Sometimes, fear-mongering can have the opposite effect – it makes you feel that you are safe because the people crying wolf seem to have raised the alarm once too often. Then, one day, the wolf really turns up.

Last week, I found a strange thing happening on my wife’s two-week-old Samsung Galaxy Note. There was a notification message that kept popping up sporadically, asking her to join a contest to win an iPad.

It seemed suspicious, but these days, with the endless spam SMSes from property agents in Singapore, you’d think it’s just another piece of spam and to just click on the notification to delete it. Instead, doing so brought me to the browser, which had its homepage changed to a strange-looking search engine.

I sat up immediately. I realised later, from searching up the Internet, that my wife’s phone had been infected by ad-ware, which had probably been hidden in some of the games she downloaded a few days ago.
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We were introduced to the 1GHz smartphones only about two years ago, but Samsung wants to take that even further and put a dual-core 2GHz phone into your pockets by next year. We’re not even talking about two cores of 1GHz each; that’s two 2GHz cores Samsung is talking about!

Engadget reports that Samsung is also considering selling the chip to vendors separately, so you won’t necessarily have to buy a Sammy phone to have scorching speed on the go. …

I was just gushing down a bowl of extremely salty French Onion soup at TGIF near the Marriot Grand Hotel in Moscow where I am staying when I saw Jobs flashing the iPad in some Russian news channel. That was enough for me to spend the next 90 minutes watching Job’s keynote.

Two things struck me from the iPads launch today:

1. Apple is really going into a closed lock-down system.

   The iPad will be utilising Apple’s new 1GHz processor (Apple now totally owns the hardware and the OS).

   It also launched iWorks (competitor to MS Office) for US$9.99 for each of the spreadsheet, presentation and word processor software (called numbers, keynote and something else I cant remember) It also launched iBooks – an e-book reader and store.  With App Store and iTunes Music Store,  now Apple also owns the software and services platform.

   Apple struck a deal with AT&T for adding 3G at US$29.99 per month for unlimited access. So like the iPhone, you are stuck again with a specific telco. And my guess is the two will work together to lock-in consumers and share the money.

   It looks like the Apple way is increasingly becoming a closed, lock-down system. I dont like lock-down systems and it sure makes Microsoft (who only controlled the OS and the apps and tried with the browser) look like an angel in comparison.

2. Is the iPad simply a glorified smartphone?

   Yes, it did look cool watching Jobs spin the thing round, but what exactly is the Apple 1GHz processor? Early rumours are swirling that it is simply one of the many 1GHz ARM processors (ARM licences its processor tech to people like Nvidia and Qualcomm to make smartphone processors) around. The same architecture that powers the Google Nexus One smartphone. But can it be powerful enough to support a mini-laptop? In case you are still wondering why the iPad does not support the ability to run multiple apps at the same time, perhaps this is the answer!

Samsung Jet

Samsung launched what it calls a phone that is “smarter than a smartphone” at a press event earlier today. This is the touch-screen  Samsung Jet, which boasts of some interesting features including:

Speed – 800 MHz processor
Graphics – 16 million colours in a 3.1-inch AMOLED display
Web – Dolfin web browser lets you view up to five web pages at the same time. Multi-tasking capable
Video – supports DivX, Xvid and H.263/4

Other Specs – HSPDA 3.6 Mbps, 5 Mega camera, 30fps video recording, music player, MS Exchange Active Sync, A-GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 1100 mAh battery
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