The internet is abuzz with Apple’s lawsuit today in the US, claiming that HTC has infringed about 20 of their patents. Gizmodo has an excellent breaking story of this, and they quote responses from both the Apple and HTC camps.

If successful, Apple’s action will get HTC’s phones banned — both Androids and Windows Mobiles — from being sold in the US, and be awarded “treble damages” and “interest at the maximum rate allowable by law”. Going by the list of patents Apple is whacking HTC for, it sure sounds like a hit job. It’s a big middle finger to the mobile phone industry not to mess with Apple, which had already tussled with Nokia in lawsuits late last year.

Not going to rehash the newspoints that you can find covered better elsewhere, but just some quick comments of my own.

Apple did shake up the mobile phone industry when it debuted with the iPhone in 2007, which birthed the touch phone genre. I can’t even remember when was the last recent phone I reviewed that was not a touch phone, so for this we have Apple to thank.

But of course the rest of the mobile manufacturers fought back, and this led to a flourishing touch phone market. End result: More choice for consumers, and Asian brands like HTC and Samsung are doing well in the touch phone space.

So of course Apple nips it in the bud by throwing roadblocks at the competition, namely number two (Nokia) and three (HTC). And with Android gaining fast ascendance, whack the phone manufacturer, i.e. HTC, which has rolled out the most Android phones thus far. Doh!

What these lawsuits will do: Not very much, I predict. Even if Apple gets its way, the US is not the only phone market in the world. In Asia alone, mobiles are huge, and we have two of the world’s most populous nations — India and China — in our patch.

Voice search for your phone – sounds good yeah?

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).

Google Mobile 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.

Source: sohu.com

Source: sohu.com

Source: IT168.com

Early images of China Mobile’s Ophone has surfaced in recent days. Lest you think this is another iPhone rip-off, the Ophone is being made by Lenovo, and will use China Mobile’s Android-based OMS (Open Mobile System) to be launched by the second quarter of 2009.

So far, very little is known about the phone’s full specs, apart from a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, a Marvell 624MHz processor, a microSD card slot and a mini USB connector. It is expected to work on China Mobile’s homegrown TD-SCDMA network.

OMS is built by Borqs, a Chinese mobile platform developer, and can operate on TD-SCDMA/EDGE/GSM networks. Chinese new reports have indicated that China Mobile will not mandate the use of OMS exclusively on TD-SCDMA handsets, preferring to leave the decision to handset makers.

In the first part of the roundup, we tallied the entries on the Techgoondu LG TV contest, and Apple iPhone emerged as the favourite gadget of 2008.

In this article, we’ll be looking at some of the other gadgets that our readers picked, and why they picked these devices.

The Techgoondu readers have spoken.

For our recently concluded contest, in which we’re giving away an almost brand new S$5,000 42-inch LCD TV (kindly sponsored by LG), the favourite geek gadget of 2008 is a product that needs little introduction.

It has been ubiquitous in tech news throughout this year. It has legions of rabid fans, and quite a few detractors as well.

How’d you like an unlocked iPhone 3G at S$878?

Local newspaper Apple Daily has reported yesterday (see the 27th Sep edition if you read traditional Chinese) that parallel imported iPhone 3Gs here in Hong Kong are now priced between HK$4,780 (SG$878) to HK$4,880, while the 16GB version is between HK$5,780 (SG$1061) to HK$6,080.

That’s HK$620 or about SG$114 less than what the HK Apple Store is selling the 8GB version for.

The cons of saving that bit of money are – no local warranty, and the article reports that most of the parallel imported iPhones, which are from the US, have a SIM slot that is slightly different and requires the addition of a copper piece to make local SIMs (HK and SG SIMs are the same) fit. I’d presume the US SIM slots are larger? Oh, and they’d probably have to be unlocked via ZiPhone or similar iPhone unlocking software, which should be a simple two and a half minute process if its similar to what I had to do with the 2.5G iPhone.

In any case, don’t hold your breath for these HK phone dealers to drop their prices any further. The article reports that they are still seeing brisk sales, and they are expecting loads of iPhone buyers from China over the upcoming “Golden Week” holiday.

Albert posted in a comment to this post that the iPhone 3G can be had for SG$800 in Beijing, so HK certainly isn’t the cheapest!

Well, sure beats the HK$8000-9000 that they were costing when they were first parallel imported here!

Hong Kong’s online Apple Store has started selling unlocked iPhone 3Gs! To my knowledge, its the only Apple Store to be doing that. Not cheap though!

The 8GB is HK$5,400 (SG$990) and the 16GB is HK$6,200 (SG$1,133). Ouch. Shipping is free, and its supposed to ship “within 24 hours”.

The site says: “iPhone 3G purchased at the Apple Online Store can be activated with any wireless carrier. Simply insert the SIM from your current phone into iPhone 3G and connect to iTunes 8 to complete activation.”

So it seems like Three’s exclusive deal for the iPhone 3G lasted just 2 and a half months, since it was first launched here on July 11. And it seems like Three has sweetened their iPhone plans with “free unlimited wifi“. And all this happening right after the G1 launch. Hmm.

Just in case you didn’t already know, Apple’s warranty for the iPhone 3G is local only – “Warranty service is restricted to the country where Apple or its authorized distributors originally sold the iPhone.”

Hey Alf, want one?

There’s a saying that the market corrects itself when the hype gets overboard. It’s happened to dot.coms, bloated Big Media companies… and apparently it’s happening to Apple’s new-found status at the top of the cool phone lineup (if Mac fans are to be believed).

Gizmodo has a good post some time back on the real world performance of the iPhone versus the advertised one. See if this is all that the wonder gadget is all that it’s made out to be by all the hype-sters out there.

You’ve probably seen those Apple ads that proclaim that there are no/few viruses for Macs.

Well, it doesn’t matter that virus writers don’t bother with Macs because they only take up less than 5 per cent of the world’s personal computer market.

But guess what, now that Apple’s iPhone is hyped up to be the best thing that happened, security holes are appearing. According to a report in Computerworld, there are vulnerabilities in the software that can lead to users being “phished”.

Went by Mongkok so had a look at the cellphone shops. As per Alfred’s post and the postings on local Mac lists, the 16GB 3G iPhones were indeed out in full force. Prices were 8800 to 9800 HKD or about S$1525 to S$1698. Way too rich for my blood.

Interestingly, with the stocks of 2.5G iPhones dwindling, the prices for them have gone up. The 16GB ones were going for about 5700 HKD! They used to be about 4000 something HKD. I guess the folks who don’t want the 3G connectivity and the poorer battery life of the 3G iPhone will still want a 2.5G versions.