The first Google Android phone will go sale in Singapore tomorrow with prices ranging from S$238 to S$448, and will be tied to SingTel’s cellphone plans just like the iPhone here.

These cellphone plans range from S$39 to S$95 a month, and users have to sign up two-year contracts with SingTel.

That was essentially the only new info from a rather lavish SingTel event this afternoon, which finally launched the Google Android phone, known also as the G1, or HTC Dream, here. Users in the US and Europe, of course, already had the phone for several months.

Asked about this, SingTel and HTC both said the delay was because they wanted to bundle in more local apps into the device, which comes with a large touch-screen, speedy 3.5G as well as a nifty slide-out Qwerty keyboard that’s great for surfing the Web and messaging. …

My beloved and well-worn Nokia E71 now has a pair of bigger and smaller siblings. The Finnish phone maker yesterday did a glitzy catwalk launch of the E75 (left in the picture above) and E55 (right), which also saw the unveiling of other new phones, at the swanky club Zirca (the former Ministry of Sound). Nokia held the Singapore launch in conjunction with its new product unveiling at the Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona this week.

Here are my 2 cents on both models after a hurried hands-on session at the event:

Heavier and chunkier, though smaller in girth, than the E71, the E75 is comfortably one of the sveltest slider smartphones phones in the market. What I like: the 3.5-mm headphones jack, the motion-sensitive screen that pivots when you turn the phone’s orientation between landscape and portrait, and the fact that it is essentially an E71 on steroids.

What didn’t float my boat was keeping the screen size the same – 2.4-inch, 240×320 pixels – as the E71 despite the bulking up. Really, Nokia, why? Okay, you get a more spacious keyboard, but the E71 is already dandy in that department. So the payback for the extra bulk is for the numeric keypad and traditional phone styling.

The skinny E55, on the other hand, comes with the same screen size as the E71, as well as a 3.5-mm headphones jack, despite losing weight and being smaller.

…

The writing’s been on the wall, but StarHub is finally going to turn off its analog cable TV channels and go fully digital from June 30, 2009.

Already, 96 per cent of its cable customers are on digital – a result of switching over customers since 2004, when the first digital set-top boxes went out to homes.

Over the years, StarHub’s mostly used the “carrot” rather than “stick” to encourage homes to go digital. New programmes were offered on its digital tiers, and when old analog boxes went bonkers, subscribers were encouraged to switch to the digital boxes.

Then, there were stuff like the Hubstation, essentially a digital set-top box rolled in with a video recorder, free phone line and 1Mbps broadband. Why would you want an analog box that has been around since 1995?

I actually think digital TV hadn’t come fast enough. …

The BlackBerry Curve 8900 was launched in Hong Kong earlier this week. So it’s touted as the “thinnest and lightest full-QWERTY BlackBerry”. OK, next. What’s really whipping up a bigger … er .. storm and much more eagerly anticipated is the touchscreen BlackBerry Storm.

While it’s not yet officially launched here, parallel import versions of the Storm (some which are Vodafone labelled) are surfacing at about HK$4,000 or less. Just do a Hong Kong Yahoo Auctions search for it here. Or if you’re here, go check it out at the (in)famous cellphone/computer malls.

I’ve only managed to have a cursory touch and feel of the Storm which belongs to one of my colleagues and my initial immediate impression was that it really had some weight, and it feels kinda chunky. Specs put it at 155g – the iPhone 3G weighs in at 133g so that explains it.

Its much talked about ‘tactile’ touchscreen does indeed seem to work pretty well and the big, bright 3.25 inch screen should make it THE multimedia BlackBerry. And they thoughtfully included a ‘normal’ 3.5mm audio jack.

But since unlimited data here still ain’t cheap, I think its lack of Wi-Fi will leave it in the hands of folks who have their companies pay for their unlimited data BlackBerry lines.

Journalism is dying.

Or to be more precise, old-school newspapers and traditional media is dying. Venerable newspapers like the Chicago Tribune have filed for bankruptcy protection, and even the New York Times is under threat.

I was reading this recent interesting commentary by Walter Isaacson — former TIME editor and CNN board member — on how to save journalism using the “old’ idea of charging for content instead of giving it for free online.

This, he says, will pay for good journalism. If good journalism goes the way of the dodo, it will be a loss to society.

I’m not entirely convinced that some newspapers failing is a bad thing. Old media business models will die, but good journalism will survive in some form.

…

After months of waiting, phone lovers in Asia will finally get their hands on the HTC Dream, the first gadget to use Google’s Android operating system.

The phone will be sold exclusively – for an unspecified time – by SingTel in Singapore and its subsidiary Optus in Australia.

Though the telco is tight-lipped about launch dates, Techgoondu understands that the phone will likely be out by the end of this month or latest by next month. SingTel is expected to unveil prices in the coming weeks. …

This Valentine’s Day, one way to impress your girlfriend or wife (or maybe even a guy friend) is to buy a pink gadget.

Going by the press releases we’ve got of late, technology firms seem to be on a roll in coming up with that pink gizmo to fit a girl’s tastes.

Sony Ericsson is one. Three of its popular phone models now come in pink, encased in faceplates that used to be “professional” black/white/silver (maybe it got feedback that these colours were too “man” or “boring” for the ladies). …

I’m really glad that the Gothere.sg folks got their 90 seconds of fame when Minister of Finance Tharman Shanmugaratnam mentioned them in the recent unveiling of the Singapore budget.

Gothere has built a darn heck of a great transport site in Singapore, and the guys have both passion and great ideas. Hopefully their S$100K project with LTA will allow them to grow into something more robust.

Caught up with them recently at Garag3, the NUS incubator for “mad geniuses”. When I was there chatting with them, they showcased their streetlevel views function to me, which I thought was pretty darn cool. Similar to Google’s StreetViews (available in US, Australia, Japan and parts of Europe), Gothere is first Singapore street directory site to incorporate such a function.

…

The latest AMD Phenom IIs, while closing the performance gap on Intel’s new dual-core chips, are no benchmark-busting CPUs.

Fortunately, the perennial challenger and alternative CPU maker is doing much better on the graphics front, with its speedy ATI Radeon 4870×2 chips still being king of the hill. And, for once, AMD is not sitting on its pants as the competitor (this time, Nvidia) closes in.

Just a week after Nvidia’s latest GeForce 280 series drivers were released, AMD posted its brand new Catalyst 9.1 drivers. This was out in the United States on Jan 29.

How do they perform? Some hardware sites are reporting that there’re some improvements in the popular Far Cry 2 and Crysis Warhead first-person shooters. Others are a bit disappointed with the lack of even more speed to be squeezed out of the hardware.

Either way, you can download Catalyst 9.1 here and try it out yourself.

Start-up@ Singapore 2009, a national business plan competition with a 10-year pedigree, is giving away this to potential winners, amongst other goodies like S$200,000 cash prizes.

The initial executive summary phase has been extended to 6th Feb (Friday), according to SgEntrepreneurs in a post today. You still have about 4 days or so to hand in your submission.

For more information on what this national business plan competition is all about, here’s a FAQ, and here’s why the deadline was extended.