The WN Wi-Fi Network Extender is portable and a convenient wireless solution, featuring a blend of USB and Ethernet port allowing users to plug in a WiMAX USB dongle or wired ADSL gateway to deliver a complete WiFi connectivity to multiple WiFi-enabled devices.

WN is targeted to fulfill multiple wireless networking needs through 4 convenient implementation scenarios; As a convenient portable travel router for on the move mobile professionals to easily create an instant hotspot anywhere and everywhere they go. This compact power house also features WiFi Wireless Distribution System (WDS) to link multiple WNs into a wireless mesh network to address the issue of “dead” and “deep” coverage zones. The WN is ideal for everyday home networking, enabling shared Wi-Fi for WiMAX USB dongles or broadband wireline gateways, be it indoor or outdoor device that does not have an embedded Wi-Fi built-in. It is also perfect for SOHOs or SMEs that needs to interconnect shared networking equipment like network printers or shared storage servers via LAN.

“At Greenpacket, we listen to our customers to determine what new features and technologies we should integrate into our products to address their consumer needs. Our existing clients are pleased with our high performance, award winning UH, but preferred if it supported Wi-Fi convenience. said Kelvin Lee, Senior General Manager of Greenpacket.“ That is why we came up with the WN, a cost effective router to extend the wireless capability of end-users’ existing wireless or wired equipment.

Specifications of the WN Wi-Fi Network Extender(WN110T):

• Compatible with any 4G Hostless device or broadband gateway through USB or Ethernet port
• Wi-Fi – 802.11 b/g/N
• Wireless Distribution System (WDS)
• Chip level antenna diversity function enhances load balance and coverage
• 2dBi antenna gain
• Advanced Security with WPA/WPA2/WEP & more
• High speed: up to 300 Mbps (11n)
• Compact and Weighs 40 grams only
• Power supply: 5V 2A DC in (micro-USB)
• Low power consumption of 1 watt
• USB & WAN Port
• Ethernet/LAN Port
• Zero Installation, Plug-and-Play
• Surge Protection

WN is patent pending and is the first portable Wi-Fi router that supports hostless wireless USB devices, which includes the current WiMAX technology and later LTE as well.

The official retail price of the Nokia Lumia 800 is RM1650 and the Nokia Lumia 710 is priced at RM999. Please ignore the estimated pricing that we revealed previously.

As for Windows Phone Marketplace, we are excited to be the first to reveal that Maxis has enabled it with operator billing. They are “fine tuning” some stuff and it should be available now or soon before the Lumia launch in Malaysia.

With Maxis supporting Windows Phone Marketplace, customers can now purchase from over 60,000 apps and will be charged via the Maxis phone bill. Not sure about DiGi, but we are still checking with Celcom if  it would enable operator billing as well.

No promises but we will try reveal if there are any exciting launch promotion for the Nokia Lumia next week.

[Update1]- Celcom has confirmed to enable operator billing for Windows Phone Marketplace before the Nokia Lumia launch in Malaysia.

Unfortunately, calls to U Mobile customer service hotline at 018-3881318 went unanswered. Angry customers turned to social networking site such as Twitter to express their disappointment.

At the point of writing, U Mobile customers would not notice the outage unless they try to make a call or send an SMS. Broadband, Internet and BlackBerry users would be experiencing intermittent connection.

About 1 hours and 45 minutes after the outage occurred, U Mobile posted the following message on its official Twitter account:

“Our 3G services in some areas in Kinta are currently disrupted. Some customers maybe affected. The rectification is in progress. Any inconvenience caused is much regretted. TQ. ^CS02″- Source

And about 20 minutes later it said that the outage was actually nationwide “in some areas”:

Our data services in some areas nationwide are currently having intermittent issue. Some customers maybe affected. The rectification is in progress. Any inconvenience caused is much regretted. TQ. ^CS02- Source

Last checked while this article is being written, no announcement about this outage was posted on its Facebook page despite having over 100 thousand fans. In comparison, U Mobile Twitter account has some 600 followers.

MalaysianWireless would like to advice U Mobile customers to roam on Celcom 2G to stay connected with friends & family. Using U Mobile, we experience some drop calls & poor voice quality roaming on Celcom. It did not happened the same when we used a Celcom 2G SIM. We believe that the network roaming agreement between U Mobile & Celcom Axiata does not guarantee the quality of service for U Mobile customers.

This is probably the second major outage U Mobile has had so far and the 1st major network outage in the year 2012. It faced a similar network problem back in October where the outage lasted about 5 hours during business hours. U Mobile CEO later said “Today we let you down and I would like to apologise for the service interruption you have experienced,”. However no detailed explanation was given for the network failure. MalaysianWireless believes that the previous network outage was caused by an error in HLR (Home Location Register).

For that outage, U Mobile compensated customer with free unlimited SMS and 1.5GB of data. We will update more details here on the current network outage as we find out more.

[Update 1, Feb 2@1.10AM]- U Mobile Network was restored at 1.05AM. Voice, SMS & Data appeared to be working again. This means that the outage lasted for at least 4 hours. We will try to find out what caused the outage soon.

Nokia is about to sell its first Window Phone in Malaysia. It is launching the Nokia Lumia 800 and the Nokia Lumia 710 on the 10th of February which is Friday next week. For those who are not aware, we leaked the estimated retail price of both Nokia Lumia two days ago.

The Nokia Lumia 710 is expected to go on sale for RM990 while the Nokia Lumia 800 has a price tag of RM1890. However both retail price are not official and yet to be finalised by Nokia Malaysia.

Our sources confirmed that Celcom & DiGi will be present at the LaBodega, Pavillion launch. We know Maxis will offer the two Lumia but we are not sure if they will be there at the launch.

Nokia Lumia 800 Specifications:

• Display: 3.7 ”, Capacitive, AMOLED display
• Processor: Qualcomm MSM8255 (WCDMA) , 1.4GHz
• Operating System: Windows Phone 7.5 Mango
• Connectivity: WiFi, Micro USB, USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR, HSPA(14.4Mbps), GPS
• Memory: 16 GB mass memory (no slot for micro-SD cards), 512MB RAM
• Camera: 8 megapixels, 3x zoom, Carl Zeiss Optics
• Weight: 142 g
• Battery: 9.5 h(maximum 3G talk time), 335h(maximum 3G standby time), 55 h(maximum music playback time), 7 h(maximum video playback time)
• Colours: Cyan, Black, Magenta

Nokia Lumia 710 Specifications:

• Display: 3.7″ 16M-color ClearBlack LCD capacitive touchscreen with WVGA resolution
• Processor: 1.4GHz Scorpion CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm MSM8255 chipset,
• Operating System: Windows Phone 7.5 OS (Mango)
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Quad-band 3G with 14.4 Mbps HSDPA and 5.7 Mbps HSUPA support, GPS receiver with A-GPS support, Bluetooth v2.1, microUSB port
• Memory: 512MB of RAM, 8GB on-board storage
• Camera: 5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual LED flash
• Weight: 125.5 g
• Battery: Talk time- Up to 6 h 50 min (2G) / Up to 7 h 40 min (3G), Music play-p to 38 h
• Others: Scratch resistant Gorilla glass display cover, FM Radio with RDS
• Colours:  Black, White (front)/ black, white, cyan, fuchsia, yellow (back)

At the time being, we are also not sure if the Telcos are planning for a launch promotion. We will update you more when we hear anything.

Prepare to be Amazed!

The job cuts is part of its restructuring plans announced last November where it will lay off 17,000 jobs globally, or 23% of its work force of 74,000, to save €1 billion ($1.35 billion) in annual costs by 2013.

The joint venture between Nokia and Siemens since 2007 has struggled to report a profit as it faces heavy competition from Chinese rivals such as ZTE & Huawei. Both Nokia and Siemens originally tried to sell the joint venture but gave up those plans later.

[Source]- Reuters

On it Facebook page, Samsung Norway has said that the update will be available toward the end of this quarter. Which means sometime this month or next month.

The Ice Cream Sandwich update will offer a number of improvement for the Galaxy S II and Galaxy Note, including a new task manager, better notification manager, improved browser, Face unlock feature and more.

Last month, the i9100 Galaxy S II ICS ROM was leaked on the web. Unfortunately the leaked I9100XXKPA ROM was quite buggy and not really suitable for end users. If you want to take the risk, head on to this page to download this unofficial update.

In the mean time, Samsung Galaxy Note & Galaxy S II users will have to stick to Gingerbread for the time being.

[Source]- Samsung Norway Facebook

[Update 2]- Windows Phone Marketplace available now & Nokia Lumia RRP in Malaysia

About two weeks ago, Nokia Malaysia invited a couple of Bloggers in Malaysia for a special preview of the new Lumia 800 and the Lumia 710. However the most important information was missing, the retail price & date of availability.

Nokia Malaysia said that the two Lumia will be available after Chinese New Year, “within weeks”. As for the pricing, we(Bloggers) were asked to share with them our estimated price as they were still deciding on it. However Nokia Malaysia did say that they have an internal pricing for the two Lumia unfortunately they did not reveal it.

MalaysianWireless managed to obtain the pricing of the Nokia Lumia in Malaysia. What we are about to reveal here is for reference purpose only as the retail price is still not finalised yet.

The Nokia Lumia 710 will be priced between RM900-RM1000 while the Nokia Lumia 800 will be priced at RM1890 in Malaysia. There’s high possibility that Maxis, Celcom & DiGi would offer the Nokia Lumia 800 & 710 in Malaysia.

Refer Nokia Lumia 800 specifications over here & Nokia Lumia 710 specifications can be found over here.

In Singapore, Nokia said it launched the two Lumia pre-installed with a couple of local apps, unfortunately for now, there might not be any local apps for Malaysia. Our sources said that Microsoft Malaysia has yet to closely work with Nokia Malaysia although we believe both parties have been instructed to do so since the partnership between Nokia & Microsoft was formed. We hope both parties can work closely to create more localised Windows Phone app for Malaysians.

“Our broad strategic agreement with Microsoft includes platform support payments from Microsoft to us as well as software royalty payments from us to Microsoft.  In the fourth quarter 2011, we received the first quarterly platform support payment of USD 250 million (EUR 180 million).  We have a competitive software royalty structure, which includes minimum software royalty commitments. Over the life of the agreement, both the platform support payments and the minimum software royalty commitments are expected to measure in the billions of US Dollars.” Nokia’s earning statement reveals.

Nokia said it had sales of 10 billion euros ($13.2 billion) in the quarter, down 21% from the same period a year ago. It had lost €954 million (about $1,260 million) this quarter alone or a total of €1,073 million ($1,413 million) for the whole 2011.

It also reported that it had sold at least 1 million Nokia(Lumia) Windows Phones.

[Q4 2011 Financial Earnings]- Nokia

According to Chinese Five Element Astrology Calendar, 2012 is the Year of Water Dragon. Expert says that people who born in dragon years (which include 1940, 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988 and 2000) are imaginative and full of energy.

Based on the horoscope, Dragon is a legendary animal and it is symbol of emperor in China. Since the Dragon is coated with mysterious color, Chinese consider that the dragon is unpredictable, untouchable and people cannot see its head and tail at the same time. Therefore, we might see something unexpected happening in 2012.

P.s: MalaysianWireless would like to wish Happy CNY and Happy Holidays to all of you out there!

In its second annual developer survey, the analysts firm reveals that while iOS and Android form the core of developer support, there is significant drive behind Blackberry OS and an increasing interest from developers in Microsoft’s Windows phone.

Adam Leach, devices & platforms practice leader at Ovum and author of the research commented: “The growing momentum behind Windows Phone indicates that Microsoft has managed to convince developers that its platform is worthy of investment. However, its main challenge now is to persuade consumers.”

In this year survey, the trends mirror closely changes in the wider smartphone market. Developers have been quick to respond to the exit of once-important smartphone platforms such as Windows Mobile, Symbian and WebOS and have embraced opportunities that have arisen through emerging platforms.

The research also shows a move away from traditional cross-platform mobile application development approaches (e.g. Java, Flash, WAP). Instead, developers are focussing their efforts towards web-based standards (e.g. HTML5), which seem to be the preferred approach to building cross-platform applications.

Yet, despite the increasing use of cross-platform programming approaches, most developers are still using vendor-specific distribution channels such as Android Market to deploy applications, as this is seen as the best way to reach the largest possible audience for their applications.

Leach said: “A smartphone platform’s success is dictated not only by the pull of consumers and the push of both handset vendors and mobile operators but also a healthy economy of applications delivered by third-party developers. Therefore, it is important for all players in the smartphone ecosystem to understand the choices developers are making today and the downstream impact of those choices.”