LG GD900 CRYSTAL

Every June, CommunicAsia Singapore is the place to be — just ask any phone enthusiast! Billed as the premier event for communication technology in Asia, it finds pride-of-place for many phone manufacturers who choose this event to launch their latest offerings for the Asian market. This year, despite the slowdown, it was up to LG and Samsung to provide most of the fanfare and excitement with big announcements, new phones, new features and plenty of eye candy!

Also in on the action were Nokia and Sony Ericsson, who organised fringe events outside Communic-

LG VIEWTY SMART

Asia to launch their latest handsets and give consumer tech enthusiasts the opportunity to play around with mobile technology that hasn’t hit Asian shores yet. Our team was there to bring you the latest bleeding-edge stuff that our attention (and the attention of most visitors) the most!

LG GD910

It was an all-Korean skirmish at CommunicAsia — not of the North and South variety, folks — and LG dazzled with a range of big-ticket announcements. We got to see the GM730 ‘Joy’ which dresses up the much-reviled Windows Mobile 6.1 platform with LG’s classy S-Class user interface that we saw in the Arena recently. Specs are about par for a Windows Mobile phone, but the LG overlay really simplifies access to most stuff from your home screen — mail, messaging, calendar, menus to access network settings and so forth are welcome additions.

NOKIA E72

The other big launch was the LG Crystal, which aside from a full touchscreen interface, features a slide-out numeric keypad that’s transparent! Unlike most touch-sensitive keypads, it also supports multi-touch (for that wonderful pinch and zoom effect) and lets you assign shortcuts simply by gliding your finger over the keypad.

Among the updates, the Viewty got a ‘Smart’ tag, and added some smarts for the photography feature with its Intelligent Shot feature, much like a digital camera’s auto mode which determines the best settings for the picture. And finally, the LG GD910 Watch Phone made a commercial debut — bring out your Dick Tracy detective gear, people!

NOKIA 5530

Sony Ericsson wasn’t present at CommunicAsia, but more than made up for it with the Asian launches of the Satio, the Aino and the Yari — yep, we still can’t get over the names either. But they’re no slouches in the specs department — the Satio is equipped with the S60 5th Edition smartphone OS, a 12 megapixel camera and a 3.5-in 640 x 360-pixel display — impressive specs indeed! The Yari doesn’t have the specs firepower of the Satio, but it adds an entertaining twist called Gesture Gaming using the front-facing camera.

SONY ERICSSON SATIO

Employing a motion sensor, it translates motion in front of the handset into game actions like boxing or Yoga workouts. This we’d like to see more of, including how silly people end up looking shadow-boxing in front of their phones!

SONY ERICSSON AINO

The Finnish giant Nokia was unusually subdued at the Connection event here, but that didn’t stop them from launching the E72, the successor to the well-received E71. Improvements include 250MB of built-in memory with support for microSD cards up to 16GB, a blazing 600MHz processor and battery life that beats the E71’s legendary longevity — if that’s even possible! Oh, and a welcome addition on a business phone — a dedicated 3.5mm audio jack! Also launched was the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic. With its metallic finish and compact form factor, it trumps the 5800 XpressMusic with its classy premium look, leading many to feel this is what Nokia’s first touchscreen Series 60 handset should have been!

SAMSUNG BEAT DJ

Right across from the LG pavilion was the other big name in the show — Samsung. Its biggest launch was the

SAMSUNG JET

Jet — with an 800MhZ application processor running on Samsung’s TouchWiz UI version 2.0, the name was apt. This thing really blazes the apps that run on its 3.1 WVGA AMOLED touchscreen display! The Omnia and the Pixon got updates as well, with the latter getting bumped up to 12 megapixels — this is still a phone we’re talking about! Also on show was the Samsung Beat DJ, a wild-looking phone with advanced music and mixing capabilities.Our personal favourite wasn’t any of its new offerings though — it was the chance to use the I7500 Galaxy, Samsung’s Android powered mobile. Just in time, as we get to review the HTC Magic in the next couple of weeks and get to show you whether Android really has what it takes to take on the iPhone.