Nokia N9 – Good Concept, A Little Too Late – Last week, I was walking in Sunway Pyramid, a shopping mall in Malaysia and I saw a demo unit of the Nokia N9 on shelf. I was curious and went to have a little hands-on on it. The design looks very good and sleek with a 3.9″ capacity Gorilla glass display.

What’s so special about phone is the button-less homescreen. There’s no home button like on the iPhone or Android. It’s just a screen, with a function button on right and the volume key on the left. So how it works is actually on swiping the screen. Swiping the screen from right to left actually wakes up the phone. I find that it is a very good idea and concept. Swiping from left to right changes your opened application screen and from top to bottom is to close your application.

Sounds pretty cool right? It runs on MeeGo OS and has a 1GHz Cortex A8 CPU, with 8megapixel shooter on the back that is able to shoot HD-ready 720P video at 30fps. The feeling on hand is very solid, not too light, nor too heavy with a perfect size. The MeeGo system is smooth and has a good looking UI too.

Unfortunately, MeeGo is a late-comer where iOS and Android is taking most of the smartphone market share and Windows Phone Mobile is coming up while RIM’s BlackBerry is doing not so well. With apps that are already ready built for the other platforms, MeeGo might not get much third party app support and development. Well, I just got to say that the idea of the phone is very good, and sadly, MeeGo is just too late, it should have join the competition few years back when iOS and Android were released.

Facebook For iPad Is Coming Really Soon – iPad has been in the market for more than 1.5 years and number one social networking site Facebook still haven’t release an official app for the iPad support. iPad user have been using alternative like the enlarge version of Facebook for iPhone, Friendly, MyPad for Facebook and more.

Just recently, someone found a backdoor to check out the Facebook for iPad app through the Facebook for iPhone app installed on the iPad. Just a little bit tweak and you can check out the new Facebook for iPad app, featuring a full screen and feature pack.

Of course, your iPad need to be jailbroken to try out. I tried but unfortunately I couldn’t get in because Facebook has already block the access to the app and I don’t get to try it. Really bad luck of me, but this also means that the ETA of the app for iPad is coming really very soon. So, it’s just around the corner and get your iPad ready for the app. Facebook for iPad is coming really soon.

Short Hands-On: Samsung Galaxy S2 – The Samsung Galaxy S2 is currently one of the best Google Android smartphones developed by Samsung and it is said to be the rival of the Apple iPhone. I am pretty curious about the phone and what it can do. I was lucky to have a short hands-on with the phone for a while.

Currently, it’s not available in the North America yet, but it’s available almost everywhere. The reviews out there for the phone are pretty good. The best features of the phone are:

• 1.2GHz Dual-Core Processor
• 4.3″ Super AMOLED Display
• 8megapixel camera featuring 1080p video
• 2megapixel front-facing camera

The dual-core CPU making it surprisingly very fast and smooth and no lagness on the touch screen, and it’s capable of producing the full HD video recording and playing. 4.3″ Super AMOLED screen produces a sharp and vivid display but unfortunately only have a resolution of 800×480 which is still behind iPhone 4′s 960×640 Retina display.

Though, the screen colour is really very sharp and vivid. The first impression of the phone is really sleek and sexy, except with the Samsung logo on top of the screen. If it’s a clean screen like the iPhone then it’s perfect.

Once getting hands on it, it feels very light and not that solid as the iPhone, but it fits the hand nicely with a huge 4.3″ display. The power button is located on the side and the design is almost like an iPhone with a bigger screen and a homescreen button at the bottom of the screen. It feels good afterall even the lightness. The lightness gives a plus point to the phone as you don’t want to carry a heavy phone in your pocket.

In term of software, it runs Android 2.3.3 on Samsung’s TouchWiz platform. The TouchWiz UI is sleek but there’s a big opportunity for customizing it. What’s matter most is still Android which currently has less apps when compare to the iOS. Android is believe to have more users than the iOS but (some) applications are still not as good as iOS. I’m sure there will be more applications, but it’s all about when.

As for the camera. I am impress with the camera speed and the quality. 8megapixel camera capture a sharp and clear image and the best is the 2mp front face camera which normal phone has a VGA camera. the 2mp front camera is good for self-portrait and video calling. This impressed me quite a lot. With such a powerful camera hardware, I just hope that there’s powerful app for that. I personally like Instagram but it’s not available on Android.

I read about the keyboard was a drawback for the phone, but after trying, I found it’s quite responsive and doing well with the heptic feedback and not much complain about it.

Afte rall, this is an awesome phone, only that I hope there’s more app on Android which can release the true power of this beast. Samsung Galaxy S2 is so far the best Android phone at this moment.

I bought a BlackBerry Bold 9780 or also known as the Bold 3 to the BB fans out there for very cheap due to the promotion and contract by DiGi. Before this, I was so curious about the BlackBerry and keep on wondering why people here, especially KL people and Indonesian like BlackBerry so much. I always scratch my head and they influenced me.

So I finally got myself a BlackBerry, the latest device, an upgrade of BlackBerry 9700 and was released just recently. It’s something very cool, very sexy, the Boldness, especially the QWERTY keyboard. I really like QWERTY keyboard very much as it’s awesome.

With much anticipation, I switched my data card with BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service) to the Bold and started BB-ing which turned up to be a disappointment to me. Now I will start ranting my dislike on the phone.

Perhaps I was on huge 3.7″ touchscreen Nexus One, switching to a small 2.5″ is not a favour. At first it’s OK, but as soon as coming to surfing the Internet, scrolling on the trackpad is getting difficult although it’s good.

Next, I tried the social media apps built inside the new OS6. Facebook is ugly when compare to a Android’s Facebook app. I didn’t try Twitter. The very famous UberTwitter is fun to tweet because it’s very fast but again the UI is ugly when compare to Twicca or TweetDeck on the Android. Foursquare is pretty much the same.

As for the application, to be honest there’s no fun application to play with like on the Android or iPhone. BlackBerry is just a plain emailing device. Don’t talk about the social media apps because it’s available on the iPhone and Android too. Nothing much special about it except the keyboard. Perhaps some people says that emailing on the BlackBerry is more secure, this maybe good to business people as the email run through their very own RIM server in Canada. If you are talking about Push Email service, Gmail app on the Android is just on par with the push service by BlackBerry.

BlackBerry is a device that need to use with the BIS, BlackBerry Internet Service. Without it, your phone is just a dumb phone which just can call and text. Even with a data plan, you can’t go onto the Internet, or WiFi, Internet is not available unless you have no SIM card in the phone. I feel it’s kinda ridiculous. I don’t really like it. And I need to add additional RM10 (3.5US$) on top of my data plan. Was thinking of using it as a texting phone but somehow other feature won’t work so I didn’t use already.

Then after using one day of data on it, I realised that my Nexus One is almost dead because many apps on the Android run through cloud service and requires data and I can’t afford a second data line. In the end, I switch back the data + BIS line to my Nexus One and stop using the BlackBerry.

This is an advice from me and personal opinion. I thought it was cool but after I tried it, it’s not. Perhaps you say you want to BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) with your friend, why not you use Kik, WhatsApp, Ping or GTalk? They are actually all the same thing. After using for a day, I don’t like it. It’s not a good phone. Stick with Android or iPhone, they are still better than BB.

Many BB-fans is going to dislike me but this is just what I am thinking about it. =) I sold my BlackBerry after then and back to Google Nexus One.

RIM just launched their latest device, the Blackberry Torch here in Malaysia. My friend Yong Xiang who is one of the lucky one who have been selected by the Maxis 10 program to review the latest unit. On a meet-up, I was luckily to get hold on the phone for a couple minutes and take a few shots of the phone.

The new Blackberry Torch is running on 6 OS which is the latest OS developed by RIM. I am not a Blackberry user but this hands on makes me think that the Torch is a pretty cool device with combination of capacitive touch screen and QWERTY keyboard. The touch screen is pretty responsive and the keyboard feels the same though.

I give a thumbs up for the touch screen. Now Blackberry is not only confine by QWERTY keyboard but both.Featuring 5megapixel auto focus, it is now on par with other smartphone on the market.

By the way, do you realise that Blackberry is becoming a trend now in the Malaysian youth community?

Walked around the exhibition hall and found something to play and try out and that is the iRiver M3 GPS system. The design is not bad, but the screen is rather small, it will be nice if it’s widescreen. Since it’s indoor, there’s I can’t navigate around with this thing, so I place search on my house address and it works. It has preloaded maps of Malaysia and it search by cities.

What’s this different from Garmin is that it is also a media player which plays music, video, text and photo. The storage is via SD card and addition features are like local yellow page listing, 3D junction view, landmark icons and toll rates calculator.

Price at RM499 for PC Fair price, I don’t like this because the touch screen is unresponsive, I always keyed in the wrong word when searching for road and navigating around is not easy.

I have went into the Apple store to check out the new iPods. Unfortunately, the only demo unit available is the new iPod nano. Nevertheless, I quickly got my hands-on on it. It feels better than the fat 3G nano. Seriously, I like a long one than a fat one. The curve design makes it looks thinner and more comfortable. It has a very striking color for the silver iPod nano because the click wheels is in black

Screen is not very big, 2″ size, but when comparing with the 1G and 2G iPod nano, it seems big. It’s a little bit longer than the old Nano.

Navigating through the menu, nothing much amaze me. It’s still and iPod user interface, with thumnails and also cover flow when viewing the iPod nano in a vertical way.

The best new feature I like about the 4G iPod nano is the built in accelerometer. Besides working for cover flow, you can shuffle a song by just shaking your iPod nano. It’s like the Sony Ericsson W910i and W580i with shake control. Don’t you will be shuffling your song when you go on a run or a bumpy ride, you have to shake hard to shuffle to the next song. Isn’t that cool?

The rest feature remains the same. Videos, photos, music, and of couse it’s cheaper now. One thing I forgot to mention is, the new iPod nano is colourful, there’s 9 colours to choose from. I like the green, black and silver. What about you?