It’s the first day of the Lunar New Year. Happy New Year to all the people from cultures that celebrate this traditional festival! And to all Chinese around the world, Happy Chinese New Year!
财神爷 wishes all a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous Chinese New Year! Taken with an HTC 8X Windows Phone 8 smartphone. Text added in Photoshop CS6.
I was having breakfast at the neighbourhood coffee shop last Sunday morning when I noticed the tiny figurine in the photo sitting in the middle of the table.
Afterwards, I left him where I met him – to let the next patron mull over the presence of such an esteemed dignitary in the local neighbourhood.
Since this is the Chinese New Year period, I suppose it’s Cai Shen Ye – the God of Fortune in the traditional Chinese pantheon.
Was this merely a handphone charm inadvertently left behind by another patron, or is the popular deity paying a visit to the mortal world?
At any rate, I lost no time in snapping a candid shot with my own handphone.
We were walking through this neighbourhood street mall on Chinese New Year’s Eve morning. Shops were teeming with people doing last minute shopping for the Reunion Dinner that night.
Having a sleep-in past noon on a Saturday. Right in the midst of the hullabaloo of Chinese New Year’s Eve shopping all around it. Taken with an HTC 8X Windows Phone 8 smartphone.
In the midst of all that hullabaloo, this kitty was sleeping most indulgently on the doorstep of one of these shops.
The launch event will be held simultaneously in London and New York – and is widely believed to be for the launch of the M7 (also possibly to be named HTC One).
Invitations have been sent out for the HTC launch event in London and New York.
Stay tuned to the webcast URL which I’ll be posting here so you can follow it live.
It’s the Lunar New Year period and Chinatowns all over the world are abuzz with decorations and festival sales in anticipation of Chinese New Year.
This couple reads “Welcoming the new spring and happiness” to the right, and “Prosperity through Harmony” to the left. I snapped this picture with the Sony Xperia Ion Android smartphone.
I was walking in Chinatown Singapore and came across this corridor outside the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple that brightly decorated with these floral wreaths and Chinese well-wishing couplets.
Samsung has launched the compact version of its flagship smartphone GALAXY S III in Singapore.
The 4-inch compact Android 4.1.2 (Jelly Bean) smartphone will be available in Pebble Blue and Marble White from tomorrow, 2 February 2013 (Saturday) at S$568 (without contract).
The GALAXY S III mini will be available in Pebble Blue and Marble White from 2 February 2013 at S$568 (without contract).
The GALAXY S III mini sports a 4-inch Super AMOLED display (480 x 800), 5-megapixel camera that records movies at 720p@25fps, 8GB internal memory (microSD slot for up to 32GB ext memory), and a 1,500mAh battery.
Running on a 1 GHz Dual-Core processor, the compact smartphone features Samsung’s “Smart Stay” and “S Voice” features.
“Smart Stay” recognizes how the phone is being used – the front camera identifies the eyes and maintains a bright display for continued viewing – as long as the user is eyeballing the screen.
“S Voice” is the natural language user interface, to listen and respond to words, allowing information search and basic device-user communication through voice commands.
Below are the specifications for the GALAXY S III mini I8190N.
Research In Motion (RIM) President & CEO – Thorsten Heins – launched the new QNX-based BlackBerry 10 operating system and unveils the full-touchscreen Z10 and physical keyboard-equipped Q10 smartphones.
RIM is also renaming itself as BlackBerry from today.
Shareholders’ response to the launch inside. All images in this article were screen-grabbed from webcast of the event.
The first manifestation of the new BlackBerry 10 – the full-touchscreen Z10 (left) and physical keyboard-equipped Q10 (right).
The basic premise of the new “BlackBerry experience” is about extending connectivity to everything around users – connecting the phone to the car, sound system, healthcare system etc.
Availability of Z10
Jan 31: UK
Feb 5: Canada (C$149)
Feb 10: UAE
Feb 21?: Singapore
March: USA (pre-orders without pricing from today)
* Q10 may be 1 month behind.
Three overarching innovations to enable this are the BlackBerry Hub, Peek and Flow.
Hub is akin to the People Hub of Microsoft Windows Phone operating system and consolidates all people related and social network information and updates in one place.
The HTC Butterfly will be available in Singapore in Fervour Red and Glamour White starting 26 January at M1 and StarHub. Recommended retail price: S$928.
HTC Butterfly will hit the shelves in Singapore from this Saturday (26 Jaunuary) for S$928.
The HTC Butterfly will be the first smartphone to have a full HD 1080p display, with a 5-inch screen that boasts a high pixel density of 440 pixels per inch.
HTC Butterfly
OS
Android (Jelly Bean) with HTC Sense 4+
Screen
5″ super LCD 3
Resolution
1980 x 1080 Full HD
Battery
2,020 mAh, built-in
Processor
Qualcomm S4 Pro 1.5GHz, Quad-core, 2GB RAM
Camera
Rear: 8 MP
Front: 2.1 MP
Video
1080p HD
Memory
Int: 16 GB
Ext: 32 GB microSD
Size /mm
143 x 70.5 x 9.08
Weight
140 g
Price
S$928
It is powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, featuring a quad-core 1.5 GHz CPU, high-performance GPU and a full 2GB of RAM to enable the seamless use of multiple apps simultaneously.
The smartphone is run on Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) and HTC Sense 4+, including Google Now.
The HTC Butterfly has a 2,020 mAh battery and power saving software and an expandable SD card slot in addition to 25GB of free Dropbox cloud storage (two years free).
The 8-megapixel rear-camera has an f/2.0 28mm wide-angle lens, 5-level automatic flash, backside illuminated sensor (BSI), and superfast autofocus.
HTC VideoPic allows you to capture video and still images at the same time. (more…)
The Samsung Mobile PIN in Singapore is the first such store in Asia after the concept’s launch at the London Olympics in 2012.
Samsung celebrity ambassadors – Olivia Ong and SKarf were at the launch event.
Samsung Mobile PIN at Ngee Ann City Civic Plaza from 18 January to 12 March 2013. Photo from Samsung.
The Samsung Mobile PIN is at Ngee Ann City Civic Plaza and showcases Samsung’s latest mobile devices including the GALAXY Note II LTE, GALAXY Note 10.1 LTE, GALAXY S III LTE and GALAXY Camera.
K-Pop girl group SKarf are celebrity ambassadors for Samsung. Photo from Samsung.
Visitors can get their hands on the devices while attendants introduce features to them in an interactive experience.
Olivia Ong was another celebrity ambassador for Samsung that was present at the launch of the Mobile PIN.
Unveiled only last week at CES 2013 in Las Vegas, the new flagship for Sony Mobile’s Xperia smartphones was showcased in Singapore to the regional media.
The Xperia Z and its smaller variant (Xperia ZL) will be available globally in Q1 2013. Prices are yet to be announced.
Update (7 February, 2013):
The Xperia Z will debut in Singapore on 1 March 2013. RRP: S$988 without contract.
Pre-orders can also be made at the following Telco websites:
You can pre-order at the Xperia Store, Sony Stores and Sony Centres from 15-24 February and get a gift.
Xperia Z will be available in the above stores on 1 March and from all telco operators from March 2nd onwards, in black or white. The purple Xperia Z will be available one week after on 8 March.
Sony Mobile’s new flagship smartphone – Xperia Z. Available Q1 2013.
The Xperia Z embodies leading edge technology that Sony had developed over the years for its wide range of electronic devices.
Arieso has just released the results of a study into recent trends in extreme data, revealing new challengers for Telcos and network operators.
The latest Hungry Handsets report by Arieso
This year’s Hungry Handsets study finds that:
Smartphones trump tablets in terms of data consumption and generation
Apple’s iPhone 5 and Samsung’s GALAXY SIII goes head to head against each other at the top of the data utilisation list
Data upload has grown, as users generate more data.
This latest analysis by Arieso into mobile data use also reveals that 40% of all data is consumed by only 1% of users, although LTE is starting to take the strain.
Interview with study author
Dr. Michael Flanagan, study author & CTO, Arieso
I spoke with Dr. Michael Flanagan, the study author and Arieso CTO about the report.
He observed that the data crunch in the wireless industry started by the launch of the iPhone was not abating; and the study revealed that increasingly sophisticated devices are unleashing unprecedented levels of user demand.
He cautioned that the particular results in this study corresponded to the specific market that was studied, and that these results could vary depending on a number of circumstances (including morphologies, available devices, regional customer behaviors, and socio-economic user factors).
“Yet again we found that novel usage patterns, new technologies and regional idiosyncrasies are conspiring to make life increasingly difficult for mobile operators trying to meet evolving customer expectations,” said study author and Arieso CTO, Dr. Michael Flanagan.
As such, these results are intended to be illustrative rather than definitive.
Dr. Flanagan urged network operators to embark upon similar subscriber and network evaluation programs in order to determine the clear and present data demands being placed on their networks as well as the most appropriate response strategies to best satisfy this demand.
