@nechbi

This arrived outside my door yesterday:

See mypocketOS.com for all the details.

At 18:30 on Friday evening I let the train take the strain on my trip to the onedotzero / Nokia N900 event in London over the weekend, which I was kindly invited to by the folks at WOM World / Nokia.

For more technical details see my hands-on Nokia N900 review at mypocketOS.com.

Arriving in London

On arriving at Paddington Station at 20:40, I set about getting across London to the hotel.

Using a Nokia N82 I was able to navigate my way around the London Underground using a trusty little app, that I use every time I go to London, call MetrO. Its great as you don’t need to worry about looking at and understanding the Underground map and figuring out where you are and need to head, you just enter you start and end locations, and it will tell you which line to take and in which direction, and where you need to get off and change. So easy!

I arrived at the hotel at 21.45 and checked in, got to my room and crashed.

Meet & Greet breakfast

Down to breakfast on the first day, and it was time to meet my fellow bloggers that have also travelled to London for the event, as well as Donna and Robbie from WOM World / Nokia.

Jay Montano (My Nokia Blog) came up from Cardiff
Gerry Moth (NokiAAddict) flew down from Glasgow
Valerio Valerio (Valerio Valerio’s Blog) had flown in from Portugal
Mike Evans (Mobile Mentalism) took the short journey from Reading
and Roger Sperberg flew in from New Jersey.

On arrival we were presented with 3 Nokia N900 handsets to have a play with over breakfast.

N900 Workshops

A couple of workshops were set-up for us, that allowed us to have a better play with the Nokia N900′s plus also to meet the N900 Prodcut Manager. So we headed over to the BFI Southbank after breakfast.

For more details on the workshops, head over to mypocketos.com for a hands on review of the N900.

Lunch

Finding a nice place to eat on the Southbank allowed everybody to have a chat about their first impressions of the Nokia N900 and the discussions with Jussi, the Product Manager.

The London Eye

After lunch, it was time for a spot of sightseeing, and what better way to do that than on the London Eye.

The onedotzero ‘identity’ installation

Later on that evening we were back at the Southbank to see the Nokia onedotzero ‘identity’ installation outside the BFI.

Read more about the onedotzero / Nokia N900 installation at mypocketOS.com.

Sunday

After a hearty breakfast, it was a great time for all the bloggers to share more details about their own websites, mobile experiences and of course talk about the events of the previous day, plus also try and grab some time online.

Later that afternoon, we were back at the BFI again, for the Hackers Workshop, where we were presented with some cool retro 80′s products brought up-to-date using the new Nokia N900.

Read more about the Nokia Push N900 Project at myPocketOS.com

After the event closed at 5, it was time to head back to Paddington for the journey back home.

You can read more about the Nokia N900 and other mobile news at my main site mypocketOS.com.

This weekend I have been invited to London to take part in some Nokia workshops to see the newly announced N900 courtesy of WOM World/Nokia.

The event is taking place at the BFI Southbank in London and will allow myself and 5 other bloggers the chance to have a play with the new Nokia N900 (not currently available to the public) and to get to speak to the Product Manager for the handset.

For more information and updates about my trip to London head over to mypocketOS.com for all the details.

The monster that is Mobile World Congress has come and gone.. and I for one was lucky enough to be able to attend.

So what did people make of the announcements by Nokia?

The N96 - lovely as it is, is really just a refined N95 with some extra bells and whistles.. mainly DVB-H which isn’t even available in most countries  yet.  I understand that when you have a pretty good product in the N95 – you don’t need to re-invent the wheel, just make it better  and I think that they (hopefully) have done that.

Again the same can be said for the N78 – which is the N73 replacement.. Again – its taken the best of its sibling and enhanced on it..

Overall have we heard anything groundbreaking?  Well actually I think not..  Nokia Maps – lovely as it is.. its a Beta, again its just an update (ok a major improvement on the original) but not really anything new.

So what happened to Touch?  This is the one thing that I was really hoping to see.  Sadly it was a no-show (in handset terms at least).

As much as I like the look of the new handsets and the improvements to the software – I did come a way a little underwhelmed..  Thankfully the whole experience of being at WMC and having access to the Nokia Product Managers while there more than made up for it.

Being an Apple fan – we love the big bang announcements and the Steve Jobs Key Note – you really do get that wow factor.  I know that nobody can match Apple for this. The problem is that they raise the bar and I just expect others to follow..

That being said – I really cannot wait to get my hands on the N96 when it comes out – it rocks!

[Note:  I've been a little slow on the blogging front recently, this was drafted shortly after my trip to WMC, I thought I just as well post it, even if it is a bit late in the day..]

A quick video showing some of my highlights of the WOM World trip to Mobile World Congress, Barcelona.

From meeting the WOM World Attendees, to Nokia Product Managers and finally getting down at the S60 Party.

Day 2 kicked off bright and early with breakfast at 7.30, with an 8.00am coach pickup to take us back into the City. Traffic was very heavy, and it took us longer than expected to get to WMC.

On arrival we had to go pick up our Nokia Exhibition Passes. As you can imagine there were a few other people trying to do the same.

When we finally get our passes we made our way over to the Nokia Hospitality Suite (our base during our time at WMC) to watch a live webcast of the Keynote Speech.

Read more…

I am now back in the UK again after spending a few days at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Unfortunately due to some very ropey WiFi at both the event and the hotel, I wasn’t able to bring you guys live coverage as I’d initially hoped. I have quite a bit of work to catch up on (sorting photos & videos etc) so all being well, I’ll have more detailed coverage in the next day or so. For the time here’s a bit about my trip to Barcelona.

Read more…

I am really excited to say that iGadget Life will be flying out to be at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week.

For those of you who don’t know the Mobile World Congress (formerly 3GSM) is the worlds largest mobile exhibition which runs from the 11th-14th February in Barcelona, Spain.

The Mobile World Congress features the very latest in technology, services, and developments, bringing to life the promise of mobile broadband for all and defining the industry’s path to continued growth. The Congress brings together the eminent leaders and personalities from mobile operators and equipment vendors, as well as those from the Internet and the world of entertainment.

Hopefully I’ll be able to post live from the floor of this amazing mobile event and bring you details of all the latest announcements and mobile news.

For those of you who Jaiku, I have set-up a MWC Group (see right panel for live feed) for anybody who wants to join in the conversation.

If you are going to be at MWC, drop me a line to let me know..

Watch this space for more details, and live coverage from 11th Feb of the world’s largest phone show!

I’d like to thank the guys from WOMWorld for making this trip possible.

Since the launch of the N95 8GB, it would seem that people are still trying to figure out if it is worth getting over it’s elder brother (the original silver N95) as I was pleased to see today that my recent N95 / N95 8GB Video Comparison has just hit over 1/4 million views on YouTube and is the 9th most popular video of all time in the Science & Technology section!

Click to Play

Look out for the yellow one!

Update: Sorry for the random video – I enabled cross-posting from blip.tv (when not uploading direct from their website) and forgot all about it.  I was trying out UpperBlip the Mac client to upload direct from your desktop.

The video is of some ducks at work – a mother with her 10 ducklings (with one solitary yellow one). Quack Quack!