The iconic Razr phone, which once propelled Motorola to number two phone maker but later almost doomed the company because it could not snap out of its success, is back now as an Android phone with the same slim lines and sex appeal.

Shipping in Singapore in early November, it is the thinnest smartphone now with a girth of just 7.1mm thick. Living up to its name, the new Razr revealed yesterday tries once again to win on design – there are unique laser-cut aluminium accents and Kevlar fibre coating, to name two features.

It also packs in the hardware as far as the latest is concerned. The 4.3-inch Super AMOLED screen will offer a bright display for reading in sunlight, a 1.2GHz dual-core processor helps out in the everyday chores like Web surfing and a handy 8-meg camera shoots high-def videos at 1080p.

All that gear should put the Razr on par with most rivals except the very top-end in the Android world, like the Galaxy Nexus or HTC Sensation XL. In Wired’s hands-on test, the reviewer rightly said that all that extra hardware comes at 14 grams lighter than Apple’s latest iPhone 4S, which has a much smaller screen despite weighing more.

The only thing which the Razr would not score top marks on is the Android 2.3.5 operating system it is using. Being launched on the same day as Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus, which sports all the new features on Google’s Android 4.0 system, the Razr could not have asked for a worse day to be shown off. The good news, according to Engadget, is that Motorola would roll out the latest software update by early 2012.

When we say Motorola here, of course, we mean Motorola Mobility, the portion of the original Motorola that was spun off in January 2011 to concentrate on handsets (the other portion makes network equipment).

Back in 2004, when Motorola showed off the original Razr, the ultra-thin clamshell model attracted everyone from fashionistas to geeks because of its nifty design, and in spite of the company’s infamously hard to use interface. It would be a phone to spin off many derivatives, and encourage Motorola executives to believe they could eclipse then-leader Nokia.

Yet, Motorola was so happy enjoying the success that it missed the next wave – 3G connectivity, music playback and later, touch screens – and would end up losing loads of market share to Apple, Samsung and LG, which were faster to the game. Only with the Droid/Milestone, which sported the Android OS in late 2009 and early 2010, did its fortunes change once again.

Now with the new Razr, Motorola clearly still has that bit of mojo when it comes to a sleek design. Add the right hardware this time and the highly popular Android system, and the company would expect the Razr to do well despite the tough competition this holiday season. For sure, it won’t want a repeat of history.

After weeks of speculation, Amazon has finally unveiled its new Kindle Fire, a 7-inch tablet that will help sell its e-books and streaming movies and, according to experts, be the toughest rival yet to Apple’s iPad and iPad2 tablets. The main reason: its US$199 price tag.

Amazon’s challenge is unique in that it is not so much a hardware seller as one more interested in pushing its online services and e-commerce business through its devices.

The Fire comes with a ready suite of apps and services, such as its free movie streaming service to subscribers of its US$79-a-year Prime membership. Customers also get a 30-day trial Prime membership, when they take the tablet out of the box, according to Bloomberg.

Another plus for Amazon is that it is running Google’s Android operating system, which likely means it will be able to run a good number of apps in the market. Just a reminder: Amazon also runs its own Android store if you are not inclined to the regular Android Market by Google.

For an attractive US$199 tablet, there are trade-offs, of course. It doesn’t come with 3G, a camera or a microphone, as Engadget points out. In fact, early pictures show that it follows a rather simple Kindle interface that is aimed at doing one thing right – media consumption.

Unlike others before who have been keen to pack in more features into their tablets, Amazon has clearly done the opposite and put in as few extra options as possible to keep prices down.

Launching their own tablets earlier this year, Samsung and Motorola had pegged their tablets’ prices close to Apple’s current iPad 2, which starts from US$499. Yet, the challengers are still trailing the leader by a fair margin, because of Apple’s first-mover advantage in building an ecosystem of apps and developers, as well as a well-liked design.

Will the Amazon Kindle Fire work? I’d like to think it will gain traction. Just as an upgrade to the old Kindle, the new souped up version will be an attractive proposition to Amazon’s many e-book users. Even for folks who never wanted to buy a tablet in the first place, coming across the Fire’s US$199 price tag while shopping on Amazon or at a retailer in the United States will surely tempt their credit cards out of the wallets.

Think of the failed HP tablet. When the TouchPad was dumped on the market by the company for US$99, or S$118 here in Singapore, it easily sold out and HP had to make more of it to satisfy demand for what was essentially an end-of-life product.

Thus with its low price, the Fire looks set to move off the shelves in the coming months. Sure, it’s irritating to hear about another “iPad killer”, as the Fire will be called by many pundits, but it surely does look like a credible competitor.

For Singapore users, don’t be surprised to see local retailers bringing in grey imports in the coming weeks.

So having spent more than two weeks with mine (a 16GB Wifi Galaxy Tab 10.1), here’s my take on it.

If you only have half a minute, my quick answer is it’s better than the iPad2 ONLY if you’re a power user, but you’ll be better off with an iPad 2 if simplicity is what you’re looking for.

And if you have a little more time, here’s why.

The Android 3.1 operating system plus Samsung’s customised user interface on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the most polished of all Android tabs that I have seen. But like all Android tabs, there is a myriad of options that are customisable. Excellent for the power user who wants to set everything from the intensity of the vibration to the huge variety of virtual keyboard inputs, but this translates to too many options for the user looking for simplicity.

Another common complaint about Android tablets is that they are laggy. Well, they ARE laggy if you put a whole ton of widgets on the “desktop” – imagine your tablet having to update your news, email, Facebook feed, weather, stock quotes etc at the same time.

The iOS on the iPad 2 is smarter in that it doesn’t let you muck around with adding tons of widgets – so you’ll have to switch from one app to another other, but in return, each app can use the full computing power of the tablet and hence when you turn it on, that one single app that appears on your screen works quickly. But on the Galaxy Tab, here’s the solution – don’t clutter the Tab’s desktop with tons of widgets! Keep it nice and clean like this and you’ll find it much nippier.

The Galaxy Tab also isn’t right up there with in terms of sheer computing power. Take a look at the benchmarks from AnTuTu. It even lags behind the Galaxy S II smartphone!

But that’s all a little academic as I haven’t encountered an instance where the tablet choked on any particular processing task.

It does have some lovely built-in apps out of the box, such as its YouTube app and Pulse, a news feed aggregator. And through its email client, it does sync with your work Microsoft Exchange server (even an old Exchange server like my workplace’s Exchange 2003).

But to get the extra mile out of your tablet, here are some of the apps that you might want to load right out of the box:

Dolphin HD browser – wondering how to go to the top of the page while browsing? You can’t simply tap at the top of the screen like in the iPhone/iPad’s Safari. But the Dolphin browser lets you draw an ‘up arrow’ gesture to get there. And that’s just one of the way it beats the stock browser. Oh, and should already know that Adobe Flash Player works on both the stock browser and Dolphin HD.

MoboPlayer – can’t view your usual video files in the stock media player? Try it in MoboPlayer. It should fix it. Full stop.

IMO chat – instant messenger client that connects to almost any IM ecosystem that you can think of. Including Skype and Facebook.

And if you own a Synology NAS like I do, there are a few Synology apps that you’d want to load on your tablet to help you control your NAS – stuff like DS audio, DS finger, DS file and Synodroid.

So am I happy with my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1? Well, yes! And here’s a couple of reasons why.

All I had to do to transfer files between my computer and the tablet was to plug it into the USB port – no drivers, no software, no iTunes to install. I like.

Over here in Hong Kong, I can use Google Voice input in Cantonese to try to search for places where I only know how it sounds (but have no idea how it’s written) on Google Maps.

And Angry Birds is free. Enough said?

That said, I do have my iPhone to keep up with all the happenings in the iOS world.

Google has begun pushing out the Android 2.3.4 update to its Nexus S flagship phone, adding the highly anticipated feature of voice and video calling within GTalk. This puts it in direct competition with the likes of Skype, which also offers a similar service.

This update gives Android a leg up over iPhone’s FaceTime in two ways. For one, calls can be made over a 3G or 4G network (provided that the telco supports it) and over WiFi; the iPhone only lets you FaceTime over Wi-Fi.

Also, you can call your friends who are on Gmail and Google Talk on their computers without additional charge. In comparison, Apple charges you US$0.99 for the FaceTime app, which you must purchase through the Mac App Store.

While you’re on video call, any text chats from your chat partner will be overlaid over the screen. Clicking on any links will not stop your chat; your video will be paused and resumed whenever you’re ready.

The update will roll out over the next few weeks to the Nexus S, while other Android phones will only get it “in the future”. If you’re feeling impatient and adventurous, and can’t wait to see what your friend looks like on the other end of the line, Engadget reports that XDA Developers have provided a direct download link for you to install manually.

But be sure to know what you’re doing or your phone might turn into a brick before you know it! Meanwhile, check out how it works in the video below:

Weeks after rumours of a second Google Nexus phone surfaced on blogs everywhere, the Samsung-made Nexus S has finally been unveiled last night (SGT) by the search giant.

UPDATE: The phone will reach shops in Singapore in late Q1 2011, “subject to successful negotiations with local partners”, says Samsung. It adds that specs will also be slightly different if it makes its way here – the operative word being “if”, so there’s no guarantee it’s coming to here.

The biggest thing here is, of course, the new version of Android, codenamed Gingerbread.

What’s new? To users, the main thing could be the easier copy-and-paste function for webpages, where apparently, you only need a single tap to select text. If that applies to e-mail messages as well – impossible on the current http://www.techgoondu.com/2010/01/06/say-hi-to-the-google-phone/ – that would be great.

Other than that, there’s a slicker black notification bar and an on-screen keyboard that supports multi-touch and promises to make typing easier, says Google.

Things appear more interesting under the hood, where a more aggressive task manager is said to keep things running more smoothly. Hardware-wise, the most interesting is the slightly curved screen, which is said to make the phone conform more closely to your face while you’re calling. Nice idea, but we’d have to get a hands-on to see if it works really well.

Among the new stuff, there’s also an NFC (near-field communications) chip built in that, if done right, could turn your phone into a digital wallet to pay for stuff at a shop or even check in for a flight.

Yes, I know you’ve heard all that before. Nokia’s tried it half-heartedly. Singapore’s telecom operators have run trials with the government here, spending precious dollars on the technology, but it’s just not taken off in most places because the ecosystem just hasn’t pushed it hard enough with enough devices and services.

The only place where mobile wallets have taken off in a big way is in Japan, where NTT DoCoMo’s proprietary Osaifu Keitai is widely used to buy noodles at convenience stores and even to log in at karaoke lounges to load your favourite song lists. Can Google replicate this success? Early days yet, I’d say.

The rest of the hardware on the Nexus S is not a surprise anymore, with Samsung’s excellent 4-inch Super AMOLED screen seen in its earlier Galaxy S, which has recently been upgraded here in Singapore to Android 2.2. There’s a Cortex A8 processor running at 1GHz, a 5-meg camera and a 1,500 mAH battery in the 129-gram frame, so the specs are up there in the game.

But the real big step up is likely not in this Nexus S, but perhaps this prototype that Engadget says should be showed off at the upcoming Mobile World Congress show in February next year. Ship dates for that could be well into 2011, so meanwhile, the Nexus S should keep its place at the top.

Like the Nexus One before it, this “Pure Google” phone will do away with any software “wrappers” or add-ons, so that’s great news if you hated Samsung’s interface. Plus, you can expect the Nexus S to be the first to get the latest Android system upgrades over the air, as they become available.

What do I make of the Nexus S? On paper, it’s a little like a souped up Galaxy S, but it’s not a game-changing step up. It looks also to be a “developers’ phone” that Google is pushing out, even though it is sold in the United States at Best Buy after Dec 16, and in Carphone in the Britain after Dec 20.

Having said that, a Super AMOLED screen is always welcome, and the Nexus S fits the bill if you’ve been wanting one with guarantees of easy future OS updates (the Galaxy S wasn’t the easiest to upgrade – see the comments on our article).

I’d be checking out the Nexus S more if I didn’t have a scratched, cracked and abused Nexus One that is still chugging away extremely well after almost a year. It helps too that the old phone will get a nice Gingerbread man after having a Froyo dessert earlier this year.

A quick walk through the yearly Mobile World Congress – the biggest mobile phone show around – and you’ll realise you are actually gazing at a crystal ball that shows what people will tote in their hands in the coming months.

Here in Barcelona, as this year’s phone extravaganza kicks off today, the power is clearly with Google’s Android. With Sony Ericsson, Motorola and China’s Huawei showing off world-beating Android phones this week, it’s easy to think 2010 will be the year of the Google phone OS. (HTC has also launched two hot numbers in the Legend and Nexus One-lookalike Desire).

But very clearly, rivals are not going away quietly. Microsoft, Samsung and Nokia all have their sights aimed at the emerging powerhouse OS.

And what phone you’d carry at the end of 2010 will likely be decided by a war of phone OSes, each competing to offer easier touch interfaces, more apps to download and better links to your friends on social networks.

Samsung yesterday showed off its self-made bada OS, something that you’d have expected the South Korean electronics juggernaut to have come out with earlier, to be honest.

Samsung is throwing in serious money behind its OS (including a multi-million-dollar developer contest), though it’s not clear if bada will win through in the end, if rival phone makers see it as a threat and keep away.

Samsung itself is also careful. With the exception of the dying Symbian, it says it will continue to support other OSes such as Android, so bada will have to slog it out with other new OSes launched here.

These include Windows Phone 7 from Microsoft. Among the improvements: hookups to Xbox Live and Zune, which means your Live gamer info as well as music will be sync’d on the phone. There are also “live tiles” which show what your friends are up to on social networks.

In a bid to tie up all its services on the phone, Microsoft has also designed a Bing button for quick search. Apps + hardware + services = success? Well, if Google and Apple can do it, why can’t Microsoft try?

If the theme of OSes seems to run in the first day of the show, then surely you would not discount top phone maker Nokia.

The Finnish giant, somewhat forgotten of late because of the buzz with Android and the iPhone hype, has struck a deal with Intel to develop a software platform for future mobile devices that include phones as well as tablets.

The name: MeeGo. Yes, my head is also filled with thoughts of a Malay dish with yellow noodles. I also question whether it will make that much a difference, considering that it now merges the previously promising Maemo and Moblin software platforms. Products running on MeeGo are expected by the end of the year.

Where’s Nokia going with this? It desperately needs a good OS to kick it back into gear in the top-end market (it still does very well in low-end phones) and this Linux-based project better bear fruit.

Failing that, the number one phone maker could find itself doing the unthinkable – using someone else’s OS for its future phones.

Okay, enough about OSes. What about the actual phones that impress?

So far, the phones I’ve seen and like are the Samsung Wave, which comes with its new bada OS, and Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X10 mini pro, a compact version of the bigger Android-driven X10.

The Wave screen is excellent and the phone ran without lag during a quick hands-on I had here at the Samsung booth. The SE Xperia X10 mini comes with a nifty keyboard and is a speedster when it comes to its touch-screen. Its small size makes it easily pocketable – the ladies will love it.

So, it looks like Motorola aren’t the only ones boosted by the open-source Android. SE, a maker of great phones all this while but somewhat lacking in the OS department, seems to be making Android count as well.

(I’m in Spain to cover the Mobile World Congress show – something I’ve done since it was in scenic but overcrowded Cannes, France – for The Straits Times Digital Life. Look out for the complete coverage in next week’s issue.)

I thought so too – so I tried out the latest Google Mobile App‘s voice search feature on my Nokia E71 (which means the S60 flavour of the app).

The app is basically kinda like a one-stop-shop to quickly link to and search through Google stuff, so you will need a data connection (wifi or cellphone network), and the other mobile apps (Gmail, Google Maps etc) loaded if you want to fire it up from the above home screen.

If you enable its location-based function, it’s supposed to yield more relevant results. But it didn’t seem to do anything for me in terms of returning more relevant search results so I shut that feature off.

The above option is probably the most important setting to make your voice searches more accurate. But alas, while there’s “Indian English”, there’s no Singlish! How can like that? Die lah.

I mucked around with the British and American English options and found that you really do need to get your accents right. E.g. for word spelt “fast”, do you say ‘fahst’ or ‘f-ae-st’? And for Singaporeans with a mish-mash of accents, this might really get you thinking about your pronunciation.

Overall, the voice recognition was good – only if you spoke in phrases or sentences. Recognising single words remains a huge challenge and with all the exceptions in the English language, it really is no surprise that it choked over words like “flour”. I’ll go test it out some more on some American-English speaking friends but I’d imagine it will still struggle with single words.

Specifically on the E71, I think I’d still prefer to bash out my search term with the little keyboard. But on normal keypad-only phones, or for touchscreen phones with finicky virtual keyboards, voice search could be faster.

So if you have an Andriod (of course), BlackBerry, iPhone or S60 phone, give this app a go.

Oh, and when I said “techgoondu”, it gave me … “taekwondo”. So do you think it will recognise “shingz”?

Once in a while, a phone can come along and seriously wow you just by its looks.

HTC’s new “hero” phone, aptly called the Hero, is one such gizmo that is just begging to be carried in your hands. Dressed in white and dark brown, this looks at first like a HTC Touch Diamond 2 with Google Android in its DNA. But look closer, and you’d find a few surprises.

Announced yesterday, the 135-gram phone comes with the a generous 3.2-inch screen, 5-meg camera, 7.2Mbps 3.5G downloads and many other goodies.

More importantly, it appears to be a real multi-touch phone that lets you “pinch” the screen to zoom in and out of a webpage, a la the iPhone.

But if you think this is just another copy of the iPhone, then you’re sadly mistaken. Take a quick online tour of the gizmo at the HTC site, and it’s clear the handset maker and Google have come up with an interface that possibly matches and extends beyond the iPhone’s.

For starters, widgets appear to be easily moved on screen, and you also can choose which screen suits your mood (“weekend or “work”, for example).

Another nice touch comes from the integration of all your transactions with a contact, from your SMSes to e-mails to Facebook conversations or Flikr photos. In other words, you can just slide your thumb along and see all these interactions you’ve had with your friend (or boss) faster than ever.

I’ve been an HTC fan since the Touch Diamond, which I still use, and I’ve been particularly impressed by the Androids that have come out of the Taiwanese phone maker. More than just clones of one popular model, these “half-humans” are getting new features with each release, and HTC looks hard to stop this year with the Hero.

Forget the iPhone 3GS re-spin. Instead, look out for the Hero when it is out in July in Europe “later in the summer” in Asia.

We’ll check for more details on local pricing when they become available, likely in the coming month or two.

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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.

One of the “customised” apps here is called SG SavvyShopper, which lets Android users use their phone to scan barcodes of stuff you see at Sheng Siong Supermarket and compare prices on the fly. The phone actually identifies the item and goes online to search for the prices and returns them on-screen.

It’s not totally new, of course. It’s the same thing that was launched with overseas versions of the phone. But there are some nifty “integrated” stuff as well, which according to my quick hands-on today, are pretty impressive.

First off, the phone is fast to move between menus – faster than my old HTC Touch Diamond.

It’s also tightly integrated with online services. You can, for example, share any link you see on a webpage with a friend by simply tapping and selecting from a pop-up menu (unfortunately, you can only send through Gmail now). Another hit for me: the little trackball at the front is perfect for scrolling up and down a webpage.

SingTel says it would ship the phone in black for a start, and if there’s demand, it may bring in the white one later. Either way, I think the ID (industrial design) and finish still have some ways to go. Not that the phone is ugly. But just put it beside a Nokia E71 or Samsung Omnia and you can tell how much more accomplished the latter two are in their touch and feel.

SingTel also explained that they hadn’t gone for the new HTC Magic, because it felt that the market here would prefer a device with a Qwerty keyboard (really, then why did it bring in the iPhone first?).

Google folks here didn’t want to say how long SingTel would have the exclusive deal on the HTC Dream. But if you want one without being tied to SingTel, you can always buy one at Sim Lim or Lucky Plaza. Or better yet, sign up as an Android developer and buy a US$399 (S$613) developer version (comes with special logo at the back too!).

Anyway, here’s the info for SingTel’s plans if you are interested to buy from the telco:

* Applicable for all new and recontracting customers across compatible phone models.
** Applies after unlimited data bundle is exhausted
*** After $200 trade-in

Source: SingTel

As anticipated, Google launched the first phone with its Android OS just a while ago in New York. The device, also known as the T-Mobile G1 and HTC Dream, comes with the following specs:

-Qualcomm 528MHz chip
-ROM: 256MB, RAM: 192MB
-156 grams with battery
-3.2-inch TFT screen
-HSDPA up to 7.2Mbps (making its one of the fastest ones out there and able to take advantage of StarHub’s speedy network here).
-3.2-megapixel camera
-Trackball (interesting!)

It will go on sale in the US for US$179 on Oct 22. I’ll find out more about Singapore pricing and update you folks soon about Google’s new foray into the mobile space.

UPDATE: HTC has declined to say when the phone will be out in the rest of the world (outside the US and Europe). But if I’ll be surprised if they don’t make it here in the next 2-3 months (the Diamond was here in SG shortly after its Europe launch)