Today is the last day for the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2005 Conference at the Moscone West here in San Francisco. It was definitely a busy conference filled with men in suits all around hoping to make their next big deal. "Lets do lunch!" "Let's do some biz together!" "Let's do..." Oh nevermind. For me, I was in my tech element but maybe from the outside I looked too "Forever 21" as I smacked my new Chanel lip gloss and went basically incognito into the exhibit floor. It was strange and yet also exhilarating to browse around low-key and only talk if I really really wanted to ask a question.
All the photos from the conference are here => flickr photos .
(Note: I tried to take good pics but sometimes it was hard because it was crowded and my hands got a little shaky -- hence some photos may be a bit blurred. I apologize.)
The Nokia booth was great. I got some Nokia mints and I finally got to take a look at the N90 close up and I still like it. (Sorry Eric!) It was lighter than I expected and the resolution on the screen was super clear. It is definitely more of camera/video recorder that happens to have a mobile phone rather than a full scale phone. I still love my Blackberry because of its email access but I have problems actually talking on the phone. Sometimes I can hardly hear someone. I overheard at the Blackberry booth a press man talking about how he can't seem to have good connections to make calls. Of course I chimed in and agreed. The Blackberry woman there said that it could be our coverage here in SF because she had heard of the problem but that she lived in Canada. Apparently it has to do with the physical phone and how it has to make all these data connections. Nevertheless, I'm on the lookout for something, but not in a huge rush.
I saw the new Motorola Treo phone. It was very light and very thin. I was around all these "important" looking men who were talking about it so I heard that it is coming out soon, although I couldn't get a word in edge-wise to ask when it was coming out or through which carrier. At least they let me hold it and take some pictures.
A company called Qool was there from Singapore. They were showing off their new Pocket PC phone and I was really impressed with the design of it. It had a funky push button interface and you could flip it up and access the PDA of the phone. It had a plastic level that you could actually detach the flap if you wanted to. Plus it was one of the lightest Pocket PC's I have ever held.
Overall, there wasn't much new stuff to see and it was a bit overrated. I didn't see anything interesting or new in mobile entertainment either. What I came away with is that mobile phones are starting to get lighter as they do more. Which is a good thing.
The final highlight was to see my longtime friend Andy of Orange Photography shout my name as he was taking pictures at the VeriSign booth. He's here with frog man, the VeriSign mascot, where he was assigned to take pictures of conference attendees with the kooky-lookin' amphibian. Apparently this frog is big time in the UK. So I thought what the hell, and took a picture with him. In a sea of conference dudes, it was nice to see a familiar face even if it was next to a guy in a frog suit.