[Best of the Web — Wednesday, 17 February 2010]

It’s day three at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, and the last busy day at the annual cellphone indaba before things start winding down on Thursday. Again, TechCentral brings you a selection of the biggest news coming out of the event.

Steve Jobs wins ‘personality of the year’: Oh, the irony! Apple is one of the few companies in the mobile industry that doesn’t have a booth at Mobile World Congress, but its CEO has been named by the GSM Association, which organises the annual cellphone confab, as this year’s “personality of the year”. Other awards went to Research in Motion for its new BlackBerry Enterprise Server, to HTC for the best handset in the Hero. The award winners were announced by British actor Stephen Fry. [Phones Review] [GSMArena]

New Web browser for BlackBerry handsets: BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion has unveiled a new Web browser for its smartphones. The news is being welcomed by BlackBerry users — the device’s browser hasn’t been as good as modern browsers like Safari on the Apple iPhone. Like Safari and Web browsers on Android and some Symbian phones, the new BlackBerry browser is based on the advanced Webkit rendering engine. [Techtree] [Computerworld] [PC World]

Projector phones set for take-off: A number of manufacturers have been showing off phones with tiny projectors — known as pico projectors — at the Mobile World Congress, suggesting the technology could be ready for mainstream commercial adoption. The idea is they can be used for impromptu presentations or to show the holiday snaps on a wall to friends or family. Samsung’s new Android-based Beam smartphone has been getting much of the attention in Barcelona this week. It’s not surprising: in addition to its pico projector, it’s a gorgeous-looking touch-screen phone. [PC Magazine] [TrustedReviews]