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The iPhone has been with us a while, and yet still stands head and shoulders above all the other touchscreen phones on the market, because other handset makers just don't seem to get what touch is all about. Until now, with LG showing off the Arena at Mobile World Congress, and which could be a very real threat to the iPhone.

It is fitting perhaps that LG, which invented the first modern touchscreen in the LG Prada, has come full circle and shown, in the demonstration carried out by the phone division's CEO, Skott Ahn, that touch has been embedded in almost every part of the Arena KM 900 device.

The 3D Cube interface, which has already been widely applauded in the press, really works and Ahn made sure that he navigated with it backwards and forwards, fast and slow while the audience watched an amplified screen of what he was doing on the wall. An alternative control layout, instead of a 3D spinning cube, is a simple 4x4 panel layout, each icon ready to release a widget or an application. But as this cannot show all the phone's 32 functions, the top reel of icons can be scrolled round at a touch, like a fruit machine reel, showing more options.

LG went further and put the same cube interface on a Windows phone (GM 730) at the event. The Arena also comes with Dolby Mobile sound, a new introduction; 8Gb of onboard memory, expandable to 40Gb; a 5-megapixel camera; full widescreen VGA screen resolution on a three-inch screen, and DivX and Xvid video format support.

LG has proved one of the big hitters in terms of MWC news, and it also announced a collaboration with Intel for mobile internet devices based on the latter's Moorestown silicon and Moblin Linux platform. This comes three months after the Korean vendor announced a partnership with Microsoft for converged mobile devices, showing LG leveraging a broadening range of partners, and especially the old PC ecosystem, to expand its influence.

The LG mobile computer is expected to be one of the first Moorestown designs to market, Intel said. Moorestown-based MIDs are expected to reduce idle power consumption by a factor of more than 10 compared with Atom devices (LG already has an Atom-based netbook). Moorestown MIDs are expected to come to market by 2010, said Intel.

LG, like Intel, is also working with Ericsson on the embedded 3G capabilities for its new hybrid devices. In the previously announced Microsoft deal, the two firms are collaborating from the R&D stage right through to sales and the creation of mobile web services, though products are unlikely to result before late 2010.

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