Thinking of junking your digital camera when you next go on a holiday? The Satio, Sony Ericsson’s new wonder-phone with a 12-meg lens, may just fit your bill.

I got a hands-on with SE’s hero phone for this year at a lavish – if rather painful – event on the sidelines of the CommunicAsia show here, and came away pretty impressed. But later on the event. First, the phone.

First impressions: The touch-screen menus are pretty quick to move between features and you get around the dozens of menus without much lag, unlike on earlier touch-screen devices. There’s none of the fancy3D flip stuff you see on LG’s new S-Class devices, but the Symbian-based S60 OS appears to be a big improvement over SE’s previously laggy UIQ operating system. …

You may have heard about the massive Samsung and LG launches here at the Singapore Expo already, but the star is the really the touch-screen phones that these two Korean bigwigs have rolled out.

Samsung’s Jet – reported first here by Gin Lee last night – was out on show with its large screen and rather quick interface. At a hands-on here, I felt the Jet’s response was pretty fast as a touch-screen device – certainly better than Samsung’s last effort in the shape of the Omnia.

I think Apple should really look out for the rest of the pack which are quickly upping the ante on touch-screen gizmos. While it still enjoys the endless hype from magazines and newspapers, it knows its recent 3GS is not much more than a facelift. Its rivals are going for complete overhauls. …

One piece of good news from this morning’s CommunicAsia announcements is that ultra-fast broadband is coming to homes in Singapore via a fibre optic network as soon as September.

This means you have to have your house or apartment wired up with these new cables. You can check here by typing in your postal code at the website of Opennet, the company tasked with rolling it out.

Don’t go to the www.opennet.com.sg URL that the official press releases point you to, because the opening page has problems loading on many browsers. Go instead to rollout.opennet.com.sg.

Well, I checked my place in Upper Serangoon and I should have fibre installed as early as Oct 2009. Hooray!

UPDATE: The rollout date is only for laying the fibre optic cable to your home, the Opennet folks have clarified at a press conference here. Nucleus Connect, the OpCo, will “light up” the fibre optics” and enable a broadband service later. I sense some confusion coming along…

Singapore’s free islandwide Wi-Fi service will be extended for another four years, until 2013, in a move that will delight users who have enjoyed not just free surfing on the go, but increased competition in telecom services as a result of the free offering.

From September, users will also get a speed boost of up to 1Mbps (from the previous 512Kbps) and come January next year, they will enjoy a seamless log-in process – a welcome improvement to the countless users who have had problems logging in on-site.

Launched in December 2006, Wireless@SG covers cafes, libraries and other public places and has jumpstarted the previously stagnant broadband scene in Singapore, leading to cheaper and more varied services in the past three years. …

Singapore’s ultra high-speed broadband service, capable of offering speeds of 1Gbps, will go commercial as early as the first half of 2010, earlier than many observers have expected.

The country’s telecom regulator,the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), had just awarded the tender for the network’s OpCo (operating company) to StarHub months ago, and the NetCo contract to SingTel late last year.

However, the multi-billion dollar project seems to be picking up fast, with commercial services coming to some users in less than a year, according to Singapore’s Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Lui Tuck Yew, at the opening of the imbX show here. …

Samsung Jet

Samsung launched what it calls a phone that is “smarter than a smartphone” at a press event earlier today. This is the touch-screen  Samsung Jet, which boasts of some interesting features including:

Speed – 800 MHz processor
Graphics – 16 million colours in a 3.1-inch AMOLED display
Web – Dolfin web browser lets you view up to five web pages at the same time. Multi-tasking capable
Video – supports DivX, Xvid and H.263/4

Other Specs – HSPDA 3.6 Mbps, 5 Mega camera, 30fps video recording, music player, MS Exchange Active Sync, A-GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 1100 mAh battery
…

If you haven’t checked out Alfred’s post on the first day, do so!

I was a man on a mission at this PC Show as I was looking to replace my old cranky desktop, which had parts of it dying and failing on me over a period of six months. An old hard disk was the first to go (trashed), followed by a stuttering video card (repaired) and now the DVD drive has totally gone kaput. Can’t blame the old dear; the machine is a cobbled monstrosity of some very old parts mixed in with new ones that has lived quite a rich and long enough life.

So at the show I was looking mostly at desktops and netbooks (tempted to get one even though my old laptop is still perfectly fine — a typical geek itch), when I came across very cool touchscreen PCs at both the HP and Dell booths. I’ve been to the last three IT fairs, and this is a new product I haven’t seen at a fair before.

…

Sweaty crowds, loudspeakers and lelong prices. What else would you expect from the latest quarterly IT bazaar happening at Suntec City from today to Sunday, right?

Crowds at the ongoing PC Show seem thinner than the previous IT Show in March, perhaps due to the fears over the H1N1 swine flu, or maybe the bleak economy is finally getting to some folks. Sony, noticeably, did not turn up with a bang as before – there were no Level 2 booths you’ve come to see at Suntec City.

Still, there are bargains to be had. And here are my own few Goondu recommendations.

1. LG 32-inch HD-ready TV (S$499)
With 37- and 40-inchers going for as low as $899, the smaller screens are obviously free-falling in price. One deal I saw at the LG booth was an HD-ready 32-incher with a built-in terrestial DTV tuner going for a mere S$499. …

Soundbuzz, one of the first online music sources in Singapore, is officially shutting its store come July 15, even as more online music stores are opening with a wave of optimism surrounding music downloads.

In a note to subscribers last Friday, as well as on its website, the company said everything will be taken down after July 15 midnight, marking a sorry end to a bright dot.com poster boy of yesteryear. …

Nokia launched its 2009 flagship model, the Nokia N97 with much fanfare in Kuala Lumpur on Friday, ahead of the Palm Pre and the new Apple iPhone which are expected to be available in the next few months.

Techgoondu had the chance to lay our hands on a Nokia N97, which Nokia says will bring the power of a mobile computer to a compact package.

The N97 is well-designed in several aspects, including its large 3.5-inch touch screen, solid build quality with a slide-out screen and an extensive suite of onboard software. …