First BREW phone hits Europe

O2 today unveiled its first handset using the UiOne user interface, making it the first European provider to commercially adopt Qualcomm’s BREW platform.

For more than a year, Qualcomm has been making a concerted effort to gain acceptance of its BREW platform in the GSM community, particularly in Europe. For the most part, GSM operators have rebuffed Qualcomm’s overtures, viewing the platform as a proprietary content delivery system tied to CDMA. But Qualcomm has made some recent inroads, announcing BREW deals with European--albeit CDMA, not GSM--providers. O2, however, announced last fall that it would be the first GSM operator to give BREW a try, using UiOne as a possible tool for unifying the user interfaces across its handsets.

The new handset is called Ice and is built by Korean up-and-comer Pantech. The UI, however, is all Qualcomm, offering a highly customizable menu structure and application environment that works parallel to Java applications and is branded under the O2 logo. O2, however, is using only the interface and not the entire BREW delivery platform, which has been fully embraced by many CDMA carriers like Verizon Wireless.

Though no other European or GSM operator has formally committed to BREW, Telecom Italia Mobile has been conducting tests of the platform, including the user interface.

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