You know an era has truly changed, when your friends leave you out of a group chat because you don't have whatsapp. This brings back memories of the instant chat messenger ICQ of 1999/2000, where it practically dominated the entire IM market. It could leave offline messages, and a function can let one turn one 'live' chat, meaning as you're typing, the receiving party can see what you're typing, including the backspaces. Then came Microsoft Messenger, MSN, with it's cute emoticons and alone with that, friends uprooted from ICQ en masse and left for MSN, leaving ICQ extinct. And you're right, I had to leave, reluctantly. Now MSN is the default, with group chats, offline messages, history all in place and more.
In 1997/1998. SMS was a very new concept in Singapore, phones were seriously expensive and SMS rocked, leaving the alphanumeric days of the Motorola Jazz behind, and an industry circling SMS was born. Now, apps, mobile messaging, threatens the existence of SMS. whatsapp, mobile msn, skype, recently imessage, and 'compilers' of IM such as ebuddy with a super new XMS function, (XMS can send free SMS from any desktop computer (or mobile one that is), the SMS market is looking bleak!
Telcos who have been charging by the minute/second/sms, has to rethink seriously now, as voice/sms are all simply data over the precious GSM networks, while the previously unheard 12Gigabytes of bandwidth per month for surfing needs over the 3G networks could be holding the GSM networks by the throats. I'm still unsure why 3G is still 'behind' GSM, it's slow in terms of speed/coverage/bandwidth throttle? (eg: voice over skype or any of your favourite IMs are usually poorer than voice over GSM networks).
The end of an era. I've the HTC Rose S740 for ~3 years. Back in 2008, there was the iphone, but it wasn't as superb as it is now, and I never had the need for such a 'smart' phone nor the saw the feasibility of a touch screen device, preferring the feel and feedback of real keys. The S740 also had a QWERTY keyboard which one can slide out. The plan was to go online with Wireless@SG if required to do some surfing and emails on the go. Wireless@SG has turned out to be pathetic! The only saviour I had was the S740 was run on a windows platform (ok..Andriod and iOs trumps all now, but then Windows Mobile was not relatively good), and the SMSes were 'threaded', and it was profoundly useful. Also, it had 'quick texts', allowing short cut keys to reply chunks of text (such as addresses, emails etc). Overall the Rose worked really well for 3 years bearing an initial 1-2weeks of nightmare service from M1/HTC.
The moving out of the old, in for the new....the 'home page' of the HTC, clean, with simple icons, and showing upcoming appointments, any SMSes unread etc. (compared to the million updates from FB/Twitter/BBM/whatsapp/emails from a few accounts that I'm handling partly with the BlackBerry Bold).
Wenhui's 4S, previously she was using a HTC wave : A rubbish, half-baked brick, a s(tupid)phone. It was one of the first foray of HTC-Android phones, with promises of seamless integration with Google products. The HTC Wave was slow, surfing of the net was worse than the 56k modem century.
Now, the time has come that I need a truly smartphone, as work requires the update/speed that we need to push information out, and gather information as well. And I feel the Apple has worked this out well with the 3GS and especially the Iphone 4. And now with the dual core A5 of the Iphone 4S, the smartphone in it's 5th generation, is finally becoming of age and worthy of all the accolades poured onto Job's Apple.
Only 1 day old into the Iphone (yes, I'm a very old virgin), I've become a teenage school boy you see on the MRT, hogging the toy all day, grinning to myself, and not having much conversation with my mom nor anyone around me.
I've woken up today (day 2), to the Iphone's alarm, and downloaded 'RunKeeper app (whilst still in bed), and let out a 'woot'! with a big grin akin to unwrapping kryptonite on Christmas morning. The app went superbly went in the 6.2km run, with GPS, location systems, all locking on, without lag, and a dozen buzzing updates in the background.
I love it!
Thank you, Steve.
@}-;------
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