Today’s unveiling by HTC and Nokia at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) should send shivers down the spines of Windows Phone fans all over the world.

For starters, the long-rumoured Nokia Lumia 900 is finally a reality, and it’s every bit as awesome as I had imagined. The new Nokia flagship smartphone features a 4.3-inch ClearBlack AMOLED display (800 x 480), a 1.4GHz processor, 512MB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. No word on whether there will be other storage options, and 16GB just seems so 2008.

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Think of Singapore’s latest efforts to turn everyone’s phone into a mobile wallet to pay for taxi rides, burgers and groceries, and the phrase deja vu may not be far from your mind.

As the city-state’s infocomm regulator and its industry partners embark on an ambitious S$40 million project, unveiled today, to let mobile phone users here tap and pay with their phones at some 20,000 payment points by next year, they could perhaps remember a lesson or two from the past.

If they succeed, users will be able to trot out their smartphones to pay for a burger at McDonald’s instead of using an ez-link card by mid-2012. A year later, in 2013, commuters may also be able to tap their phones at train station gantries to pay for their rides – if the transport authorities and companies get their act together.

But Singapore has seen numerous such trials over the years, even as places like Japan and Hong Kong have raced ahead with more advanced payment options. …

After wowing crowds at the CommunicAsia show in June, Nokia’s “all screen” smartphone is coming to a shop near you as probably the only one to run the Meego operating system.

The 16GB version of the N9 costs S$799, while the 64GB model will go for S$899 at all three telcos here – SingTel, StarHub and M1 – with “attractive” operator subsidies, according to Nokia Singapore today. It comes in black, cyan and magenta. …

Microsoft has sent its next iteration of the Windows Phone software to handset makers, as it wraps up the operating system’s features and software code ahead of a launch in Fall 2011.

The so-called Mango update, unveiled two months ago, promises a number of fixes and updates to the original Windows Phone, which looked great when launched late last year but had an uphill struggle taking on Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS devices. …

Nokia’s first Windows Phone device using the “Mango” version of the Microsoft software looks almost identical to the recently-launched N9, according to a seemingly leaked video of the Finnish phone maker’s CEO demonstrating the much-awaited gizmo to staff.

Codenamed Sea Ray, the new device is like a twin of the N9 that runs on Meego, which Stephen Elop showed off at Singapore on Tuesday, except that there are the three Windows Phone buttons at the bottom of the screen.

The video, which seems to be shot a day later, actually had Elop telling folks in the crowd to turn off recording devices so that the “super confidential” gizmo would not be leaked to any blogs. …

UNWIRED, Singapore’s first and only independent wireless and mobile conference, returned for a second run last Thursday, and saw the attendance of top-level executives from the relevant industries from across Southeast Asia.

Opened by the Infocomm Development Authority’s assistance chief executive Khoong Hock Yun, it featured half a day’s discussion on hot topics affecting the industry and its users.

From Singapore’s expected move to next generation mobile broadband (4G/LTE) to the rise of mobile computing and winning features of a mobile operating system, the conference was packed with fresh insights from a who’s who list of the country’s industry experts, who fielded a number of questions from the audience. …

Nokia E6 (left) and X7 (right)

Here’s the funny thing about Nokia phones: Pictures never do them justice. You can’t know how a Nokia phone really feels in real life just by looking at photos, and this sentiment is best exemplified in the Finnish mobile giant’s newly announced phones, the E6 and X7. Both phones will be launched with the latest version of Symbian, which features of slew of improvements that could possibly bring it up to par with other current smartphone platforms.

Techgoondu had the chance to give these two babies a quick hands-on and came away impressed. Put simply, these are Nokia’s best phones yet, and it’s not an overstatement to claim that they are the Symbian phones we’ve all been waiting for.

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Just days after Nokia and Microsoft joined hands in a bid to rein in the momentum that Google and Apple have rolled up in the smartphone market, the first piece of bad news has hit home – the first Nokia-branded Windows Phone devices won’t be out until 2012.

The news came from a Finnish interview with Nokia’s board chairman, Jorma Ollila, who contradicted his CEO Stephen Elop’s earlier estimation that the first such phones would appear by the end of this year. …

In the few hours after technology behemoths Microsoft and Nokia unveiled one of the most dramatic partnerships in years to take on rivals Google and Apple, terms like MicroKia, Noksoft and NoWin have quickly become popular sarcastic phrases for tech pundits predicting a doomed marriage.

As if the two new allies needed reminding, the jokes are a measure of how uncertain the future is for two companies playing catchup in the smartphone game, despite a deal that seems, on paper, to be joining their still considerable powers to crawl back their rivals’ leads. …

If you haven’t heard already, Nokia has announced a partnership with Microsoft, making Windows Phone 7 (WP7) their “primary smartphone strategy”.

Nokia will also integrate their existing ecosystem into Microsoft’s. For example, Ovi Maps will become a core part of Bing’s mapping services and Ovi’s apps will be, through some way, brought into the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace. Watch the following press conference:

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