Nokia announced today that the N900 can be pre-ordered in Singapore from now to Mar 26 from http://www.nokia.com.sg/n900/preorder

Available for S$999, the Maemo-based device has a ARM Cortex-A8 processor, up to 1GB of application memory and OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics acceleration. It comes with 32GB of storage, which is expandable up to 48GB with a microSD card.

Local bloggers were given a quick hands-on with the device recently and most walked away impressed by phone, including the speed at which the phone handled multitasking and full Flash support from the phone’s Mozilla Firefox browser.

Those who are anticipating an upgrade to MeeGo, the new Linux-based OS melded from Moblin and Maemo, will be disappointed when the MeeGo source codes are released by end March. As reported by Damian on CNET Asia’s Crave blog today, Nokia has confirmed that Maemo on the Nokia N900 is not upgradeable to MeeGo.

As this point, Nokia’s pre-order site doesn’t seem to be responding. Perhaps that’s good news for Nokia (if the site is indeed overwhelmed with pre-orders), which is in dire need of rejuvenation to compete more effectively against the likes of Apple, BlackBerry and a flurry of Android device manufacturers.

Update: In response to enquiries from Techgoondu, Nokia has verified that “their server was definitely up and running on Monday [Mar 15], but due to load, there may have been intermittent issues, where some users may have experienced an error message.”

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”?

Techgoondu had the chance to lay our hands on a Nokia N97, which Nokia says will bring the power of a mobile computer to a compact package.

The N97 is well-designed in several aspects, including its large 3.5-inch touch screen, solid build quality with a slide-out screen and an extensive suite of onboard software.

Because the N97’s screen slides upwards and outwards at an angle to reveal the QWERTY keyboard, the amount of space available for the keyboard is limited. The result is that Nokia can only accommodate 3 rows of keys, as compared to 4 rows found on the E series phones.

The limited number of keys also means more alphabet keys would have to double up as symbols, leading to the increased use of the shift key when entering symbols. While the keys are more spaced out, I found myself spending more time typing on the N97 keyboard as compared to the E71.

The space bar is also awkwardly placed towards the right side of the keyboard, and this may slow you down considerably especially if you’re typing long e-mail messages.

Unlike the E75 which provides a physical alphanumeric keypad in addition to a QWERTY keyboard, the N97 offers an onscreen alphanumeric keypad in portrait mode. That means you still have the option of typing with a single hand for quick SMS replies without bringing up the N97’s QWERTY keyboard.

In his opening address to the media and invited guests at the launch event of the Nokia N97, Chris Carr, vice president of sales in Nokia Southeast Asia Pacific, noted that mobile phones are set to become the most important gateway to the Internet. In addition, mobile Internet users are also demanding a more customized experience on their cellphones to reflect their rising amount of activity on social networking sites.

The N97 allows you to customize a home screen in a portal-like manner that includes shortcuts to applications such as e-mail, Nokia’s Ovi store, weather information and widgets from a pool of content providers such as the Singapore Exchange, Bloomberg and local newspapers. Facebook and Twitter widgets are also available for you to access these services directly.

Browsing the web on the N97’s touch screen is a tad different from what you’d do on HTC devices and the iPhone as far as finger gesturing is concerned. You can’t really flick your finger to scroll down a web page. Instead, your fingers have to be kept on the screen while you scroll.

The N97 comes with a five-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens. Pictures appeared vibrant onscreen, though the built-in flash took a couple of seconds to recharge between snapshots.

My goondu take on the N97: the overall experience can be fine-tuned further. I noticed some software lag while switching from the portrait mode to the home screen. Users of the Nokia E71 will have to spend some time getting used to the N97’s keyboard layout. Active users of social networking sites, however, will appreciate the convenient widgets that come with the phone.

The N97 will retail in Singapore for S$1,028 (without Comes with Music service) or S$1,228 (with Comes with Music). Prices also include a three-month Nokia Maps navigation license.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
Estimated retail price: S$798
Availability: From 28th Feb 2009, Saturday (tomorrow)
Colors: red and blue, with silver-black from mid-March
Specs and features: Pretty standard for a mid-range touch phone. 3.2 megapixel camera. 3G, HSDPA and Wi-Fi. Comes with built-in A-GPS. Free 8GB micro-SD card. For all the specifics, go to Nokia’s product pagehere.

But I totally agree with Gin and Alf that the key differentiator is the “Comes with Music” service by Nokia. Brilliant tactical move by the handset giant. Basically, it allows users unlimited downloads of tracks from Nokia’s music store for one year. According to Nokia, they have about four million tunes in the store. Operator charges are of course separate. Singapore is the first country in Asia to run this service; it was first launched in UK last October.

The music is DRM-protected (cannot be copied to another phone or device) and is tied to one PC, but users get to keep all the downloaded songs on their PC and Nokia phone even after the service expires after one year. Bit rate encoding is 128kbps, which is sufficiently decent. I believe there are some onerous restrictions on porting the account if your PC or phone dies (a 6-week wait), but even with this and the DRM, I’ve got to say this is a brilliant move by Nokia.

One, it ties people to their Nokia phone for a year. Two, it incentivizes folks to buy another Nokia phone at the end of the first year. Three, cheap legal music that is easily available to consumers. It’s available anywhere in Singapore with mobile coverage — which is practically everywhere on our island nation.

I say cheap because even though the music is theoretically “free”, you have to pay the operator costs. Nokia has done a brilliant job in building the platform and working with the telcos and music distribution companies to come up with a product that truly is quite innovative in pricing.

Here’s some more recommended retail pricing information on other Nokia phones that will also have this “Comes with Music” service, available from tomorrow:

• Nokia N96(black): S$1238
• Nokia N85(cherry black): S$938
• Nokia N79(petrol black): S$858
• Nokia N5320 Xpress Music(grey): S$618
• Nokia N5220 Xpress Music(titaniuum): S$558

Note:Prices before taxes or subsidies from operators

My beloved and well-worn Nokia E71 now has a pair of bigger and smaller siblings. The Finnish phone maker yesterday did a glitzy catwalk launch of the E75 (left in the picture above) and E55 (right), which also saw the unveiling of other new phones, at the swanky club Zirca (the former Ministry of Sound). Nokia held the Singapore launch in conjunction with its new product unveiling at the Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona this week.

Here are my 2 cents on both models after a hurried hands-on session at the event:

Heavier and chunkier, though smaller in girth, than the E71, the E75 is comfortably one of the sveltest slider smartphones phones in the market. What I like: the 3.5-mm headphones jack, the motion-sensitive screen that pivots when you turn the phone’s orientation between landscape and portrait, and the fact that it is essentially an E71 on steroids.

What didn’t float my boat was keeping the screen size the same – 2.4-inch, 240×320 pixels – as the E71 despite the bulking up. Really, Nokia, why? Okay, you get a more spacious keyboard, but the E71 is already dandy in that department. So the payback for the extra bulk is for the numeric keypad and traditional phone styling.

The skinny E55, on the other hand, comes with the same screen size as the E71, as well as a 3.5-mm headphones jack, despite losing weight and being smaller.

The other big difference between the E55 and E71 is the half-qwerty keyboard. The E71′s 10-keys across and 4-keys down qwerty keypad is now halved width-wise, into a 5-keys across and 4-keys down keypad in the E55. There are two letters for each key. Press once for the letters on the left side of the button, and twice for the right. Unfortunately, my short time fiddling with this not-qwerty qwerty keypad is filled with typos from I guess my unfamiliarity with the scheme, as well as with the flat and tiny keys. Practice could make perfect – or not, for those with not-so-slender fingers.

For the more ham-fisted, the predictive text option (for both the E55 and E75), should make text input easier.

Both the E55 and E75 comes with a new, swankier interface – headlined by Nokia’s new email application. And both phones now feature flatter input surfaces, as opposed to the bumpy keys of the E71. While the new contact points look more chic, I still prefer the old bumps, which make typing more tactile.

So which Nokia will Goldilocks choose?

The differences in sizes and weights are not dramatic between the three bears, er, phones. The E75 is around 5mm thicker than the 10mm-thick E71, and a smidgen (12g) heavier. And it is actually 2mm shorter and 7mm narrower than the E71. This makes it one of the smallest (if not among the lightest) slider smartphones in the market today.

The E55 is wee longer (2mm) and slightly narrower (49mm vs 57mm) than the E71, while keeping to the same screen size. Most notable, however, is the weight-savings: 98g vs 127g. Shaving 30g off does not sound like much, but it is: the E55 feels noticeably lighter than my E71, which is already an insanely pocketable smartphone. I like!

Appetites whet? The wait for both phones won’t be long. The Nokia E75 is expected to ship in March while the Nokia E55 is expected to ship during the second quarter of this year.

Right after Sony Ericsson shipped its Xperia X1, along comes Nokia’s new N-series “hero” product, the N97, that comes with, surprise, a slide-out keyboard.

But unlike the Xperia, which runs on Windows Mobile, Nokia’s N97 uses Symbian OS, the company behind which it recently acquired.

Notably, from early hands-on first-looks here at the Nokia World show in Barcelona, the N97 has a few promising features.

First off, the large 3.5-inch touch-screen, which really looks large even by iPhone standards. Its 16:9 aspect ratio means videos should fill the screen nicely too.

There’s the nifty Qwerty keyboard, of course, and that slanted slide-out screen, which angles more sharply than the Xperia’s, giving users a nice look at things without tilting their heads too much.

There’s more. A new beta service called “So-Lo” will make use of the phone’s AGPS and compass to help you get information on, say, the famous Sagrada Familia building here in Barcelona.

You simply point at the building and click. The AGPS looks up your location and narrows down the search to the famous Gaudi building, then displays additional information on it.

Using the same technology, Nokia believes that you can in future point your phone on, say, a movie poster and be able to watch a trailer and book tickets.

Clearly, Nokia’s taking on everyone now – Google and its Android phone and Apple with its tightly integrated iPhone services.

The N97, packed to the brim with 32GB or RAM and expandable with another 16GB via a microSD card, does look like it will keep Nokia right up there with the top smartphones for the next year.

It’s a big phone – somewhat like the old HTC TyTn II and Xperia X1 – but it looks good for its size. Not everyone’s gonna buy it, but if you are a mobile geek who loves slide-out keyboard, this is something you may just pay the estimated 550 euros (S$1,100) for when it’s out before June next year.

(Note: For Singapore readers, I’ll be filing more Nokia’s new technologies, including Nokia Maps, in the print edition of Digital Life shortly)

Nokia has taken the wraps off its new 5800 XpressMusic phone, the long-awaited touch-screen phone from the top phone maker.

Pictures of the device, Nokia’ answer to the touch-screen craze sparked off by Apple’s iPhone, had been out on the Web in the days prior to the launch.

So it was no surprise when the device was unveiled here today. If it looks a bit like the iPhone, or Samsung Omnia, you are absolutely right!

But it has all the right stuff packed in as well, like a 3.2-inch screen, 8GB mico-SD card (pity it wasn’t 16GB built in though), a 3.2-meg Carl Zeiss lens, and most importantly, a 3.5mm audio jack, which means music fans can plug any earphone/headphone directly to it.

This is one phone aimed squarely at Apple, especially with Nokia’s Comes with Music service bundled in next year. That gets you a free one-year access to Nokia’s online music store. Yup, you download anything you like for free, for a year.

Unfortunately, the price for that bundle is not disclosed yet. The phone alone will go for 279 EUR, when it is out in the fourth quarter this year.

The Comes with Music programme will be out in Asia-Pacific by the first quarter of 2009, and will be available also with other music phones like the N95 8GB and 5310 XpressMusic.

Not a bad response from the top phone maker, afte seeing the likes of Apple, HTC and Samsung steal its thunder of late. Let the battles begin!

A year after announcing its ovi online services, Nokia today showed off a near-complete version of its answer to Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s online offerings here in Singapore.

At a demo for reporters at the Geek Terminal cafe here, it presented new features like remote file sharing and sync’ing of contacts.

ovi is Nokia’s attempt to hook up its phone users to online services, seeing how Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are reaching out to mobile users through their Web-based e-mail, calendaring and productivity offerings. Let’s not also forget Apple and its tightly-integrated iTunes and recently, MobileMe application.

When fully ready, Nokia’s ovi offers the usual calendaring, contacts backup, as well as maps and games. Sounds like Google? Yup. Reminds you a bit of Apple’s iTunes and AppStore? Uh huh.

The thing is, ovi has taken a long time to complete since its announcement last year. It seems like a defensive move, yes, but it does have some value in offering a better out-of-box experience.

Remember that not everyone is signed up to Google Docs or Microsoft Live. This gives ovi an edge, because it targets anyone who has a Nokia phone – and Nokia sells more phones than anyone -and wants to go online with it.

The demo today showed off ovi’s remote sync feature, which goes beyond the usual PC-phone sync, to one where you can seamlessly sync all your contacts to the ovi portal either over 3.5G or Wi-Fi. Lost your phone? No worries, you can sync back your stuff from ovi.

More interesting was the second feature, which lets you share files with friends easily. I’d call it a smarter version of yousendit.com.

You first select whatever files, say, reports or presentations, to sync to Nokia’s remote server, which you can access on your Nokia phone. To send this file to a friend or contact, you simply select the file from a list on your phone, which sends a link to your friend over e-mail. He then clicks on this link to preview or download the file.

The good news is that both of you can preview the file without downloading it first, saving download time and data costs if you are on the go.

To be sure, none of these ovi apps are hard to replicate, but Nokia has smartly clustered them together in one online portal that tightly integrates with Nokia phones. Sounds like Apple? Yup!

However, Nokia’s ovi only works with its phones now – most of the latest N and E series as well as “regular” phones should run well. This means you can’t use it if you are a Samsung or HTC user, and you better off using Google’s online sync features and Google Docs for sharing files.

How good is ovi, on the whole? It looks well thought out (after taking so long to build, it better!). But the real test is how much users want to be tied to Nokia.

Apple has shown that, with a strong brand and ease of use, it can attract users to its well integrated offerings. Google, on the other hand, offers unprecedented openness, and upcoming phones using its Android software, probably the most “connected” of all mobile devices, will give users access to Maps, e-mail and other online apps perhaps even more easily.

To be honest, all look promising, and it’s too early to say who will own the mobile Web in future. For now, if you are a Nokia user, you just got one more way to extend the usefulness of your phone.