Striped:Shirt

It was on the news last night on TV and TODAYonline posted the same info on their site today. Basically, it says that the iPhone ‘may finally launch’ here in September this year and it will be Singtel carrying one of the most anticipated mobile phones.

I doubt how accurate the sources are - “industry sources” and “a local vendor who works closely with Apple associates in the United State”. If @wanidakok, an Apple employee here in Singapore, even does not know any details, how can outside sources find out? Apple is known to be secretive with its product launches and this may just be one of those ‘leaks’ that usually happens online.

For it to be on the news, there must have been a credible source but they don’t sound as convincing as most people would’ve liked. I can safely say that the iPhone should be coming in the near future given that their currently looking for a local iPhone Buyer and Planner plus the announcement on the news. The details on the service provider and the pricing are still shaky.

Meanwhile, follow the conversation here in HardwareZone as the locals discuss the news announcement last night.

I was looking for jobs online and went to search for openings in Apple Singapore and this is what I found:

The Apple COO was quoted in ars technica saying that “We will enter Asia with the iPhone in 2008…”, which then adds a little more credibility to the job opening found online. It’s going to be interesting how the iPhone will be sold here because I think the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) prevents the locking of handsets to a particular service provider. So far, I know that this has happened in France where there are laws prohibiting a mobile phone to be bundled with a specific mobile service provider. Orange is the exclusive distributor of the iPhone in France however they also sell an unlocked version of the phone at a higher price according to PC World.

If Starhub, Singtel or M1 do not get exclusive rights to the iPhone then we should expect it to be unreasonably expensive given it 1.0 state. Hopefully, Starhub (who I am subscribed to) ends up getting the same arrangement as Orange in France where they can sell both the locked and unlocked versions of the iPhone. (After which, we’d see a surge in the users moving from Singtel to Starhub. hah!)

It’s too early to tell but “iPhone Planner/Buyer” jobs does seem intriguing. Now with the iPhone SDK out, and WWDC 08 happening in June, there’s no better time to buy the phone that revolutionized the mobile phone industry.

As for now, people here in Singapore are stuck with iPhone-Singapore.com which sells it at around S$1000. For further information, join the conversations here and here.

In the meantime, I’ll stick with my Sony Ericsson which is about 2 months old.

Just as I praised Sony Ericsson for their user interface, Google releases new screen shots of Android. The last time I saw a preview of Android during its early development, I was impressed with the apps they had running on it. The only problem that I had was their menu, which had the same implementation as Yahoo! Go 3.0 using a carousel. I’m sure if they had other display layouts for their menu.

Photo Credit: Gizmodo

The new screen shots from Gizmodo showed UI improvements in the Android OS. They don’t look as sleek as the iPhone or Sony Ericsson phones, but they look very neat and simple to use. Simple done well is better than a flashy UI that’s too complicated to use.

And according to John Maeda, the author of The Laws of Simplicity, “In Simplicity we trust.”

After the iPhone, I think that Sony Ericsson has one of the best mobile phone user interfaces in the market. Not only are they easy to use, they look good too.

Check out the new XPERIA X1 “panel interface”.

Designer Tsunho Wang came up with this amazing camera concept which lets us take photos from an angle that’s really up to how the camera glides. Not to mention, the shutter is automated by face recognition technology.

I remember making straw or paper fly like this when I was a kid, but a camera?! Resolution should not matter in this case. Turn this concept into a reality please.

Credits: Yanko Design 

My first eBay purchase has finally arrived! Can’t wait to experiment with this camera!