In the last few weeks in the Windows Mobile space, we have seen how the HTC Diamond and Samsung Omnia heating up the mobility space. Which will you choose to have? As we will look to have a fight out among this two top rated Windows Mobile Professional devices in the next two weeks. So look out for more information on this soon. Between the two, the HTC Diamond has a sleek factor that also spells chic, while the larger screen estate Samsung Omnia also looking sleek but a compared to the HTC Diamond would seem a tad heavier. Both have their own unique overlays to make each device personal to their brands, both run Windows Mobile 6.1 under the hood. Whichever device you purchase you will be neatly surprise by what the HTC and Samsung has come up with. 

Check out this video presentation of the Omnia.

The new upcoming Samsung i900. Watch this space for more to come.

Next week at CommunicAsia 2008, Samsung will be officially releasing the Samsung i900 Omnia. The word Omnia is taken from the New Testament from the Bible, in Latin: means, “all things pure.” This Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional device features quad-band GSM / GPRS / EDGE support, 7.2Mbps HSDPA, a built-in accelerometer, WiFi module, USB port, FM tuner, Bluetooth, 3.2-inch 400 x 240 resolution display and a 5-megapixel camera (with smile detection and geotagging). An 16GB version and a 8GB will soon be available. Priced the same as the HTC Diamond, available in Asia after CommunicAsia 2008 in Singapore. 

The much anticipated Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1, a Windows Mobile Powered Professional device from Sony Ericsson. The first specifications has now been confirmed. It comes with 3 inch Wide VGA(800×480) touch screen LCD, XPERIA panel concept(software). 3.2 Megapixel camera with Touch auto focus and photo light, video capture up to 30 fps. Integrated WiFi and A-GPS. HSDPA 7.2Mbps, HSUPA 2Mbps, Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, YouTube support with 3GPP playback, FM Radio, steaming audio/video, 3G Video call, Bluetooth 2.0, HW 3D Graphics GPU, microSD (High Capacity card - hopefully up to 16GB atleast), memory comes with a massive NAND Flash 512MB, SDRAM 256MB, Quadband EDGE, TriBand, the battery life is around 10hrs(GSM) 6.5hrs(UMTS) talktime, standby time 580hrs(GSM) 833hrs(UMTS) all this at a feather weight of 158g only. 

No price indication yet. 

A son asked his father, ‘Dad, will you take part in a marathon with me?’. The father who, despite having a heart condition, says ‘Yes’.
They went on to complete the marathon together. Father and son went on to join other marathons, the father always saying ‘Yes’ to his son’s request of going through the race together. One day, the son asked his father, ‘Dad, let’s join the Ironman together.’ To which, his father said ‘Yes’ too.

For those who don’t know, Ironman is the toughest triathlon ever.
The race encompasses three endurance events of a 2.4 mile (3.86 kilometer) ocean swim, followed by a 112 mile (180.2 kilometer) bike ride, and ending with a 26.2 mile (42.195 kilometer) marathon along the coast of the Big Island . Father and son went on to complete the race together.

They completed a total of 900 racers and 26 Boston Marathons.

http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?view…faca5dd9ea45513

HTC just officially launch the HTC Diamond, the latest Windows Mobile Powered Professional device in Singapore. I had the opportunity to be invited for the launch to cover the event. I was both wowed by HTC Diamond’s TouchFLO 3D, a software technology invented by HTC that personalizes the way a user would interact with the device. The HTC Diamond’s must have with it’s latest TouchFlo 3D GUI, HTC’s innovative software revolutionizes the way we use our mobile device, it has an emotional interactive feel that is different from any other mobile device in market today. Whether it is the cool and sleek looks or the features under the hood, the HTC Diamond is the latest Windows Mobile device you would not want to miss. The HTC Touch Diamond will be available from June 2008 at all authorized resellers at a suggested retail price of SGD$1,098.00 (inclusive of 7% GST) 

Before you read on about our hands on review, here are the specs in a glance.

The device comes with a Qualcomm MSM7201A 528 MHz processor, running under the hood of TouchFLO 3D is VGA device with Windows Mobile 6.1, ROM 256MB, RAM 192 MB DDR SDRAM, also has built in 4GB internal Storage, weighs a feather weight of 110g with battery, comes with TriBand, 3G, HSDPA/WCDMA, 900/2100MHz for Europe and Asia. It is both GPS and A-GPS ready, has Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, Wifi 802.11 b/g, the camera has a 3.2 Megapixel auto focus lens and a secondary VGA CMOS camera on the front of the device.

The Device is small enough to fit into your hands snuggly and my gosh is it light, but not light the point it feels like a toy, but light enough to carry in your trousers pocket without feeling embarrassed and it does not weigh the ladies down.

The difference with the generation one TouchFLO and the latest TouchFLO 3D is the way the software interacts with the user, it is a whole new experience in TouchFLO 3D, with a graphic GPU equivalent to what you will find in a PSP rendering your graphics is a stunning especially with a VGA screen, HTC seems to have pull out all the graphical creativity of the bag to really bring the interactive user interface to be a personal one with the user and it did. At press room, there was a lot of wows and ohhs when, John Wang, Chief Marketing Officer of HTC Corp showed us personally in greater details about what the HTC Diamond can do.

With a GPU churning out close to 7 million polygons per second(what does this mean – means QUAKE mobile will look as smooth as silk on the HTC Diamond) and because of this, the entire GUI looks smooth from Contacts, to SMS, photos, music and video rendering. HTC working closely with Google and Opera, we got a taste of how fast YouTube  and Google Maps loaded, John had a video MV of Madonna and it played live streaming from YouTube on HSDPA, it was smooth and the download was fast. They have a nice feature program called Weather which actually updates over the air the latest weather results of your location or city of choice, the overcast, sunshine, raining graphical display is not just eye catching but gives you a good feel of the weather and I just like looking at it.

The device can automatically detect when it tilts to orientate the screen in portrait or landscape mode as there is a accelerometer built into the device, cool.

I am personally ok with the internal 4GB storage space, but for people whom brings out their kitchen sink of music, photos and videos may be disappointed with the lack of an external storage slot. We mentioned this to John, hopes in future models they will update this to atleast include a MicroSD slot for the power users.

HTC really thought through what some of the things people liked or disliked about their devices, one thing I always hated was the losing of my stylus from my PDA, it just popped out after too much usage to the point I lived without a stylus on my Dopod Universal for almost a year, basically just used my fingers to do all the tapping. Well worry no more, in the HTC Diamond, the stylus has been revamped and it comes with a magnetic catch that catches on to the device - HTC solves one nagging issue there.

HTC not resting on their laurels, somehow they managed to place a detector wire to it because when you pull out the stylus it will switch on the device. According the John Wang, “Why would anyone pull out a stylus unless he was going to use it.” Hmmm that makes a lot of sense, now why didn’t someone think of it, little things like these go along way as it is very thoughtful. 

Was the machine slow? No it was not, but than again, I am not sure if I maxed up the internal storage would it slow it down or not.

This is just our initial hands on review run up, look out for our full review when we get our hands on a review unit.

HTC’s motto is, “HTC Innovation”, over in sunny Singapore, a tiny island of just 4 million people, HTC just released the affordable HTC P3400i, a Quad Band, Windows Mobile 6 Professional device, means it comes with a touch screen. Running with a TI OMAP850 processor at 201 MHz, 2MP CMOS Camera,  ROM 128MB/64MB RAM, Bluetooth, 1250mAh battery, 2.8″ TFT touch screen, and weighs a light weight of 126g with battery. 

Available in Singapore at a suggested retail price of SG$488(including 7% GST) or USD$353 from end May 2008 onwards. 

Microsoft released an introduction to the TouchWall, looking at the video presentation, it is quite interesting to see the way it works and functions. This would be helpful in boardroom style concepts or in a teaching environment or even in a wargaming room or on board a carrier strike group. Well wherever you can think of the places it can be in, it is impressive. 

Read the news source from the Washington Post.

TouchWall is a fundamentally simpler mechanical system, and is also significantly cheaper to produce. While Surface retails at around $10,000, the hardware to “turn almost anything into a multi-touch interface” for TouchWall is just “hundreds of dollars” says Sands.

TouchWall consists of three infrared lasers that scan a surface. A camera notes when something breaks through the laser line and feeds that information back to the Plex software. Early prototypes, say Pratley and Sands, were made, simply, on a cardboard screen. A projector was used to show the Plex interface on the cardboard, and a the system worked fine (I’m trying to get Microsoft to release photos of the cardboard prototype, no luck so far).

The TouchWall system I was able to test yesterday consisted of a PC running Vista and Plex, a 4×6 foot plexiglass screen, a rear projector, a infrared camera and the three infrared lasers. As you can see in the video, it worked, and well:

Sands showed a number of activities in the video - scrolling though mixed media on a desktop with his hands, infinite zooming in and our, playing media, and even using a drawing tool to turn the entire screen into a whiteboard.

Microsoft is quick to say that they have no current plans to productize and sell TouchWall. But the potential of the system is obvious - Prately spoke animatedly about a future where the computing experience is less monitor/keyboard/mouse and more like an architect’s desk, with user input primarily directly on the screen and via voice commands, with keyboard/mouse type input used more for data entry or office type editing tasks.

TouchWall certainly isn’t the first multi-touch product we’ve seen (see iPhone). In addition to Surface, of course, there are a number of early prototypes emerging in this space. But what Microsoft has done with a few hundred dollars worth of readily available hardware is stunning.

It’s also clear that the only real limit on the screen size is the projector, meaning that entire walls can easily be turned into a multi touch user interface. Scrap those white boards in the office, and make every flat surface into a touch display instead. You might even save some money.

When we talk about Search, we think Google or Yahoo, however there is a giant waiting to emerge from Micrsoft called “Live Search”. This is one of best, but has been underated and living in the shadows of it’s other earlier competition who was in the market earlier. I found that Microsoft has over the last two years tweaked Live Search to a certain perfection where the results are getting more comprehensive and link to exactly for what you searched for. Google is ending up to a certain marketing mess as top search results are base on hits and priority ranking for paid advertisers thus diluting the real search results. I like what Microsoft has done, the clean lines and subtle design of their updated Live Search engine gives you cool look and feel to it, but what is most important is that it delivers what you set out to search for. Live Search when it was first launched to be honest with you, I hated it, it was messy, slow and not accurate, but it has improved and now I prefer it to Google’s. Most importantly, you need to take it for a go to find out more.