcelona, I found out that the US launch of their XP3 super-tough phone has been delayed until September. The XP3 was originally promised to appear in places like rural carriers and big-box stores around now. It's a waterproof, almost indestructible phone with a 3-year warranty. There's a European version on the market now, but the European version lacks the critical 850 Mhz frequency band that would make the phone usable in many US rural areas.

We've gotten a lot of interest in our XP3 posts here on Gearlog, so there definitely seems to be a market for this phone. Given that Sonim is churning them out in Europe, you've got to wonder - why is it so hard to bring it to us, guys?

Bipartisan support is all well and good, but let's be honest with ourselves: How many of us would trade it for a cheap, unauthorized cell phone bearing the likeness of our Commander-in-Chief? If you raised your hand, boy does Mi-Fone have the handset for you. The company created an Obama Phone for the African market, and immediately sold out of its sole run of 5,000.

Fortunately, the company had a model on hand at this year's Mobile World Congress, and Sascha Segan had a chance to play with the device and take a couple of shots. The handset features a small color screen, a flashlight, an FM radio, and an Obama logo key.

He also spoke with Ken Yiptong, a representative from the company, who told him, "We did it for fun. I don't want people to think we just want to make money on someone else's name; it was just fun." Check out the full hands-on, over at PCMag.com.

No, we're not talking about the Captain Marvel comic book series: Shazam is a mobile music discovery provider, which at Mobile World Congress today announced it is embedding its technology in the Samsung BeatDJ (M7600) and BeatDISC (M6710).

Shazam introduces new features, such as Find Similar, which offers users suggestions to other tracks they might like based on the track they just tagged. The Find Similar feature is based off of the other 35 million Shazam users who provide similar tags based on a certain track.

Another new feature is the Find Tag. Users can use this to trace details of existing tracks on their phone where some of the information is either missing or wrong. Simply select a track within the Find Tag feature, and information, like the title, artist, album, and genre, is added to the track.

These new Samsung handsets will be available worldwide by April for the Samsung BeatDJ and May 2009 for the BeatDISC.

If you envy the Helio Ocean 2's dual-sliding keyboards but want something with a bigger carrier, the new Pantech Matrix Pro might be for you. The Matrix 2 looks a lot like the Pantech-made Ocean 2 (or Pantech's previous Matrix and Duo phones), a big (4.2" x 2" x .9", 5.34 oz) oval with a 2.4", 320x240 screen. Slide the screen up to reveal a keypad of flat, traditional number keys; slide the screen sideways to show a QWERTY keypad of well-separated, squarish buttons.

The Matrix Pro runs Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard - it doesn't have a touch screen, rather you navigate around it using the two keyboards and its cursor pad. It's a tri-band 3G, quad-band EDGE phone with GPS, stereo Bluetooth and a 2-megapixel camera. It also supports AT&T's relatively little-used video calling feature.

The Matrix Pro will be available on Monday, Feb. 16 for $179.99 including a two-year contract and mail-in rebate. Interestingly, that's the day Microsoft is expected to announce Windows Mobile 6.5. Windows Mobile 6.5 devices won't be available for months, though, so this Windows Mobile 6.1 phone will be current for a while.

It's always nice to see a little bit of unity in the dog-eat-dog world of consumer electronics. At the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona this week, 17 leading mobile companies came together to adopt a "Universal Charging Solution" (UCS) by 2012, using micro USB as the charging interface.

The list includes an impressive selection of international GSMA members, including UCS initiative include 3 Group, AT&T, KTF, LG, mobilkom austria, Motorola, Nokia, Orange, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor, Telstra, T-Mobile, and Vodafone.

The move is also aimed at reducing standby energy consumption and the production of duplicate phone chargers.

"The mobile industry has a pivotal role to play in tackling environmental issues and this programme is an important step that could lead to huge savings in resources, not to mention convenience for consumers," said GSMA CEO Rob Conway. "There is enormous potential in mobile to help people live and work in an eco-friendly way and with the backing of some or the biggest names in the industry, this initiative will lead the way."

Welcome to the 8-megapixel club, Nokia. Nokia joined Samsung, LG, and Sony Ericsson today by introducing an 8-megapixel camera phone, the relatively petite N86 8MP.

The N86 8MP is in many ways like Nokia's N85 Symbian-powered smart phone, including having a super-bright 2.6", 320x240 OLED screen. The N86's star feature is an 8-megapixel camera with a wide-angle Carl Zeiss lens on the back, that also captures 640x480 video at 30 frames per second. The camera has a two-LED flash, which is much brighter than a single LED.

Otherwise, the N86 is a Symbian phone with 8GB of internal memory and room for a MicroSD memory card. It runs on AT&T's 3G network, T-Mobile's 2G EDGE network and Wi-Fi. It has a TV-out port, stereo Bluetooth, A-GPS and an integrated FM transmitter. Like all Symbian phones, it comes with a top-notch Web browser, plays music and video, and supports a range of e-mail accounts, including Microsoft Exchange.

The Nokia N86 8MP will ship by June for around 375 euros ($473). US consumers should expect to be able to buy it through Nokia's flagship stores and Web site. Find out more on Nokia's site.

MySpace on Tuesday announced a custom application for the Palm Pre and Nokia's Symbian S60 devices. The news basically means that there will be a MySpace app for the Pre and S60 phone, as there is for almost every other mobile platform.

"We want our users to be able to access MySpace from any device," John Faith, vice president and general manager of MySpace Mobile, said in a statement. "We are committed to building apps for platforms we feel are groundbreaking to offer our users the best possible on-the-go MySpace experience."

The social networking site will also launch a revamped version of its mobile Web site at m.myspace.com and wap.myspace.com. User interface options have been optimized for devices with screen sizes 176 pixels wide and larger. It supports 13 languages and is localized for 29 countries.

In related news, cell phone analyst Sascha Segan discusses why the European Palm Pre multitasks better than Sprint's on pcmag.com.

The Sony-Ericsson Idou concept phone is one of the most buzzed-about devices of this year's Mobile World Congress. Introduced on Sunday night, the phone offers an impressive 12.1-megapixel camera.

The handset also offers a number of entertainment features and runs a yet-unnamed version of the Symbian OS. It also boasts a 3.5-inch, 640-by-480 resistive touch screen. Beyond that, the details are fairly sparse--including the actual model name, which will most likely be changed before release.

Our mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, did manage to get some hands-on time with the device. Check out a video of the Idou in action, after the jump.

I'm taking some time to wander the floor at Mobile World Congress, the world's largest cell phone trade show, and I'd like to share what I see with you on our photo blog. Right now we've got about 30 shots, and more are to come (I can hear our production team groaning from 3,000 miles away.)

Looking for watch phones? TV phones? Phones that last a month without a charge? How about booth babes? Just zip over to the photo blog and your needs will be satisfied. We'll be updating this with new shots periodically throughout Tuesday and Wednesday.

Samsung has said here at Mobile World Congress that their theme for the show is touch, and that they're aggressively promoting their TouchWiz overlay for Windows Mobile. (For more on TouchWiz, check out our review of Verizon Wireless's Samsung Omnia.)

So I was surprised to go to Microsoft's booth and find the Samsung Valencia, a TouchWiz smartphone - without touch! This non-touch-screen phone uses a variant of TouchWiz that includes a menu/widget bar in the left hand column, but you navigate through it using the phone's cursor pad. Other touch-like features include photo speed dial and what appeared to be support for Internet-based widgets.

According to Microsoft, the Valencia has a 393 Mhz processor, a 2-megapixel camera, 128MB of RAM, a 320x240 screen, GPS, Bluetooth, 3G, Windows Mobile 6.1 and "20GB of storage," which must be some sort of typo.

Samsung did not release any details about the Valencia.

Okay. So we now have one decent Android phone at Mobile World Congress, but it is very, very much not for the US. Today Vodafone announced the HTC Magic, the follow up to T-Mobile's G1 Android phone, for the UK, Germany, Spain, France and Italy. The Magic will also be for sale in "several other Vodafone markets" over the next few months, the company said. Vodafone does not operate in North America.

The Magic is an all-touch-screen device with no physical keyboard. It has a 3.2", 320x480 screen, with a track ball similar to the one on the G1. According to HTC, it runs on a 528 Mhz Qualcomm processor, has Wi-Fi, and its 3G radio absolutely, positively does not work at all in North America. Presumably, there's a software keyboard for inputting data, though oddly, it doesn't show up in either Vodafone's or Android's photo galleries. The phone also has a 3.2 megapixel camera, HSDPA 3G Internet and GPS.

A Vodafone exclusive makes it complicated for this phone to come to the US. Vodafone owns part of Verizon Wireless, but the two companies don't use the same phone technology.

The HTC Magic will be available in Europe in April. You can learn more about it on Vodafone's site.

At a panel at Mobile World Congress today, AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph De La Vega just said, "Dell announced they're entering the smart phone market." That's a quote.

This confirms many rumors that have been floating around; while Dell is not here at MWC and has not made any announcements, you can pretty much take an on-the-record quote from a major carrier CEO with confidence.

Dell has not commented on the record about any smart phone plans yet.

You're looking at live, broadcast TV playing on an Apple iPhone. I've actually seen two iPhone TV apps here at Mobile World Congress. This one uses the box in the foreground to connect to Qualcomm's MediaFLO service, which then beams the signal via Wi-Fi to an app on the iPhone. TV looked sharp, clear and smooth - broadcast quality. A Qualcomm rep I spoke to said that Qualcomm doesn't intend to sell this device themselves; instead, they're going to try to find a retail partner to bring it to market. Considering that AT&T, the iPhone's carrier, also works with MediaFLO, it looks like this may actually come to pass.

I also saw an iPhone app from PacketVideo running streaming TV that could be provided by MobiTV, another AT&T partner. The PacketVideo app was running over 3G, so the video was choppier than the smooth MediaFLO broadcast. But TV over 3G will work where you can't get Qualcomm's signal, which is broadcast on TV channel 55 in many US cities. PacketVideo said they were trying to sell their app to partners, who would then take it to retail.

And the score is Windows Mobile 3, Android 0. Mobile World Congress was supposed to be a big Google Android party, but so far Android seems to be the choice of chipset companies and Chinese ODMs, not of the large, branded handset manufacturers who sell most phones. Of course, we've still got three days of the show left, but what we're seeing today isn't encouraging.

Samsung, HTC and Sony Ericsson have all decided not to show new Android phones at MWC, although they all profess their love for Google's open-sourced platform; they just won't put out. Instead, I've seen Android phones and mockups from smaller vendors you may not have heard of: a chipset-level demo from VirtualLogix, a phone from Chinese vendor SIM Technology with a touch screen and no physical keyboard (at left) and a mockup from Huawei. Check out the VirtualLogix and Huawei devices after the jump.