With the official start of the Mobile World Congress 2009 only hours away, Sony Ericsson announced its Idou smartphone at a press event in Barcelona. We sat down with a few Sony Ericsson execs to talk about the new smartphone, which will be the first device from Sony Ericsson to run on the new Symbian Foundation(INFO) platform. The open-source Symbian Foundation OS is being built upon Nokia's S60(INFO) user interface and the Symbian OS(INFO), and will look very much like the current Nokia S60 5th Edition that runs on the Nokia 5800 XpressMedia, if our sources are to believed.
Since the Idou is a prototype, and doesn't even have an official name yet, we were unable to get video of the smartphone actually powered up. But we did get a chance to play around with the hardware enough to at least be able to imagine what is coming.
For being such early hardware, the Idou felt solidly built. We could see the 12.1 megapixel camera's autofocus lens and Xenon flash, and the signage on the device told us that it will feature DLNA compatible WiFi and GPS as well. The display measures 3.5 inches across and is in a wide screen format, though we don't know what the actual pixel resolution will be.
In terms of the look and feel of the user interface, we can expect it to be fairly true to the stock Symbian Foundation UI, which is expected to look much like S60 5th Edition. Sony Ericsson reps did say that we should expect to see the same kind of Sony Ericsson user experience type apps on the Idou as we see on Sony Ericsson's feature phones and its Xperia X1, though there was no mention specifically of the Xperia panels, which we are not expecting.
We have been told that the full announcement for the Idou, which will contain its final name, full specs, and expected availability date, will come to us by early Summer of 2009. We're looking forward to it. For now, enjoy the photos and the HD video we shot of the device.
[via MobileBurn]
