Blogmob Samsung Mobile: I’ve Been Given A Samsung i550 Phone

..only for a month! 😛

A month ago, I received an email from a guy named Kash with an invitation to participate in an event called Blogmob. As this is their first event, sixteen bloggers have been selected to review two phones – a Samsung i450 phone or a Samsung i550 phone – for an entire month! Blogmob is the brainchild of Mobile World and Samsung where they select a bunch of bloggers each month(but I think bloggers who are interested in future events can register themselves too) to review a Samsung mobile phone and utilize these phones in their daily lives. Samsung and Mobile World are under the impression that bloggers have highly digitalized lives…and I certainly hope I don’t disappoint. *gleep*

Kash is the editor of Mobile World, a magazine on everything related to mobile technology. Instead of approaching tech bloggers to review the latest Samsung phones, they have decided to branch out and pick sixteen bloggers with their own set of audiences. I applaud them for their courage in believing in us. Kudos to the Mobile World and Samsung team for doing something different.

These sixteen bloggers are made up of Lydia Teh (Yes!! The author!!), Jasonmumbles, myself, Missycheerio/Ellie, Vincent Chow, Sultan Muzaffar, Amy Lai, Praveen Rajan, Kugan, Visithra, Abner, David, Jun Yan, Norizwan, John Ling and Jazlin Ernida.
There are three contests carried out during this entire event. This means only three bloggers will win their phones at the end of the month and the other 12 are given a 50% discount off the phone if they plan to purchase it.

The first contest would be to show the phone to as many as possible. The second contest is for the most interesting entries about the phone and the last contest is to see who has the highest traffic in that one month long duration.

The event was held at Izzi KL and even though I managed to drive down to the golden triangle in like, 20 minutes from Subang Jaya(the Federal Highway was surprisingly clear), I was stuck for up to half an hour in a stupid jam on Jalan Bukit Bintang. Arghh!

I arrived at the event slightly frazzled and quivering a bit because of the excitement and embarrassment for being one of the last to arrive. Everyone was so friendly! Though a few were painfully shy, but it was all cool.

We started off with a round of introductions to get everyone to warm up to each other. That’s Sultan Muzaffar standing up! He is right, he is really shy in real life though he is outspoken in his blog. He said so himself during the introductions!

This is Amy! I recognized her url as one of those around Nuffnang’s community. On her right is her friend Resh and on her left is David, another blogger whom I recognize from Nuffnang’s community.

David stands up to talk a little bit about himself. Somehow, he reminds me a little bit of Smashpop though he is just a little bit more talkative.

Missycheerio aka Ellie! A fellow Subangite and her boyfriend is Alvin Lum, my senior from school! Woohoo, I love it when the world is small.

The only blogger I know about and personally prior to the event – Jasonmumbles! Not only is he an old blogging friend, but a rather close one at that. One of the few people who layans me on MSN at any time of the day. I can nudge him on MSN at 6am and still expect a respond.

The Samsung team introducing themselves as well.

The phones!! The phones!!

Kash came around with a deck of cards. Those of us who picked the red card will get the i550 phone and those of us who pick the black card will get the i450 phone. I’m extremely happy that I picked the red card! I really really wanted the i550 from the very beginning. It’s the wifi function that did it for me. I was even checking my facebook while at a karaoke joint two nights ago.

If I do a good job, this belongs to me. It’s pressurizing and oh so tempting.

Meet Lydia Teh! She looks a lot like the caricature on the cover of her “Honk! If You’re Malaysian” book. She’s also amazingly friendly and very very funny too! We were both gasping in delight at the generous discount given to us to purchase the phone but pretended to be disappointed with such a ‘small discount’. Hehe. I told her that I remember her articles in the newspapers from way back in 2003. She wrote a review for an RTM2 television show(amazingly, a chinese show which I caught during my study breaks back in form5) for the Star back then. She also writes for the Mind Our English column in the Star. I told her I contribute to R.age every now and then as well but I felt like a small fry compared to all her accomplishments! She’s even on the best seller lists in a few of the bookstores! But I loved the fact that she had absolutely no air about her.

I think his name is Bernard. Bernard here is flapping his hand while talking about the i550.

l-r: Myself, Ellie and Jason. We were doing what one usually does in a blog meet. We go around taking photos with each other.

L-r: Resh, Myself, Amy and David.

I didn’t mean to bore David..

According to the organizers, if we can snap a photo with Sam who is from the Samsung team, he counts as ten people! I hope they keep to their word.

A group photo of Kash and the grateful bloggers.

Took the opportunity to camwhore with Sultan Muzaffar! I’ve heard of him ever since I started getting involved with the blogging community(and this is pretty long, like since 2005) and finally, I got to meet him.

How can I go to a blog gathering and not take a photo with Jason kor here hm?

And one with Kash as well. Thank you so much, Kash.

l-r: Lydia, Jason, John, Myself, Amy and Ellie

Jason, always thinking about the appetites of his friends wherever they are. When he comes to KL, he brings something that can only be found in Malacca. When he goes back to Malacca, he brings something only found in KL. 🙂

I fetched him, Amy and Resh to KL Sentral but we lost our way and we tried using the GPS but were such noobs, so that didn’t work out too well. We’ve got a video, though I haven’t checked to see if it’s blogging-worthy.

As you can see, I’m pretty keen in winning the “show the phone to the most people” contest. I started off with the jockey outside Izzi Hotel.

Then I showed my entire family when I went back to Malacca for ching ming.(my family very simple one, we prefer to avoid the crowds.) That’s 11 people there!

And I know it looks really tiny.

Sexiness in a box.

Though the keypad feels like bits of rice to the touch, surprisingly you don’t miss any of the buttons in the midst of typing something.

Besides the cool blue tracking ball-scroll thing, I love the camera function of this phone. It is AMAZING. It takes the most awesome macro shots. I shall demonstrate this function in a later post. Patience, my children.

Okay, I can’t wait. See how awesome the colours are! It’s damn clear as well.

A slim phone is always always sexy.

A very clean back. The jakun in me is raving about the flash that comes with the camera. It’s a 3.0 megapixels camera as well! Even better than my first ever digicam. (pathetic Sony camera)

Earphones for music and radio on the go.

A few more angles but I’ll do a nicer explanation in a later post.

Sexy sexy candybar. I’d prefer a flip phone but does it have wifi? NOooo! I love it when my phone has a wifi function…so even if it’s a candybar, I’ll take it!

This is inside the goodie bag that they provided us bloggers during the event. Two magazines courtesy of their publishing house, a printed version of their powerpoint presentation, a Beyonce cd(OMG! awesome car rides!), Samsung paraphernalia and cute round-shaped playing cards.

Since I was some running some errands today at Petaling Street, I decided to take the opportunity to show this phone to as many people as possible. In a day or two, I will set up a page to showcase the amount of people who have seen this phone.

This lady was very kind. She even wished me all the best in winning the competition.

Most of them just gave a slight nod and smiled for the camera. Though understandably most of them were pretty confused. I told them that it was a Samsung phone that I’m hoping to win.

This guy and I look like we’ve been friends for the longest time. Hehe. Most of the people whom I took photos with really held the phones in their hands to have a look-see. So it’s working! If Samsung intended the public to have a feel of their phone, it’s really working.

This is the uncle who sells Leong Cha at the corner of Petaling Street.

More random strangers. I felt really nervous at first but thankfully I survived the first few scary prudes.

Obviously the foreign tourists are the most willing of the lot. Other foreigners like the ones manning the Petaling Street stall (don’t you find it weird that foreigners are selling to other foreigners at a widely proclaimed tourist spot) are very obliging as well.

Not that I’m playing the racial card here, but today I hated my own race alot. Such prudes. Oklah, it’s not their fault that they didn’t want to take a photo with me but they were definitely the rudest of the lot. Most would just give a small wave of the hand. I think it’s all the snubbing-promoters-karma biting me back in the ass.

Not all gweilos are obliging though. When I muttered like an idiot(due to me being nervous), they would walk away with that brisk wave of the hand. But when I spoke clearly and ahem, professionally, they actually layaned! So nice of them.
Also, hehe, I realized that those who were with local-looking girls were pulled away quickly by their local girls or they themselves dismissed me within seconds. At that time I thought, “Hm, maybe their local friends have warned them about having their photos taken by strangers and then used for black magic purposes.” But now when I think about it, D’oh. So obvious that they are afraid of their deeds being recorded on camera and put up on the world wide web.

Funny how when I walk pass shops at Petaling Street, I usually get harassed into visiting their shops(like hello, let me walk in peace!) but when I asked them to take a photo with me, they would happily pose, and then forget about asking me to buy things. Kinda like made them shut up by taking a photo with them. Maybe you can try that if you can’t stand the noisy peddlers.

This is a rare and kind Chinese aunty who kept saying, “Haiyah!! Si tan lah si tan lah!”(anything lah anything lah!) while smiling happily.

And on I went…

Another type of people that I could count on to layan me would be people who are around my age.

I’ve got tons more, so the point of the photo is only to show the organizers that I’ve shown the phone to a lot of people. So I shall not captioning the photos from here onwards.

Also, an easy way to get the younger people to take a photo with me would be to ask them, “You know what is a blog right? It’s a blogging contest,”. Though I had to say it in cantonese to these girls. Karat cantonese, I have.

Though they were a little doubtful but they obliged.

A bunch of people who are about my age from Penang. I was like, “You know what’s a blog right?” and I could feel that they resisted an urge to roll their eyes as they said, “Yeaaa..” Hehe. I wonder if we have mutual friends. Let them know that they are here on my blog if you know them.

My brother says she’s hot.

Though some of the peddlers are scary when you’re walking pass their stalls briskly(as they call out to you etc), they are actually very nice and you can see how genuine their smiles are. Look at the one next to me, I’m smiling while looking at big grin. Wait, GOD DAMN, those are damn nice teeth. And they don’t look fake to me.

Not bad…initially I didn’t want to approach the chinese peddlers because most of them are erm, well, mandarin speaking or crude cantonese speaking. And I don’t fare so well in either language. Thus I’ll probably get brushed aside furthermore chinese people are very superstitious. But these two were very cool and were like, “Ke Yi! ke yi!” (can can!)

Micah has grown up! 😛 Can’t wait for Heroes to resume soon.

and the last photo.

Damn, I sure hope I’m in the leading for the 1st contest.