My coverage of Orange Mauritius Expo 2009.
Well, actually it was a little more that just an expo of old telephones. ;)
That’s an old General Electric telephone… Compare that to your own phone. :P
I'll start off with the mobile phones... If you were looking to a hands-on with the Samsung Omnia or the Nokia 5800 or the Nokia E71, you'll be disappointed that these handsets are actually dummies at the Orange stand! Apart from the iPhone, there were hardly any other smartphones to test.
Nevertheless, there was still a Samsung Omnia HD being demoed at the Samsung booth. The Omnia has the best screen I've ever seen in a device - that AMOLED screen is way too good, great contrast & true black. :)
As for the UI, it's exactly like the 5800 & having a capacitive touchscreen seemed unconvincing on a UI optimized for resistive touch.
Also demoed at the Samsung booth was a waterproof phone – the Samsung Niagra.
Nokia was demoing the 5800... but they missed a great opportunity to present the N97 to the public.
The Sony Ericsson booth was empty. No one bothered to stroll there.
At the Apple stand, there were two things - an iMac turned off & the iPhones.
I've never tried an iPhone before (nor any other Apple product) so I had great expectations of the iPhone. The first iPhone I tried was UTTER CRAP! The touchscreen was totally unresponsive - tapping was hit & miss, sliding half-worked - I had to finger-punch the screen to launch something & the lag was so evident! I fired up Safari & (although it had a SIM), as expected orange.mu never loaded. & what to say of the screen - biggest fingerprint magnet in the world. Was this really the over-hyped iPhone?
Disgusted, I moved over to the Orange stands where the only real phones were SIM-less iPhones. The second iPhone I tried was so much better. How could two similar devices behave so differently? Both were iPhone 3Gs, but I bet they had different firmwares, which completely changed the user experience. Here are my final observations from the ‘better’ iPhone:
- It's a massive fingerprint magnet, not suitable for my fat greasy fingers.
- Capacitive is less accurate than resistive. With capacitive, your touch has to be firm, you con't have half-heartedly touch.
- There is a lag when doing different actions on the iPhone. For me, the animated transitions actually amplify that lag. The iPhone is not a device for frenzied hyper active impatient persons.
Add the fact that there is no app-switching, that was very frustrating to hit Home every time.
- Although it has a low resolution on a big screen, there is no pixelisation thanks to the anti-aliasing & font smoothing.
- After using the iPhone's QWERTY virtual keyboard, my doubts have been cleared. There can be no alternative to a physical Qwerty or T9 keypad. The virtual keyboard just isn't fast enough.
To conclude, without any apps, I was quickly bored by the iPhone. It's a good gadget, but not worth the Rs 25k it's being sold for.
Moving on, there was a gaming section with kids playing games on PCs, plus a PS3.
& something called Orange Sitara doing the background score of the event.
The mini-conferences were kinda noobish – but that’s the point of the Expo, it’s for noobs! :P
For the My.T/Orange TV, Orange tried to woo customers by putting huge screens playing those 15 channels. But they forgot that these channels are horrifyingly pixelised & the huge flat screens amplified that! That was a big FAIL!
Cash & Carry in partnership with Orange were offering special My.T+PC/Laptop offers… The total sum for the PC/Laptops at the end of 48 months is around Rs25,000 for the 256k 3GB, Rs 28,800 for the 512K & Rs 38,400 for the 1M. Check it here.
The Home section was also boring except for the Orange Liveplug – connects your My.T TV network via electrical lines.
To sum up, Orange Expo was a waste of time, no interesting technology, plastic smartphones on display, iPhone extravaganza, a Home suite straight from France & some conferences-for-dummies. But it's an Expo where models are more attractive than offers - that's why I’m glad I went there, & I would definitely recommend you to go… even if it's only for one thing…. the booth girls. ;)