Bangkok’s gadget scene

 

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It’s been years since I last visited Bangkok. I remember how the streets were dirty, the roads were smoggy, the Tuk Tuks made one hell of a racket while navigating the clog of cars and buses, the shopping malls were really dull and you’ll be sure to be greeted by some ladyboy just around the corner. Today the place hasn’t changed much, all except for the how much the shopping malls have grown up. And by grown up, I mean they’ve bloated 100x in size.

2011-09-30 15.28.53

Surprisingly, one thing these super hyper mega malls does have aplenty: are gadgets. In fact there’s probably a higher concentration of Blackberry users in Bangkok than in Hong Kong. And they don’t look like corporate issued devices either.

So it’s all very interesting to see how a seemingly developing country have such a healthy gadgets uptake. And thus I was not so surprised when the mega mall next door (Siam Paragon) had such a huge electronics section filled with cutting edge Honeycomb tablets and dualcore phones. And I’m dam glad these places are not saturated with knockoffs like those that you can find everywhere in China.

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Samsung Galaxy 7 on the left; Samsung Galaxy Note on the right. I’ve not seen the Note displayed elsewhere in other countries so this was a surprise.

2011-09-30 11.31.05

The Nokia Experience Centre….in case you really want to experience Symbian.

Sadly, no Meego N9.