Nokia Lumia: the Next Generation of Mobile Phones

Pinoys will finally have the chance to experience the latest in cellular technology with the release of the next generation Nokia Lumia phones.

Meet the Nokia Lumia 920, 820 and 620, all powered by windows 8 and comes with a unique camera technology, the exclusive Live Tiles and a load of innovative new designs.  It also comes in a range of colors to pick from to suit your personality and mood.  

With the exclusive Live Tiles, you get instant access to all your favorite apps, contacts, emails, Facebook and tweets on your homescreen.  Thanks to Windows 8, the tiles update in real time so you stay up to date with everything at a glance.

Each Lumia smartphone comes with a unique lens that lets you take a series of photos with a single click and you can upload your photos straight away for your friends to see.

Nokia City Lens is another cool feature that lets you discover what your city has to offer.  Just hold your phone up and watch nearby restaurants, hotels, and other businesses pop up on your screen. You can find suggestions on where to eat. Find the nearest bars. Then read reviews, get phone numbers, link to websites or create a list of places to visit another time. 

What's more, Nokia Lumia Windows 8 smartphones come with full-versions of Microsoft Office, Outlook and Internet Explorer 10. Now. you can create and edit Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel and Word documents when you’re out and about, and browse easier than ever. 

 If you can't wait to get your hands on these latest mobile phones, I suggest that you go to the nearest Abenson Appliance Store.  Aside from being one of the country's biggest appliance network, Abenson is also a major destination of gadget buyers.

Abenson in fact makes it easy for you to score the gadget you've been wanting to buy.  Pay as low as PhP500 a month for your dream gadget at 0% interest for all major credit cards.  You may also get some freebies from on-going promotions within the stores.

  

So what are you waiting for? Experience the new Nokia Lumia at the nearest Abenson branch now.

LG Optimus 2x: Genius Smartphone

Today's phones are getting smarter and smarter.  Their makers are putting more and more features that help users of these phone more productive in their daily tasks.  But what makes a phone "smarter" than others?

For one, it must be able to do multitasking and allow switching from one application to another.  It must also have a high resolution camera and a full high definition video.  Since I always go online, it must allow me to go online fast when I needed to.

Enter Optimus 2x, the latest smartphone offering from LG.  It is the world's first dual core smartphone running on the powerful NVIDIA Tegra mobile processor.

This will help me a lot because this means it could do multitasking without going sluggish.  Thanks to the two processors in this phone, applications will also launch faster than in average phones.  Browsing the Internet will be a lot faster and means more sites visited than waiting for them to load.  I can check my email, update my Facebook site and then watch a video on YouTube.  And while doing all of these, I can still receive phone calls!  Now that is really smart.

Optimus 2x runs on Froyo Android 2.2 which brings a lot of additional conveniences, including over-the-air updating of apps and even music syncing. It also supports Flash 10.1, which makes for a more complete Internet browsing experience.

Another feature that makes me excited about this new smartphone is the 8-megapixel camera.  I love taking pictures but I cannot bring my DSLR all the time.  With this baby, I can even take pictures in low light situations, thanks to its LED flash.

It also has a full HD video camera, which records and plays back at full 1080 resolution. With this, I will be able to record my memories with better clarity including the sound because the Optimus 2x also supports HD sound.  I can relieve my memories and watch it on my HDTV since HDMI connectivity is likewise supported.

I could go on and on with the many features of the Optimus 2x.  Indeed, Optimus is more than just smart.  It's genius!  Visit lgoptimus.ph for more information.

Fear Mongering

This afternoon, I received a frightening text message from a good friend. The message read:

BBC News Flash: japan gov't confirms radiation leak at fukushima nuclear plants. Asian countries should take necessary precautions. Remain indoors first 24 hours. Close doors n windows. Swab neck skin with betadine where thyroid is, radiation hits thyroid first. Take extra precaution radiation may hit phil at starting 4pm today. Pls send to your loved ones. 

At first glance, the message looked legitimate. It came from a friend, the source is a respectable international broadcasting firm, and indeed, at the time the nuclear plants in Fukushima were being monitored for possible radiation leak.  But I was already skeptical.  It looked like another one of those text hoaxes.

The researcher in me kicked in and I wanted to get the details and facts right where they came from.  A quick check on the BBC website proved me right. I didn't find any mention of the warning on the radiation from the damaged nuclear plants going to our direction.  

I quickly informed my friend and in a few minutes he replied through a text message that it was indeed a hoax and the health department has already released information that our country will not be affected by any radiation coming from Japan.

But what was even more surprising were the news reports earlier tonight.  A state university in Manila sent home their students and closed their buildings because of that text message.  The president of the university said that he declared the suspension of classes because he wanted to ease the worries of the parents of their 30,000 students.

At the same time, there was a mad rush among panicking people to buy Betadine, a brand of antiseptic made from 10% povidone-iodine in water.  A leading drugstore reported a surge in sales of the brand, with some of their branches running out of supplies.  The health department has also come out with a statement that Betadine is useless in preventing radiation illness.

A friend also told me that there's another text message that warned people to put on raincoats or use umbrellas in case it rained tonight.  The text alleged that people might get skin cancer and other diseases brought about by nuclear wastes in the air due to the radiation leak in Japan.

I am surprised that with all the information available literally at our fingertips, people still believe these hoaxes.  There are already ways to verify such reports either from the mass media or yes, the Internet.

I have forgotten who once said that highly stressful situations bring out the best and worst in people.  While the Japanese people  face the consequences of the disaster that befell them with dignity, here we have some Filipinos who are spreading false information to spread panic. I hope people would learn to discern what is true and avoid being victimized by these fear mongers. I hope they also learn to verify the information first before spreading it blindly to other people.

Pinoy Quirk 3: Screaming on the Mobile Phone

I commute to and from work daily.  Everyday, I encounter all sorts of people but the kind that really amuse me and sometimes irritate me are those who use their mobile phone inside the vehicle and talk in very loud voices.  

Some of you may have encountered them already.  Their phone rings, they answer and start blabbing at the top of their voices.   I don't understand why they have to speak  loudly when the phone could easily pick up even their normal voice.  Unless of course the other  person is deaf or is hard at hearing.  It is as if they don't even care if the person next to them could hear what they were talking about. 

They amuse me sometimes especially when the conversation contains tidbits like their problems or issues with their family or friends.  They lay out their lives for everyone to hear like it was some badly written telenovela.  I remember one commute where a middle-aged woman talked on the phone about a sister-in-law who owed her money.  She told the party on the other line how the sister-in-law couldn't pay her.  The woman talked almost throughout the duration of our commute, her story took several twists and turns, and the volume of her voice never diminished.  I didn't want to listen to her but she was so loud, I could still hear her even when I put on my iPod.  Me and the other passengers became captive audience of her story that she should have kept among her family.

On another instance, there was a man who kept on calling people in his office, telling them the  combination of the lock to a vault or a door.  We heard his instructions like "Turn left to number 2, then number 5. Turn right to number 4, then zero." He got angrier and angrier because nobody seemed to get the combination right.  When one conversation ended, he would call another officemate and complain how "dumb" the last one he talked to was.  

What is irritating though are passengers who make an unnecessary call: the kind that could wait until they got home.  There once was this girl seated beside me who wanted to plan a birthday party while inside the bus.  I don't know what the person on the other line told her but she ended the call with "Okay, let's decide when I get there."  Then she went silent.

But I get even more irritated with people who not only talk loudly but even turn on the speaker of their phones.  Like that mother who called her daughter and scolded the girl who started whining in the most annoying voice I ever heard.   The other passengers also looked at her direction but she couldn't care less. I think it's the most stupid thing to do not only because we could hear the entire conversation, but because it disturbed the other passengers.  

Really, what were they thinking?  Don't they care about their privacy?

There are times when I just want a quite commute, especially before or after a busy day.  All I want during a commute is to silently watch the other cars that pass by the bus in the highway. I know that   I cannot get that a hundred percent of the time in a public vehicle.  But I hope people who use their mobile phones in public conveyances would also give their fellow passengers a little courtesy.

A Really Red Day

Kung Hei Fat Choy! 恭喜發財

The lunar new year is being celebrated today in our part of the world but it is also Valentine's Day for  most of the world.  It's a double red day because the color is associated with love on this day of hearts and at the same time, the Chinese believe that having something red at the start of the new year brings luck for the rest of it.

Many of us mistake  Kung Hei Fat Choy as Chinese for "Happy New Year" but a friend who studied in Taiwan told me that it is actually a wish for someone to be prosperous in the new year.  Hopefully we would be prosperous this year, the year of the Tiger in Chinese Astrology. 

When I passed by the SM North mall this morning, there were dragon and lion dances.  The main building was filled with the sounds of drums, gongs and cymbals as the dancers prance around.  I even sniffed around to check if any incense was burning.  A Chinese friend once told me that lion dances are performed on special days for good luck, health, prosperity and blessings.  To make the lion even more powerful a ceremony is performed wherein a dot is placed on the lion to make it come to life.

I used to interchange the lion dance for the dragon dance (and vice versa)  because of their appearances.  This morning, I found out that the lion has only two dancers hidden behind the mask while the dragon has several people, more than ten men if I am not mistaken.  Anyway, I still had to go to my father's place for our usual Sunday lunch so I wasn't able to see the entire lion and dragon dances.

On my way out of the mall, I met the strangest thing ever.  There were these two guys dressed as mascots but instead of cute characters, they were dressed up as huge television sets and written across the screen was "Something Big Will Happen to Philippine Television".  Their costumes were actually the body/case of big screen CRT TVs that were the hit during the end part of the 90s.

I went back to Bulacan after having lunch at my father's place and I got there in time to see my friends leaving for a branch of the SM Mall in Baliuag.  Since it was still early, I decided to go with them and since it was a Sunday, there was very light traffic going there.

It was a different inside the mall though.  It was full of people, young and old.  I even saw a newborn baby there carried by his doting father.  All the restaurants were full and with waiting lines to boot.  We decided to go around the mall and checked our favorite shops.

We went to the electronics and I.T. sections since I am in the look out for a dual SIM phone. At present, I carry three phones everyday and a dual SIM phone would leave me with just two phones to lug daily.  I am looking at this locally branded units called the MyPhone.  It meets my first requirement (2 SIMs in one)  and it is also a QWERTY phone.  Aside from these, the  price is very low compared to other brands!  However, it doesn't have Wi-Fi capability which I don't have a need for at the moment because I already have a BlackBerry and a netbook.  We passed by the CD-R King store and got some DVD-Rs as well as a mouse for my netbook.

From here we went to Joey Pepperoni, a pizzeria and pasta eatery.  The place was also filled with people but we immediately seated and attended to by a smiling crew member.  We ordered for Pesto Pasta, Joey's Pepperoni pizza, and bottomless iced tea.

The iced tea was immediately served and my friend consumed the contents of his glass in one instant.  It was promptly filled by the servers.  We didn't have to wait really long for the pasta to be served.  The serving was very generous, luckily we ordered for just one because it was more than enough for us.

It has a lot of pesto sauce but the taste was not too over powering.  In fact, it was what I expected of a pesto pasta.  My friend found it strange though that the dish has potatoes and beans in it.  I told him that maybe it was to emphasize that it's a healthy snack and a vegetarian dish because it did not have any meat in it.  The pasta they used though was not good, it was like it was over-cooked and a little on the soggy side instead of being firm.

The pizza was fantastic.  It was almost covered entirely by pepperoni slices and the cheese was overflowing.  I like the crust since it is crunchy and soft at the same time.  I thought the sauce was a bit salty though although my friend said it was just alright.  I also tasted a little sweetness perhaps to meet the taste preference of some Filipinos.

But if it is sweetness they wanted, then Filipinos should get a load of the Sunkist Iced Tea served by this joint.  It was too sweet for my taste.  I even asked for some extra ice to dilute the solution further because it was so sweet.

Overall, I enjoyed the meal at Joey Pepperonis.  Aside from the good food, the service crew was also very attentive and fast in giving what their customers needed.  

We left the mall before sundown and more people were still coming in.  Many were couples who must be celebrating Valentine's Day in the mall.  Perhaps the other people were just trying to escape the heat of the afternoon.  Whatever their reasons, we all made the owners of the mall prosperous this start of the year of the Tiger.  Kung Hei Fat Choy indeed and have a romantic Valentine's Day too.