More than 20 different brands and models of Android mobile phones are already hitting the North American and European markets. In the Phillippines, I know of only two mobile phone manufacturers that have officially offered Android based cell phones in the local market — Samsung and HTC. Although you can find other brands like Motorola’s Milestone and even Google’s Nexus One (actually made by HTC). Their prices are still way off the reach of the majority. For instance, the Nexus One which sells for US$530 (about 30K pesos) in the US are priced at 45,000 pesos locally. Even the Motorola Milestone, which has an average price of 35,000 pesos, are still way out of reach of most Pinoys.

Of the two brands of Android mobile phones, HTC, which made the first Android phone called the G1, offers the HTC Hero at Php 30,000+ locally which is still pricey. The HTC Hero mobile phone specifications offer the basic things that you would find on a smartphone like a 320×480 capacitive touch screen display, GPS, wifi, 3.5G data capability, quadband GSM, external memory slot and an autofocus camera (although there is no front camera). At that price, now wonder, Android hasn’t picked up phase on the local market.

But here’s where the potential game changer comes in — Samsung. Samsung has recently introduced it’s Samsung i5700 Spica Android based mobile phone locally. The specifications of the Samsung i5700 is almost the same as the HTC Hero with three (actually four) of things that I found very attractive for an Android mobile phone in it’s class. The first thing is the CPU, the i5700 has an 800Mhz CPU compared to the HTC Hero’s only 528Mhz CPU. Samsung has also included it’s DNSe (Digital Natural Sound Engine) technology into the mobile phone. DNSe is the same technology found on Samsung’s media players. The third is a DivX encoder, which enables the Samsung i5700 Spica to play DivX movies.

The fourth item is actually the major thing here. Samsung has actually priced the Spica i5700 in the local price range of the Nokia 5800 ExpressMusic. Given the estimated price of about Php14,000 locally, I hope that Samsung would put some marketing activities so that the Android based mobile phones would have exposure locally.

I was trying to get an estimate of the number of mobile phones that have units sporting a GPS receiver. It’s very interesting that according to the statistics by AdMob, although Nokia is still the predominant mobile phone brand, most of the mobile phones that browse the web have models that have no GPS and small screens like the Nokia N70 (which is a Nokia model that has gained popularity in the Philippines due to it’s speed, durability and features that cater to a lot of Pinoys). I was surprised not to see the Nokia N95 and the Nokia 5800 not in the upper portion of the list since I also see a lot of Pinoys using them.

Of the top handset models in the Philippines, all of them are Nokia brands. Except two, the iPhone and the iPod touch (technically this isn’t a mobile phone), which are made by Apple.

It would be interesting to see statistics next year, when some of the Android based mobile phones have reached the Philippines in greater numbers although I still think that Nokia will continue to dominate the market next year.

Anyway, I still haven’t found some solid statistics so I decided to write this blog post. If you work or often go to Ortigas Center, it would be nice if you can post a comment and tell me what mobile phone brand and model that you use and whether it has an internal GPS receiver. Thanks.

It’s a great way to be mobile. Now, not only can I get connected using my mobile phone, I can use it also as a 3G router and connect my notebook to the Internet without any of the hassles of using cables that I usually have to do before. Mobile Internet via 3G/HSDPA in the Philippines has started to become widespread with the 3 major telcos in the Philippines now offering unlimited phone calls, SMS and data connection on a single mobile phone SIM.

I am looking forward to the time when the Philppine telcos would start offering HSPA+ speeds as a normal service. Current mobile Internet speeds have only been in the 2Mbps range. Mobile technology in the Philippines has been steadily going mainstream as more people use their mobile phones to connect to the Internet.

This coming week, I am going to setup instant messaging on my mobile to furthur allow me to get connected to the Net with only my mobile phone with me. Also I’ve been looking for a good messaging app for my Symbian phone that I can use so that I can also manage my email & SMS. So far, I find the default one that comes with my mobile phone inadequate since I want something that would handle HTML, preferably support kinetic scrolling while the Symbian firmware upgrade that would allow kinetic scrolling in all the apps is still not available. It would also be great if the messaging app does message threads to make reading email easy. I hope I can find these apps these week and start my full transition into the mobile Internet.

The other thing is to get myself to use my mobile phone instead of my notebook computer to do these tasks so that I would get myself used to doing them on my mobile phone during those times I find myself without a computer at my side.

At the start of 2010, I started using my phone. The three things I’ve initially setup on my mobile phone are email, browsing and Twitter. Over the first weeks of January I started getting used to doing email, some browsing (I think I’d really have to get a new mobile phone as my main connected phone, preferably one that has at least 800×480 display), and Twitter.

Although I have a pretty decent connected phone which is a Nokia 5800, I’ve used it mostly for voice, SMS and a few occasions for email and browsing. This year It’s going to be different since I want to focus on some online startup ideas that I have been doing on my own.

I’d be writing out some of my online experiences and tips on my mobile site at Connected Phone – a web site that I have put up for all my mobile related articles. I’ve just posted an article on using a mobile app called Gravity that provides a full function Twitter client.

There are several ways of donating money to the Haiti victims. If you have PayPal, you can donate thru this eBay link that has been setup for the purpose. Google has also a dedicated page for the Haiti earthquake victims here. Google has also taken the effort to get a satellite photo of the extent of the Haiti situation. You can download the file and view it using Google Earth from this link. Every amount will go a long way if everyone can spare some money, let’s reach out and help out the victims.

So, what makes Avatar so great as a movie? It’s definitely not the 1 Billion dollar 17-day gross sales. There are two things that makes Avatar such a great movie in my opinion. The first thing is the technology that has developed thru the years that these days when you watch a movie, you’d find it hard to distinctly separate what is real from what is computer generated. Computer graphics and 3D animation in movie-making has reached a whole new level.

The other thing that makes Avatar different is the fact that today, a lot of us will be watching movies on the big screen in 3D more often. Thanks in part to the efforts of James Cameroon, global adoption of 3D projection in theaters has reached tipping point. These days, most often than not, I’d rather watch movies at the comfort of my own home. 3D has given me another reason to enjoy the big screen once more — well maybe until the day when big screen 3D at home becomes an economic reality.

This year, I’m spending a lot more time online focusing on a couple of things — Web development and mobile. I’ve put up my site for WordPress and mobile development at Code Stuff.

With so much interest in what’s currently happening on the mobile industry around the globe, I’ve put up my own site about the current trends and news of mobile phones going smart. I’d like to call them the Connected Phone. I actually started off with a site called Java Midlet and decided to transition on the more appropriate name — Connected Phone.

While the Filipino nation is mourning for her death, I would just like to share some little trivia about her death.Former President Corazon Aquino’s death was on August 1, 2009 at 3:18am in the morning.

If we were to put that date into it’s equivalent number, it would be

08-01-2009 3:18

Now try a little modification and remove all the zeros and put all the numbers together, we get

8129318

A little re-arranging, we would come up with a date which is

8-21-1983

That’s August 21, 1983 — the day that Former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, her husband, died.

Some coincidence?

I deeply mourn for the loss of a stateswoman who has shown her love for the Filipino people.

Just visit this link and choose the Ubuntu OS version that you want.

Hopefully next week, I’d be a lot better and do my regular work.