MWC 2013: New six-inch-plus touchscreens blur the lines between phone and tablet

This year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona saw a huge number of devices that blurred the line between smartphones and tablets.

With devices up to eight inches capable of making calls, it's no longer clear where 'phone' ends and tablet begins - or whether we need a word like 'phablet' to fill the gap.

With Apple keeping launches of a new iPad mini and iPad 5 to themselves for later this year, the Spanish door was left open for its Android and Windows 8 rivals.

Big names including HP, Asus, Lenovo and Dell were all leading the charge but it was Samsung's Note 8 that left observers puzzled as to whether it was a phone or tablet.

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A follow-up to the popular Note 5, it has an eight inch screen but still features a SIM card slot for cellular phone calls. Holding such a beast up to your ear though may not be so practical.

Due out in the next few months, it works with Samsung's novel S Pen to write on the screen or control the display and also comes pre-loaded with the popular Flipboard news and information curation app, the Jellybean version of Android and a five megapixel rear camera.

Samsung's executive vice president YH Lee telling MWC audiences he plans to double the electronics giant's tablet sales in the next 12 months.

And Simon Stanford of Samsung UK and Ireland believes tablets sales will grow again in 2013. He said: "The Galaxy Note was a completely new category of device when we launched the first one back in 2011, and it's been extremely satisfying to watch it sell so well and grow in stature as our customers’ understanding of the category has grown."

A similar device from Asus was also on show at MWC with its seven inch Fonepad featuring a 1080p Full HD display and nine hours of battery life plus 3G telephony support for voice calls.

And what do you call the 5.7 inch ZTE Grand Memo that was also shown-off - is it a massive phone or a tiny tablet? 

Stuart Miles, editor-in-chief of pocket-lint.com, said: "I think the

line between smartphones and tablets are blurring because consumers are

still trying to understand what they are trying to achieve with these

devices.

"If you think about it in the grander scale of things

the sector is only a couple of years old, it's still early days, and

that means we are still trying to find our way.

"You also have

to remember that we use the actual phone element of our phone less and

less at the moment. It's all about surfing, it's all about playing

games, it's all about taking pictures."

Last night at the Global Mobile Awards, Best Mobile Tablet was won by Google and Asus for the six-month-old Nexus 7 – but what from MWC looks set to compete with that device in the coming months?

The HP Slate with a seven inch screen and Android Jelly Bean seems to be the most natural rival, with its cheap $169 price-tag. However, its price may not seem so reasonable when you consider the fairly basic specs including just a VGA camera on the front.

Sony is hoping its Xperia Tablet Z may be one rival, bargaining on its waterproof nature to capture consumer imaginations. The Android device is 4G compatible, has a superfast quadcore processor and eight megapixel camera. There's no price announced as yet though, and that could be a stumbling block if costed too close to the iPad.

Lenovo showed off not one but three tablets at MWC, hot on the heels of the quirky touchscreen tablet/laptop hybrids it had at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month.

The Chinese company has two seven inch tabs, the A1000 and A3000, and one 10inch (S6000) in a bid to cover all bases and challenge numerous rivals from the Amazon Kindle Fire HD to the main iPad.

And with analysts Context predicting Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system will only succeed through tablet adoption, Dell was naturally keen to show off its Latitude 10 Windows 8 tablet. It included tech such as a fingerprint and smart card reader underneath a tough Gorilla Glass screen.