Talk about mobile TV brings me back many years – maybe as many as five years – when the first 3G phones came to town in all their bulky and overheated glory. Who can forget how pixelated and jerky the mobile TV or videos were when they were demo’d on these early 3G wonders?

Thus, seeing StarHub launch its new mobile TV offering today reminds me of how far we have come in mobile phone technology.

It’s no wonder StarHub’s new CEO Neil Montefiore, facing the media for the first time in his new role, kicked off the launch today by stressing how much things have changed since those lousy mobile TV programmes of old.

Phones today, he notes, are faster and smarter. Networks too, are keeping up with bandwidth over the air. And finally, the content is appreciated now  – young audiences are no longer averse to watching news or sports on the small screen.

What do StarHub have on offer then? Essentially 24 channels – including CNN, Disney and TVBJ – will be viewable on the small screen for just $1 a day. If you like what you see and want to view it everyday, there’s a $25-a-month subscription that you can sign up for. …

Just a day after we got our claws on the Motorola Dext, we managed to slime up the screen of an upcoming Motorola Milestone with our first hands-on with the much-awaited Android 2.0 phone.

Yes, folks, the slide-out keyboard gizmo touted as a step up from the Dext is coming to Singapore within the next couple of months from StarHub.

How do we know? The phone was put on demo today at StarHub’s launch of its new mobile TV service, and the much-awaited Moto Milestone was among a list of devices that will roll out with the service the latest by March.

Whether or not StarHub has got an exclusive deal on this device, the folks here today were pretty coy. But it’s interesting that SingTel, while launching the Dext yesterday, mentioned nothing about rolling out the Milestone themselves.

We also don’t have any pricing details for now. But we can say, from a quick hands-on, that it will be one of the few phones that can really challenge the current “it” phone – the Google Nexus One.

My first impression is that Motorola’s Milestone is a well-made phone, in the sense that the feel is solid. The keys also seem like they can take a pounding from compulsive SMS and e-mail users. …

A nice “plugged in” social media phone. That’s how I’d view the new Motorola Dext, which is being put on sale by SingTel  this Saturday (Jan 23).

One of Moto’s “comeback” phones featuring the now-hot Google Android OS, the Dext comes with a slide-out Qwerty keyboard as well as an ample 3.1-inch screen offering a not-too-shabby 320 x 480 resolution.

SingTel is the first to bring the phone to Asia, as part of an exclusive deal with Moto that will last at least six months. According to Spiros Nikolakopoulos, Motorola’s vice-president and general manager for Asia Pacific and international distribution, this exclusivity can be up for renewal.

This means SingTel will have, for a while, one of the best Android devices, sans the Google Nexus One, of course.

What of the hands-on experience? First off, the keyboard, with the “popped up” keys, are easy to type on, especially if you really don’t fancy learning how to type SMSes on an on-screen keyboard. …