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.
Today, Singtel launches HTC Dream aka G1. It will be available at all Singtel Shops and Singtel Hello Shops tomorrow. Alongside with the launch of HTC Dream, Singtel also announces 3 new Flexi plans that is targeted towards the HTC Dream.
This is the first time I was invited to a Samsung event, was invited by Daniel, the PR Manager for Samsung. Previously I did two reviews on Samsung products, one is the YP-K3 and the other is a VP-MX10. This event is called Samsung Touch Event. It is to let us have a touch and feel of those Samsung phones that are announced during MWC. The product marketing (mobile) manager, Winston said there about about 20+ phones Samsung phones that is being announced at MWC, but here in Singapore, they picked 7 to showcase to us.
The 7 phones are C3050, UltraB, UltraS, BeatDisc, BeatDJ, OmniaHD and the last phone which is the flagship product is the UltraTouch. They also announced 2 services, Share Pix and Online Widgets. The Share Pix is similar to Nokia’s Share On Ovi but in this case, the pictures are first uploaded to Samsung servers and then in turn the server will upload the pictures to the designated service that the user choose like Facebook or Friendster. The online widget is just an improved version of the famous Samsung Widgets that can be found in some Samsung phones. The online widget will allow you to retrieve RSS feeds as welll as create shortcut to websites.
Singtel will be bringing in the first Google Android powered mobiles phones to Asia (Singapore included), the HTC Dream.
Singapore, 5 February 2009 – Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel) and HTC Corporation, a global leader in mobile phone innovation and design, today unveiled the first Android powered mobile phone released in Asia – the HTC Dream. Customers of SingTel and its wholly-owned subsidiary in Australia, Optus, will soon be the first in Asia to enjoy this highly anticipated device.
Nokia announces Nokia N79 today, it will be available in the 1st quarter next year. It will be the first Nseries touch device and the 2nd Nokia touch device after Nokia XpressMusic 5800.
It is now 1am Singapore Timing and my NDA has ended. Now it is time for me to talk about Nokia XpressMusic 5800 aka “The Tube”. I was invited by Text 100 (Thank You Supriya!) to the pre-media briefing of the Nokia Remix 2008 at Marina Mandarin. The media pre-briefing is held simultaneously with the Nokia Remix 2008 event in London and hence the weird timing of having it at 9pm last night.
The press release conference will happen later on at 9am and followed by a party at night at 7pm where I will be going with Li Xiang.
I had an informal gathering with Nokia, Text100, and several bloggers at The Straits which is located at 31 Pekin Street, Far East Square. At first, when I heard of The Straits, it was referring to the The Straits Kitchen located at Hyatt Hotel. Luckily the full address is given, if not I will be going to the wrong place. The last informal Nokia event was held on the 13th June 2008. How time flies, 2 months just passed like that.
We get to play with the Nokia N79, N85 as well as the long due N96. I would like to say that my views are PURELY based on the prototypes as N79 and N85 will not be launching that soon. For the N96, it is quite closed to the final as it will shipping next month (September 2008) and the RRP for it is S$1258.
Nokia today held a media event at House @ 8D Dempsey Road at 2pm to officially announced the launch of Nokia N79, N85 and N96. Unfortunately I have to attend my first tutorial, if not I will definitely attend the event.
Basically Nokia N79 is the successor or Nokia N78 and Nokia N85 is the successor of Nokia N81 as well as Nokia N81 8GB. You can also say that the Nokia N96 is the successor of Nokia N95 8GB, but personally I think it is own rather than successor of anything. Nokia N79 – Powerful fusion of technology and style (August 26, 2008)
Espoo, Finland – Nokia today unveiled the Nokia N79, the latest addition to the Nokia Nseries range that combines intelligent and customizable design with a fully-loaded multimedia computer. Behind its sleek exterior, the Nokia N79 is a technology powerhouse. It offers a full range of multimedia experiences including integrated navigation, music with FM transmitter, high-speed connectivity, superior web browsing, at least 10 pre-loaded N-Gage games and an advanced 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics. The Nokia N79 is expected to begin shipping in October 2008, with an estimated retail price of EUR 350, before taxes and subsidies.
