Nokia has stopped the music on its year-long unlimited song downloads that come bundled in phones in all but six countries, as the world’s largest cellphone maker readies for a tough 2011.

The service, launched to much fanfare as Comes With Music in Singapore in early 2009, enables users of selected phones to download as many songs as possible from the Nokia music store, for a year.

However, the phone maker has now said it will stop the bundling in 27 markets, including Singapore, and will keep it going in only China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey and South Africa. …

Here’s something for all you sweaty joggers and gym regulars – a “wearable” Walkman MP3 player that is not just water-resistant and but also washable.

The latest Sony Walkman W, launched today, also comes without a long wire dangling down the side. The S$129 device appears like a one-piece construction that wraps around the back of your head and is secured onto the ears with ear buds that remind one of Bluetooth headsets.

This means no more getting tangled with an irritating wire either running to your iPod hooked up on your arm or stored in your shorts pocket. …

Philips GoGear Opus

Philips may not be on many portable gear head’s shortlists of brands when it comes to buying a new portable music player, but its new model’s support for FLAC could swing a few votes its way.

The GoGear Opus is one of a slew of new releases by the Dutch electronics giant in Singapore today, and the only one in that bunch – as well as one of the few in the market – to supprt Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), an open source lossless compression standard that more than a few discerning listeners have told me is sonically a tad better than rival codecs like Apple Lossless and WMA lossless (although I can’t really discern those differences – all lossless codecs sound as good to me).

A rival to Apple’s Nano in terms of features and price, the decidedly chunkier Opus has a larger screen real estate compared to the Nano (2.8 diagonal inches vs 2.0-inch) but also costs slightly more ($339 vs $328 for the 16GB version; $299 vs $248 for an 8GB version).

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There are 4GB worth of reasons to love Apple’s new and very small iPod Shuffle. But there is one reason why I don’t – lack of controls on the player.

In making the new Shuffle so small, Apple’s designers decided to ship some of the heft to the earphones – smart, really. The new Shuffle relegates crucial controls like volume, song selection and play functions to a captive control strip attached to Apple’s earphones.

So you are pretty much stuck, unless other earphone makers start making earphones with Shuffle controls (Monster has already said it will roll out a series).

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What does a goalie do as he prepares to step up to a penalty shootout at the end of a gruelling 120-minute cup final? Turn on his iPod.

That’s what Manchester United goalie Ben Foster did yesterday, as the Carling Cup final between the Red Devils and Tottenham Hotspurs moved to the lottery of a penalty shootout after a 0-0 stalemate.

According to Soccernet, he checked out how his opponents would take their kicks by watching past videos of them on an iPod just before taking his place between the posts.

Soon after, he saved two of the three spot kicks that Spurs took, allowing Man Utd to win 4-1 on penalties eventually. …

Okay, on to the other Sitex show bargains on the first day.

One tempting deal comes from Samsung, which is selling its new 14.7-megapixel NV100HD camera for S$599, with loads of freebies thrown in. 3 x 4GB SD card, card reader, 5-in-1 cleaning kit, extra lithium battery, tripod, etc and etc, anyone?

This nifty little number (see below) also shoots HD videos and has a nice 28mm wide-angle lens. And it also has a handy 3-inch touch-screen as well. Besides the wide-angle option, this is a worthy update over and seems a better buy than Samsung’s own S$549 NV24HD, which comes with an older 10-meg lens but better 24mm wide-angle.

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On the face of it – a rather “thin” face of it – Creative seems to have finally come up with a solid MP3 player with its Zen X-Fi.

This little gizmo is slim at just 12.8mm (a few credit cards thick) and should fit into the pocket well. Yet it has most of what the pricier – and longer – Apple iPod Touch has and more.

Wi-Fi? Check. Video playback (including DivX and WMV)? Check. SD card slot for additional expansion? Check.

Wait, there’s also built-in FM and a microphone, so it should come in handy for recording meetings and, for us reporters, for recording what interviewees say (and later deny!).

Best of all, the price is right. Creative’s online store is selling the 32GB version for S$399 – that’s less than the S$848 what Apple asks for its 32GB iPod Touch.

With such capacities, there’s finally enough capacity for the whopping 20+GB of music that is quickly expanding on my PC, thanks mainly to my encoding stuff in WAV instead of MP3 these days.

I’ve always said MP3 players, unlike computers, are lifestyle products and Apple’s done a better job with them than a “PC” company like Creative. But would you pay twice as much for a player with less stuff just to look cool?

I know I didn’t buy a Sony Walkman or Discman just because it’s Sony in the past – I bought an Aiwa or Panasonic that played (mostly) just as well. Now, after two iPods, maybe it’s time for me to consider Creative seriously.