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.

Xiaomi – China’s Android Phone With Great Hardware And Design. How great is it when the 2 most powerful phone on earth, Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy S2 blends together? Here comes the Chinese made, Xiaomi Phone which is authentic, powerful and beautifully design, not just another Chinese cheap skate clone.

The Xiaomi features the MIUI OS which is a modified version of Android sports a iOS-liked UI and the MIUI OS is actually a very famous custom ROM already available on the Android.

The hardware is strong and even more powerful than the Samsung Galaxy S2. It sports a 1.5GHz dual-core chip and powered by a powerful Adreno 220 graphic processor which works well with the phone’s 1GB RAM and 4GB ROM.

Xiaomi Phones has a great battery capicity which has an enormous 1930mAh cell instead of the normal 1400mAh (iPhone) or 1500mAh (Samsung Galaxy). Standard features on the phone are the GPS, 8 megapixel camera with f2.4 lens, 3 touch sensitive button below the screen, huge 4-inch 480 x 854 capacitive touch screen LCD. The weight is heavier than the iPhone 4 for a bit. According to the launch keynote, accessories like case, spare batteries will be available.

Best part of all the price is at only RMB1999 (933MYR / 313USD) which is just half the price of the current top smartphone. How awesome is that? It will be available for pre-order on August 29th (in China of course) and will be release somewhere around October.

Check out the official site for more about the Xiaomi Android Phone, of course it’s in Chinese and Google Translate will help.

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.

As you know, Nokia dumped Symbian for Windows Phone 7 (WP7) and they in fact still working on another operating system which is the MeeGo. Somehow, the Nokia N9, known as the swipe phone might be the first and last phone from Nokia running the MeeGo platform.

Recent 21 June event in Singapore, Nokia stunned the world of tech with the Nokia N9 smartphones, can be said as the successor to the Symbian Nokia N8 and Maemo N900.

The N9 features a new interface experience that doesn’t require any navigation buttons or even a home butter. The only physical buttons are the power button and volume control.

The sleek design of Nokia N9 handset features a 3.9″ AMOLED screen with WVGA resolution of 854×480 which has a cruved Gorilla glass, upgraded from 3.5″ of Nokia N8.

It’s Nokia phone with the highest hardware specs and wun with a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 OMAP3630 processor and a 1GB RAM. It has a 8MP camera with Carl Zeiss lens and Nokia claims that it has the fastest image capturing phone in the market, that a shot can be taken in just 2.6 seconds.

It also included NFC which lets you share files and media by tapping onto another device, and Dolby audio support.

The design is real awesome and what’s special is the MeeGo platform which features the Swipe function. Navigating through apps and homescreen just requires different swipe gesture. According to its Harmattan implementation, Nokia centralized the device into 3 main functions and they are notifications, apps and multitasking.

There’s no news about release date, but it’s one of Nokia’s best phone up to date and MeeGo is obviously better than Symbian but the support for it lies in Nokia hand.

Check out the full specification at Nokia’s site.

A news report by Digitimes revealed that Apple has just placed orders for a new next-generation iPhone which is more known as the iPhone 5 (iPhone 4S) from Taiwan-based supplier Pegatron Technology, which is said to be begin shipping in September.

No Major Update On Apple iPhone 5

According to the source, the smartphone iPhone 5 or iPhone 4S will not receive a major update from iPhone 4, but yet there’s still a difference and rumors said that it’s the camera, will features the A5 dual-core processor and runs the latest iOS 5.

Well, the iPhone 5 rumors is getting true and let’s keep waiting for the next-generation iPhone. There will probably a special event in September by Apple.

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I have been following the news about Samsung Galaxy S II (S2) lately as it’s one of the most powerful Android phone at the moment, which is a straight rival to the Apple iPhone. The dual-core processor, 8mp camera back and 2mp front face camera, Super AMOLED screen and the sleek design make it the best Android phone now.

Recent news from Samsung reported that they have successfully sold 3 millions units in just 55 days, which is a great milestone when compare to their successor, the original Galaxy S which took 85 days to reach that number.

In Malaysia, there’s hundred over people queues for the phone on launch date by Maxis lately and there have been a high demand for the phone, some retail shop even increases the price from RM2,099 (RRP) to as many as RM2,399.

What do you think about the phone?

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Check out the teaser video of the coming soon Nokia N9. It seems pretty cool and sleek, very stylish. Powering by a QWERTY keyboard, 12megapixel camera and runs the MeeGo OS.

What do you think? Hehe.

When I first get my Google Nexus One, I was the only one among my friends who uses an Android mobile phone. So far, I have friends use iPhone, Symbian, Sony Ericsson, Blackberry, Windows Mobile but no Android. So I assumed I was the first among my friends who uses an Android.

And now, I found a friend who uses Android too and he’s Kenny, a geek like me, just signed up for DiGi’s DG Smartplan and bought the HTC Legend on a discounted price. I guess more and more people will go for Android already because Maxis and DiGi are selling it.

HTC Google Nexus One still rocks with bigger screen. Haha, but my rival HTC Desire is cool!

I have been using this new Google Nexus One phone for two weeks already and I am very satisfied with the new phone, love it a lot although there’s still don’t-like about the phone.

I live in Malaysia and it’s not listed in the shipping destination of four countries. There’s United States, United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Singapore. Luckily, I have a brother who resides in Singapore, he helped me to order and shipped to his address in Singapore, only then he bring it back to Malaysia during the Chinese New Year holiday two weeks ago.

The shipping from USA to Singapore was pretty fast, it took DHL 4 days and hand delivered on a Sunday.

The package comes with the phone and another order of the Europe-Asia AC Adapter, it’s actually useless because the two-pin works here too!

Inside the phone box, there’s the phone, a pouch, earpiece, USB cable and 2-pin adapter.

I like the earpiece because the microphone is tiny, although not as tiny as the iPhone’s but still it camouflaged into the media key and not many will notice it’s actually an earpiece with mic for the Nexus One. People will think that I am either talking to air, or just listening to MP3.

I was on Symbian, familiar with iPhone OS and it’s my first time using Android 2.1. Very unfamiliar with the UI and not very friendly at first, the keyboard was not as sensitive as the iPhone but I am getting used to the OS already. Although Android apps are not as many as the iPhone apps, but I believe it will grow, perhaps is because that it’s still new.

Another thing I dislike is the capacitive touch screen doesn’t feel good as the glassy one on the iPhone, and last dislike thing is the 4 touch sensitive button below the screen are annoying, because I always touch on it accidentally.

Afterall, I like my phone, I am satisfied with it. I can’t dislike the battery life because all smart phone’s battery life is like that.

If you want this phone, you need a data plan because it syncs a lot.

Here’s mine LIKES and DISLIKES.

Likes:

• Larger than iPhone’s screen.
• Capacitive multi-touch screen.
• Thin and lightweight.
• Solid built.
• 5MP Camera.
• Android open-sourced platform.
• Google Account and Facebook sync.
• Cheaper than iPhone.
• Unique because less people own it here at my place.
• Pouch with Android cute logo.
• Earpiece.

Dislikes:

• Less apps.
• Can’t buy paid apps here in Malaysia.
• Screen not as sensitive as iPhone.
• Battery life.
• Speaker phone not so nice.
• Facebook Application for Android. SUPER LOUSY.
• 4 touch sensitive buttons below the screen.

I think that’s all. =)

Google have this video of the unboxing of their Nexus One. Seeing a 3 ninja chopping off the box of Nexus One to unveil what’s inside. Seems like there’s no manual. I find it quite lame and funny.

What do you think?