iPad Launch Day in Hong Kong attracted diehard Apple pilgrims

23 July is the official launch day of iPad in Hong Kong.  Early in the morning, a crap load of die-hard Apple fanboys/fangirls had queued up early outside IFC, the shopping mall in the prime location of the city, just to buy the tablet device.

We took these pics at around the official launch time.  The offiical reseller, “DG Lifestyle Store” was on the second floor of IFC Mall.  The queue started inside the mall, just outside the door, then through the male toilet next to the store on the 2/F floor, and the photo just showed the pilgrimage outside the entrance on the 1/F floor, and the queue was already extended to outside of the Exchange Square.

To our estimation there was more than 300 people waiting – with half of them having an Apple product in their hands, which we believe is some kind of ritual to beseech the Steve Jobs the patriarch.

Price list of Apple iPad in Hong Kong for your reference:

Our recommendation?  There’s no need to buy an iPad if you’re travelling to Hong Kong, all you can save is the GST/VAT and nothing else.

How to root your SonyEricsson X10

The experts on XDA-Developer are now finally able to root the SonyEricsson X10 Android phone.  Look at what they have done step-by-step in the links below.

We feel obligated to remind you to backup essential information before any attempt of modifying the phone system.

Also, before rooting, make sure you know your machine is a X10i or X10a, there are slightly different procedures.

Read more on threads of XDA-Developer forum here:

• [Tutorial] Rooting the X10 and removing apps
• [GUIDE] Root your X10 R2BA023 !

Samsung Galaxy S i9000

So, we ordered from ComputerUniverse once again.  Usually prices of handsets in Hong Kong is among the lowest of the world.  But Samsung has a very aggressive market strategy in Hong Kong, they make lots of advertisement bombardments so that they tend to sell the high-tier phones 100€ higher than parallel imported goods.

Hopefully we will receive the phone before iPhone 4 release in Hong Kong.

Basic stats:

Connectivity: UMTS+GSM(850/900/1800/1900MHz)
Dimensions: 122.4 x 64.2 x 9.9 mm
Weight: 119g
Talk Time: 13 hours(2G), 6.5 hours(3G)
Standby: 750 hours(2G), 600 hours(3G)

Screen: 4.0 inches, 16.7million color WVGA “Super AMOLED” touchscreen, 480×800 resolution

Photo: 5MP
Video: 1280×720, 30fps
Earphone jack: 3.5mm
Wi-fi: 802.11 b/g/n

OS: Android 2.1
CPU: 1GHz Cortex A8 (Not 100% sure)
Internal Memory: 8G/16G (with micro-SD slot)
Bluetooth: V3.0 +HS (A2DP / AVRCP)
Radio: Yes, FM

Another late Review – Samsung i5700 Galaxy Spica

A couple of weeks ago, we had gotten a hold of a Samsung i5700 Galaxy Spica and tested it with a 2.1 ROM. Same as always, we lack a proper tool to take the pictures (or host it, for that matter)

In this review, we use HTC Hero as the control phone for come comparison. Galaxy Spica is slightly heavier than a Hero, but is slightly thinner.

Speedwise, with its 800MHz processor, we wouldn’t call this a lightning speed, but its Android 2.1 ROM is indeed way more smooth and is noticeably faster than any given custom 2.1 Hero ROM up to date. We proceeded to re-flash the HTC Hero back to Android 1.5 nearly immediately.

There is a lot of buttons for this innocent i5700. Just by bottom of phone we have dial, hook/power, return, menu, search, home, four-way cursors, and an OK button. On the right side, there are also a camera key on the right side which is disabled in the 2.1 ROM, and a Lock-screen button. On the left side there’s volume control. To make things worse, the arrangement of the buttons are not quite easily adaptable, especially the Return button.

On battery life, we have no special complaint since it beats Hero quite comfortably, as we didn’t need to charge it in the middle of the day, while we can’t probably make the Hero pass 4PM even with a brand new official battery (Model TWIN160). Look, we had to recharge the Hero!

The 3 megapixel camera is quite impressive and is comparable with (if not better than) the quality of a 5 megapixel camera of an HTC phone.

With most Android handsets over US$400, Samsung Galaxy Spica’s price is virtually unbeatable – we can get it for below US$250 here, less than half of price of the Google Nexus One. It’s definitely a nice budget choice for new users of Android.

A very late Review for Samsung Pixon12 (M8910)

I’m going to sell the Samsung Pixon12 M8910 that I’ve been using for like two months so as to get one with Wi-Fi tethering support.  Before I sell the phone, I’m going to write a very belated review of this powerful handset.

Startup Time
Startup time is quite fast. After pressing the power button for 2 seconds, the phone starts up, and in 24 seconds, it’s in a fully standby mode.  A couple of control experiment results: It takes 30 seconds for a LG Viewty KU990 to get ready from booting up, and 95 seconds for an HTC Hero with a “VillainROM 5.3” to be ready (more info about VillainROM here (external site)).

Voice quality
Voice quality is nice.  No big complaints were received from the other side of phone for a daily usage for two months.

Photo quality
Singlehandedly wins against all other phones in the market even after six years of its release. 12MP pictures with very fast refresh time, equipped with powerful LED and Xenon Flash.  Very fast reaction to the dedicated camera/video button; comprehensive configuration menu; and auto-focus tracing function just by touching the object in the screen.  Photos are of extremely high quality and the quality bests the competitor, SonyEricsson’s Satio, quite easily.  Its default mode is intelligent enough and one needs little configuration to take a photo with a camera level quality.  One minor caution:  Some phone cases available in the market are ill-designed and can cause awkward interaction to the flashlight.  It is recommended to remove the phone case before taking a photo with flashlight.

Video quality
720 x 480 limitless 30 frames per second video both make Pixon12 the best phone ever.  Also it plays video files smoothly.

Ringtone volume
Ringtone is loudly, and music is played properly.  Nice.

Screen
3.1 inch AMOLED screen, still displays pretty well under sunlight.

Gesture Feature
Gesture shortcut is more or less the same as Samsung JET S8000.  Basically you can set up different gestures to directly run any function/program in the lock screen.  It can be convenient, but it is definitely not for the ones who never keylocks their phone.

Alarm
Pixon12’s alarm system is so good that it deserves a paragraph here.  Multiple clocks with individual triggering days of week can be set up.  It also has the general option to enable or disable the alarm when the machine is off (the function is referred as “Auto Power” in the Alarm menu).  Auto Power gives incredible flexibility – you can disable when you turn your phone off during exams, while enable it in other occasions, for obvious example, at night.  Snooze and stop can be achieved easily – they are arc-shaped gestures in opposite directions, ensuring your snooze will not be fatal.

Response Time
There is no delay in most actions, and for the most basic function – i.e. talk, you can immediately pick up a call upon passing the call button.  This sounds silly, but you know it’s something iPhone can offer but Windows Mobile handset cannot.

Battery Life
This phone can last for around two days with normal usage (take and upload 5 pictures + 15 minutes talk), a little bit distance from our expectation.

Misc
Generally user-friendly, with a few glitches to blame:

• Touchscreen Sensitivity
  Resistance touchscreen is the issue here.  While it allows better hand-writing recognition, if you somehow forget to lock your phone and put into your pocket with other things in it, chances are Pixon12 will keep moving desktop widgets, or even dial random calls.  Be sure to keylock the phone.
• Keypad Issue
  Dialing those automated number is a nightmare.  You will have to keep unlocking the phone in order to press the dialpad.  You will get fed up with this really soon.
• Connection type
  It’s annoying to set Internet connection between 3G and Wi-fi.  It seems kind of silly to toggle every time you switch the connection method. This is particularly bad for uses without unlimited 3G tariff plan.

Additional features
150MB storage (with expansion of Micro-SD card up to 16G); Bluetooth 2.0 EDP; FM Radio; GPS positioning; “Communities” service – one touch upload of pictures or videos to Facebook/Flickr/Photobucket/YouTube/Picasa/MySpace; Dynamic Canvas; Find Music


Overall
The best choice if you need its unparalleled multimedia functions. With its current price of about US$420 (See the link below) as of April 2010, we consider it as a better than buying a mid-priced digital camera. We would recommend it to readers who do not need to Twitter a lot and goes to Internet every hour, and those who love to take photos but do not wish to always bring along a digital camera.