Finally I have received the retail unit of LG GM730. Preciously there was a big commotion among the bloggers who received the LG GM730. Some report that the battery looks old and hence that explains the extremely short battery life of less than 12 hours on standby, some also reported that there are scratches on the phone and on the battery. That made us wonder whether the unit given to us are the final unit (they told us it is the final one) or some prototype unit as it has the word “Not for sale” embossed behind the cover. To make matter worst, we received it in a press release A4 size file holder which only consists of the phone, battery and charger. I am glad everything is sorted out and we have received the retail unit of the LG GM730 in a proper box in exchange for the previously worn-out unit.
Here are some unboxing pictures. I will do a review on it soon. Pretty busy right now.
I was there last year at the Singtel iPhone 3G Launch queuing up for the iPhone 3G as a normal consumer. This year I was also there, but with a media pass. I was there pretty early at about 1.30pm because I have to go to Funan to run some errands. The media event started at about 3.30pm. We are brought around the Comcenter by Yuen Kuan Moon, the EVP of Consumer from Singtel. He explains to us the various part of the queue structure and how the customers will move about when queuing. Apart from that, Singtel announced a new service called Mio TV on Mobile. Customers can get to stream live tv stream from Channel 8, Channel News Asia, Bloomberg and a few others. It is not an iPhone App, but rather the streaming is done in Safari itself. It is pretty impressive as the quality is watchable and it doesn’t lag.
According to Kuan Moon, this year the response was much better than last year. He did not give an exact figure but he says in thousands. Last year the launch of iPhone 3G is basically register of interest and user still have to queue up. But this year, Singtel did a pre-order and require the customers to make a deposit of S$50 before queuing. There is also a separate queue for walk-in customers which closes at about 9pm due to the overwhelming response on the pre-order queue.
Singtel will be launching the new iPhone 3GS on Friday, 10th July 2009. Hopefully it will NOT be during office hour.
IPHONE: You have a date next Friday 10 July with your new iPhone 3GS – keep it free! We will email you early next week with launch event details, prices and upgrade options. Have a good weekend and see u next Friday! It’s going to be huge!
WOM World has sent me two sets of Nokia E75 all the way from UK for a E75 Project. The project name is called “Teach a Technophobe”. I have to coach a user, in this case, it will be my mom on how to use the Nokia E75 for email messaging. There will be a few series of challenges for both my mom and I to complete on a weekly basis.
I took a day off and went to the LG Press Conference at Communica Asia 2009 which takes place yesterday at the Singapore Expo. The event name was called “World Premiere of LG’s Newest Feature Packed Smartphone”. 3 phones were mentioned during the press conference. The LG GD900 Crystal, LG GM730 and the LG Viewty Smart (LG GC900).
LG App Store
LG also announces their own LG Application store which will be opened on the 14th July 2009. It will have about 1,400 apps at launch time out of which about 100 of them are free apps. It will have local applications as well as LG dedicated applications. At lunch time it will only support Windows Mobiles app, if I am not wrong Java and Android apps will be supported eventually.
Went for the Nokia N97 Blogger Preview at Nokia Singapore office located at Alexandra Technopark. The Nokia N97 will be the next Nokia flagship device. It felt solid when I got my hands on it. There will be 2 colors for it. The black as well as the pearl white. There are a lot of interesting applications/widgets that you can place on the home screen such as Facebook, Stocks, Weather, etc. Gone are those days of those boring Active Standby screen which exists all the way till the N96. You can have up to 5 widgets on the home screen which you can arrange in any order you like. A neat feature which not many people may know is there if you swipe to the left or right of the home screen, all your widgets will be hidden to protect your privacy. Swipe again to get them back.
The sensitivity of the screen is just average due to the technology used. If I am not wrong, the N97 is using a resistive screen to cater for a wider audience with many different methods of input instead of a capacitive screen and hence scrolling or “flickering” is not as smooth as iPhone. That is the only complaint I have. In terms of responsiveness, I felt that it is more responsive than the iPhone. Typing on the mini QWERTY keyboard is quite smooth for me as the keys are not clustered together.
Nokia today launches the Nokia XpressMusic 5800 & Nokia Comes With Music service at Velvet Underground at 4.30pm. The consumer party is at 9pm on the same day opposite Zouk Carpark. Nokia Comes With Music service is now live in Singapore. Singapore is the first Asia country to launch the Nokia Comes With Music. The Nokia XpressMusic 5800 will be available at all Telecom shops tomorrow (28th February 2009). The Recommended Retail Price (RRP) for it is S$798.
