Communic Asia 2008 - Omnia, Amazing Worlds, Toughbook & Such

Communic Asia 2008 is one of Asia's biggest exhibition and platform for operators, service providers, technology vendors and consultants to network, exchange industry info and discuss the future of technology. I went yesterday and spent 1.5 hours at two of the Halls. Trust me, you need at least more than 2 hours to really walk around the exhibitions at Expo. Make it at least a half-day trip for anything fruitful.

Nonetheless the short trip is good enough for me to experience some gems at the exhibition. One of them is the Samsung Omnia. Right at the front of the exhibition halls is the Omnia advert (pic below). It looks slim (12.5 mm thick metallic casing) and runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 system, so you could have access to the Microsoft Office apps. The screen (3.2 inches) is wide enough for video or photos viewing, and Omnia comes with a 5 megapixel camera as well. The screen is a bit too sensitive in my opinion, which makes navigation a bit tricky. Guess my fingers are too thick.

There are more than 10 sets of it available for visitors to try it out. For those with no patience to queue for a hands-on, Samsung has also done up a mock huge-sized functional version which sort of looks cool.

Other than Omnia, I took a quick look at the other exhibitors. Guess this is Communic Asia and there are plenty of exhibitors from around the region, including China and Korea. What is surprising is that there are also European companies (I saw Norway companies).

Another gem I found at the Communic Asia 2008 is a Singapore / US company, Amazing Worlds, that builds and maintain 3D mirror worlds! It was only in April 2008 when I remarked that Mirror Worlds will come to Singapore one day (earlier blog here)! Watched their demo and even played with the system for a while. Impressive. There is still a lot that Amazing Worlds need to do in terms of populating the servers with content, but it will be interesting to monitor their development. Here's a demo of their product on YouTube:

The exhibitions also have other products but well this is not PC Show so the focus is different. I find the display of Panasonic Toughbook interesting, and Yahoo! also provided some demo of their mobile content platform. It is also interesting to experience the demo by DoCoMo on the Osaifu-Keitai mobile wallet that StarHub Mobile will bring to Singapore soon.

For those who wish to visit Communic Asia 2008, Friday 20th June is the last day and the event closes at 4pm, so better hurry!