You may have heard about the massive Samsung and LG launches here at the Singapore Expo already, but the star is the really the touch-screen phones that these two Korean bigwigs have rolled out.
Samsung’s Jet – reported first here by Gin Lee last night – was out on show with its large screen and rather quick interface. At a hands-on here, I felt the Jet’s response was pretty fast as a touch-screen device – certainly better than Samsung’s last effort in the shape of the Omnia.
I think Apple should really look out for the rest of the pack which are quickly upping the ante on touch-screen gizmos. While it still enjoys the endless hype from magazines and newspapers, it knows its recent 3GS is not much more than a facelift. Its rivals are going for complete overhauls.
It shows when another Korean electronics firm LG also launched three new models as well – all touch-screen models – here. To some surprise, it said it would be launching Android and Windows Mobile phones this year. Symbian? Not their focus, according to the LG executives at a press conference here.
The GD900 Crystal, which uses LG’s own proprietary S-class operating system is the most eye-catching. A tempered glass keyboard (it feels like plastic to me) lets you not just SMS away, but also to scrawl some gestures – a la Palm 1999 – to fire up applications.
The interface – including flipping 3D cubes and nifty transitions – is nice and rather fast. But on a demo phone at the LG booth, the interface seemed kind of slow when there are, say, lots of pictures and songs loaded. I’ll do a proper hands-on when I get hold of the Crystal.
Here are other pix at the show today. With the notable absence of past bigwigs like NTT DoCoMo and Panasonic, Samsung and LG easily had the flashiest displays, complete with booth babes to match their shiny new phone models.
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