With the Mobile World Congress approaching, the list of new mobile innovations just keeps getting longer. There does not seem to be one particular handset that is going to make the most amount of noise, and if there is such a device, it has not been leaked to the press. So I thought I would round up a few of my favorite stories from the last week or so regarding what we will be seeing in Barcelona next week.

Since Nokia still owns the majority of the mobile market, I figure they are a good place to start. TechCrunch reported that Nokia will be announcing their new app store to compete with the Apple App Store, the Palm App Catalogue, and the Android Market.

This is a positive development for all those still using Symbian devices, I know there are a lot of you, but you can keep me out of your club. Nokia lost me with the slowness of the N95 and put a nail in the coffin with the 5800’s horrible interface (as reported by Itamar Weisbrod of Flyscreen).

In any case, a new app store is a good thing, but as I have said numerous times, the experience of installing an app is going to be what matters most. If the Nokia user experience will be similar to Apple’s, their new app store should do very well.

Moving on, Samsung will be redoing their whole TouchWiz interface, which really impressed me when I played with it. According to Mobile Crunch, the enhancements include 3D transition effects, the ability to add more widgets by downloading them, the menu of the widgets, which was previously stuck on the side of the screen can now be moved, you can now assign pictures to contacts, and lastly, they are implementing some sort of voice control.  Sounds pretty cool, although is it just me or were most of those features already implemented in other phones like 3 years ago?

One of the most exciting devices to be announced in Barcelona is the LG Arena, KM900 if you must. With its 3D S-Class interface, Dolby / DivX technology, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, WiFi, Assisted GPS and more, this should be a show stopper.

Samsung is not staying in the software realm, they are also going to be attracting a large crowd in Barcelona with a few new phones, the most exciting one being the Ultra Touch S8300. With its huge AMOLED WQVGA touchscreen plus a numeric slider keypad, an 8mp camera, AGPS, FM radio, A2dp, Micro SD slot, 7.2Mbps HSDPA, and 12.7 mm package, looks like we got a winner.

Notice someone missing here? A small company named Sony Ericsson? Well, they are not sitting around twiddling their thumbs either. Sony is announcing the new Hikaru, another slider device to join their overpopulated Walkman line of devices. Before I get into the specs, any idea what Hikaru means? Anyway, the new device will boast an 8 megapixel camera (noticing a pattern here?), 2.6-inch screen, WiFi, AGPS,  and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Sounds pretty solid.

That’s enough about new devices for now. However, Barcelona is also supposed to bring big news for another company, not with a new device, but a new OS. I am talking about Microsoft’s new mobile OS, Windows Mobile 6.5. Looks like they will also be jumping on the apps bandwagon with their app store dubbed Marketplace. I am not too optimistic about this announcement, as they have disappointed me one too many times in the past. However, it is not impossible for Microsoft to revive themselves as a mobile Superpower by announcing a really great product here. Palm did it with the Pre, Microsoft even did it themselves with Windows 7. A little piece of advice from me to Microsoft? Two words; bigger icons!! Start with that, then we’ll talk about what comes next.

To summarize, looks like all the big boys will be taking off the gloves for WMC. I don’t know about you, but I am excited.

-Hillel

Update: I did not forget about the Toshiba super phone when I wrote this, I just blogged about it so much already, so I left it out of this post.