Like, finally. Singapore had CWM since last year while we had to settle for the problematic Bimbit service with its limited and decidedly awful selection.

Nokia had two preview sessions for the X6/CWM bundle 6 Jan – one for media and one for bloggers.

Nokia's X6 next to Apple's latest iPod Touch

Playing around with the phone for a few days, I’d say that as a standalone phone, the X6 is still buggy and a challenging proposition.

Bundled with CWM, it’s a steal.

When you buy an X6, you get a year’s subscription of CWM. Think unlimited downloads and songs that you get to keep once the year is up.

Only catch, though, is the files are in WMA format and DRM-locked. The license is limited to one mobile device and one computer, though every 3 months you can transfer said license to a new PC.

CWM is probably the best alternative to Apple’s iTunes music store which is not available to Malaysians. It has a fairly impressive catalogue that covers a wide range of genres from Iron Maiden, Barry White to Rihanna.

There’s also a respectable selection of indie bands represented as well which should be a relief to those not as keen on current radio hits.

Though I like the catalogue, I wish I could say the same about Nokia’s software for the PC. The newest version of Ovi Player still doesn’t play nice with Windows 7, is slow, a resource-hungry monster and is decidedly inelegant when compared to Apple’s slicker iTunes.

I can still download music straight to my phone but the process is slow and a battery sapper.

If Nokia wants to stay relevant in the upper segment of the mobile phone market, it needs to do something about its software.

Now on to the phone: I admit to being biased because I loved my XpressMusic 5800. It was a poor man’s touchscreen phone but it did a lot for very little money.

Compared to Apple’s iPod Touch, the X6 is far less responsive despite the new capacitative instead of resistive touchscreen.

I’ve had the phone crash on me once or twice already and trying to play music in the background while surfing or texting can be taxing on the phone.

But if you loved the 5800, the X6 is a major though pricier upgrade. I like the new Contacts bar for the Home screen which feels a whole lot zippier.

As a music player, I did miss how much easier listening to music was on my Touch. The X6 makes you jump through far too many hoops and I’m so annoyed by having to wait for my phone to verify the license of my CWM songs. It shouldn’t need to do it everytime I play a song, Nokia.

Sound quality is decent and the speakers’ loudness is fair competition for the 5800.

I just think that as a music phone, it could have been better. Sony’s Walkman series is probably the benchmark for MP3-friendly phones while Nokia’s XpressMusic series have always seemed bulky and less responsive in comparison.

For apps, Ovi has yet to impress me with its selection and the Ovi Store app is such a pain to browse through. If you have to purchase an app from Ovi, I would recommend the awesome Twitter-client Gravity which is worth its less than US$8 price. Kinetic scrolling, lovely interface and great ease-of-use.

But the X6 has grown on me the past few days and is certainly a very able replacement for my 5800. The bundled Facebook app is very good and makes taking pictures with my X6 and uploading them to FB near effortless.

I admit that my X6 is primarily a communications device for me – perfect on long commutes or when I need to quickly send out Twitter updates.

Its battery life is also fairly decent, lasting a good 4-6 hours with heavy Net surfing, Tweeting, chatting and some music playing.

All-in-all, neither the X6 nor CWM are perfect. But together, they’re a great combination which somewhat makes up for their individual failings.

If you loved the 5800, you’ll adore the X6.

If you’re a heavy music or social networking client user you might appreciate the X6’s hardiness.

If you fancy unlimited downloads of music on CWM, guilt-free and don’t mind DRM, the X6 package is a bargain.

My wishlist for the bundle:

1. Fix Ovi Suite and Ovi Player, as well as create Mac versions.

2. Roll out an X6 firmware update ASAP

Verdict: If CWM appeals to you, the X6 bundle isn’t a bad proposition at all. Otherwise, power users might want to wait for the Maemo-powered N900.

Personal photo printing has been around for quite some time, except that getting your photos printed out right after you’ve taken them isn’t exactly something you can do without the right equipment. Sure, one can argue that portable photo printers such as Canon’s Selphy ES-series do let you print on the go without having to find a wall socket to plug in for power, but getting one that literally fits into your pocket wasn’t really possible. Until of course, Dell came into the picture with their Wasabi photo printer.

I had the opportunity to bring one around for a while, and while it certainly has its limitations, it turned out to be one heck of a fun printer.

Dell markets the Wasabi primarily around the novelty that is ZINK (short for Zero INK) technology, which basically means that the printer doesn’t actually come with physical ink cartridges. Instead, the color pigments are made in the form of heat-sensitive crystals, which activate when heat is applied. While this means that the photo paper will be proprietary by nature, and that you can’t use any other types of regular paper, the lack of additional moving parts also means that the finished device can be made a whole lot smaller. Plus, not having to replace ink cartridges can be a blessing by itself.

Physically, the Wasabi (or otherwise known to Dell as the PZ310) is pretty small, not that much bigger than my Nokia N82 mobile phone. And given that most of the Wasabi’s made out of plastic, it doesn’t really weigh all that much either; just a smidgen over 200g or so according to the product page on Dell’s website. If its a pocketable photo printer you’re looking for, this one actually does fit the bill. Heck, even the Wasabi’s power adapter is almost as large as the printer itself.

You can send photos over to the Wasabi in two ways: via PictBridge connectivity from a PictBridge-enabled digital camera, or via BlueTooth (either from your mobile device or laptop, for example). Pairing the Wasabi with your mobile phone, for example, is an exercise in simplicity. I managed to test BlueTooth transfers using both my Nokia N82 and my wife’s Nokia E66; both worked flawlessly. Naturally, the main plus point of all this is that you’ll not need any drivers to be able to use the Wasabi, as there’s nothing to actually install in the first place.

Dell’s designed the device to be pretty simple to use, so there’s no plethora of buttons, lights and whatnot to distract you. Aside from the power button, there’s one that makes the Wasabi print multiple copies of any particular image, as well as a latch that opens up the Wasabi for users to load in additional ZINK sheets.

The reprint button is exceedingly handy when printing multiple copies, as the image data is retained in memory even after the print job is done, and the memory cache is only flushed when new image data is received by the Wasabi. That said, you can’t queue multiple print jobs with the Wasabi. Images can only be sent individually, and even then, while the Wasabi is busy printing, it’ll not accept any new print jobs until the print job is complete.

The indicators on the Wasabi are deceptively simple. You get three LEDs, each indicating a smiley face, a sad face and a battery. The smiley lights up during normal operation; a steady glow when waiting for a data signal, and blinking when data is being received. The sad face lights up with something is wrong; running out of media for example. Last but not least, the battery indicator shows the power status; blinking when low on juice, and staying lit when charging.

Dell says that the Wasabi is able to print 15 photos on a full charge. The lithium-ion battery is removable too, so you can easily purchase and tote around spare battery packs in case you need to print more photos during the same session. Recharging the battery takes about an hour and a half; not too shabby.

Each pack of ZINK photo paper comes with 10 sheets worth, including the blue ZINK Smart Sheet you see above, which calibrates the Wasabi’s important print bits for you. Each individual pack of paper comes with this calibration sheet, and Dell stresses that it’s a must to re-calibrate the Wasabi with each fresh pack of paper you load. The paper bay is revealed once you unlatch the transparent plastic cover on the Wasabi.

Printing a single photo takes about 50 seconds, give or take a few; not blindingly fast, but neither is it snail-slow either. The Wasabi does make some noise when printing, but nothing more than a slight whirring can be heard.

If anything, the print quality isn’t anywhere as good as a proper photo printer, as there’s a great deal of grain in the photos. For the Wasabi to produce better prints, you need to ensure that your images were shot with plenty of light. Then again, ZINK technology isn’t exactly mature, we should see higher quality prints as the granularity of the ink crystals gets finer, and as the technology improves over time.

A side benefit of the photo sheets being heat-activated by nature is also that you don’t need to wait for the printout to dry before handling, as they’re already dry from the get go. Also, the ZINK sheets aren’t just photos, they also double up as stickers. The adhesive is pretty strong though, and once stuck on, it’s not easily removed without some mess left behind.

A few things to note; firstly  that the Wasabi automatically crops your printouts to an aspect ratio of 3-inches by 2-inches, which is the size of the ZINK sheets. As such, you’ll have to frame your shots with that limitation in mind, lest a photo of your buddies on an outing end up with someone’s heads cropped off. Secondly, the Wasabi can’t print 15 sheets in one go; it’ll stop after a couple of prints to cool down, which is indicated by the smiley face LED blinking slowly.

The Dell Wasabi comes in three colors: pink, black and blue, and has an online price of S$319 here in Singapore (RM719 back home in Malaysia; and US$149 in the United States). The asking price isn’t exactly cheap for a portable photo printer, but at least Dell makes a habit of running online promotions every other week, so there’s very little chance of you having to pay full price to pick up one of these. The ZINK sheets are priced at S$8.56/RM19/US$20 for 48 sheets on the various Dell country websites.

As a portable photo printer that’s fun to use, the Dell Wasabi certainly fits the bill in more ways than one.The wife took it out to a gathering with friends, to their delight. Most of the ladies were more than willing to overlook the mediocre print quality in favor of the fun factor that the palm-sized printer brought to a girls’ night out. If Dell were looking for validation on the appeal that the Wasabi has, that’s probably the best example I can give you.

Nevertheless, aside from the less-than-optimal print quality, there are a couple of bugbears that we hope Dell will rectify in a future revision of the Wasabi (if any), least of which is the ability to load more than 12 sheets of photo paper at one go. In addition, while having the photos double up as stickers is interesting, it’d be great if Dell could also sell cheaper photo paper *without* the adhesive. Last but not least, the asking price can be a bit of a turn-off, especially since that the Wasabi’s faults are quite significant all by themselves.

For more pictures of the Dell Wasabi, continue scrolling down.

So by now just about everyone’s heard about Apple’s diminutive new iPod shuffle. It’s sleek, it’s slim and its absolutely tiny. No bigger than your typical thumb drive, this is probably the first time I’m seeing a portable MP3 player that boasts a volume much less than that of a rolled-up set of earbuds. One of these will set you back by US$79 in the United States, while Singaporeans are charged S$128. Over in Malaysia, one of those will go for RM309. The new shuffle’s also received a bump up in the storage department; from 1GB on the second-generation shuffle to 4GB on the new one. What’s more, while the ‘old’ shuffle came in a cornucopia of colors, the new one only comes in black and silver.

I’ve had the pleasure of hanging on to one for the past 2 weeks or so, and here’s a quick review for your reading pleasure.

To start off, just like with any other iPod product these days, you get a set of white earbuds; typical Apple fare for the most part, except that the ones that come with the new iPod shuffle have playback controls built-in; more on that in a bit. You also get a data cable, which plugs into the stereo jack on the shuffle, which also doubles up as the charging cable. Apple fans might also note that unlike the second-generation shuffle, the new one does *not* come with a dock.

One particular point about the new shuffle is that it happens to be totally button free. With the exception of the switch that you can see above, there are no buttons whatsoever on the shuffle, which leads back to the newfangled earbuds. There’s been plenty of noise regarding this, and opinions seem divided. One camp likes the minimalist approach, while the other seems to think that if Apple shrinks the shuffle any more, you’d probably find the next generation shuffle built into the earbuds themselves. As it is, Apple’s managed to squeeze quite a lot inside; amazing, really.

The switch you see enables shuffle or standard playback modes, while also doubling as an off-switch. Other than the earphone jack, the tiny dot you see in the middle is the LED indicator, which shows the various possible states of the shuffle when in operation.

The clip is pretty sleek, though it doesn’t really have a good grip. Attaching the shuffle to your collar, or the edge of your shirt is possible, but commuters stuck in the likes of a crowded train might run the risk of an inadvertent tug dislodging your new shuffle from wherever you’ve clipped it. Similarly, joggers and gym-goers might want to tie the shuffle down somewhere, lest it comes loose during a particularly vigorous workout.

Audio playback quality on the new shuffle is quite good. I also own an iPod touch 32GB, as well as an iPod classic 120GB; so far, with a pair of Audio Technica earbuds, I can’t really hear any difference between the three. Of course, using a third-party set of earbuds at this point also means that you lose a great deal of control over playback. Apple says they should have an adapter cable out soon, but having to shell out more cash on an add-on that lets you use your preferred set of earbuds just doesn’t seem right.

One thing to note about these new earbuds, having to keep clicking on the control pad is downright annoying. What’s more, you literally have to learn the different combinations that activate the different commands, almost like Morse code. As a matter of fact, Apple’s got an entire cheat-sheet for your handy reference, right here.

At this point, if you’re going to pick up one of these anyway, I’d recommend that you ditch the earbuds, and use your own favorite pair, clicking buttons notwithstanding. Besides, what better way to appreciate the shuffle than to listen to your music the way Apple named the player? After all, you can still activate shuffle playback mode from the switch on the player itself.

It’s interesting to note that the shuffle’s earbuds do work with the second-generation iPod touch and the iPhone 3G (though not with the 120GB iPod classic, nor the first generation iPhone), and it might be the case that Apple is considering having such earbuds bundled with all future iPods. For now, many third-party earphone manufacturers have also announced shuffle-compatible earbuds, such as Etymotic, Klipsch and Scosche.

The shuffle’s much hyped-about VoiceOver technology – where the shuffle basically ‘talks’ to you, telling such tidbits as the title of the song and the playlist name, in a selection of different languages to boot – is something that I personally consider as being more of a gimmick. Maybe it’d come in handy when someone asks you the name of the song you’re listening to (assuming you’ve forgotten). Personally, I have so much music already that I couldnt really care less what it’s called most of the time, so long as it’s pleasing to the ears. Nevertheless, the VoiceOver function works reasonably well, pretty much as advertised.

So, is it worth investing a couple more bucks into lining Apple’s already-bulging coffers? Well, after two weeks with this plugged into my ears, i’d have to say both yes and no.

Yes, only if you’re looking for a neat gift for a friend or family member.

No, simply because the earbuds are the biggest deal breaker if you’re not a big fan of listening to random tracks from your music library. You’d be better off shelling out a few extra bills for the iPod nano, which at least has a click wheel and a screen, and you’d probably not notice the extra couple of grams sitting in your pocket either. What’s more, the new iPod shuffle is so small, you run the risk of dropping it somewhere and not realizing it simply because it weighs so little. If you’ve got one of those older second-generation shuffles, and it’s getting pretty beat up, Apple’s still selling them online, best pick up one or two before they completely disappear.

In terms of looks and aesthetics, i’ll be the first to agree that Apple’s done a great job with the new shuffle. After all, slabs of machined aluminum can’t be anything else but cool. In terms of usability however, Apple’s probably removed a little too much this time around for it to make any real sense.