Handset lets sports fans keep tabs on medal winners

Wireless handsets providing information and updates about the 2012 Olympics could be introduced to sports fans at the Games.

The Wireless Olympic Works comes in a mobile phone with software that downloads event results, schedules, medal counts, biographies of medallists and information about venues and weather.

More than 5,000 members of the International Olympic Committee, Olympic organisers, staff and sports bodies tested the service, developed by Samsung, at last year's Games in Beijing.

In London the phone's developers will introduce it to the public to buy and download the programmes.

Samsung's vice president and head of worldwide sports marketing Gyehyun Kwon said: "It can navigate any information you can find. It will text information from Locog (the London Olympic organisers) and the IOC so that you can use your computer as a walkie-talkie and use a mobile phone."

The first digital information system was introduced for officials at the 2004 Athens Games and one is being prepared for the Winter Games in Vancouver next year. Mr Kwon said the downloads would be available in "every language in the world".