SingTel extends early upgrade offer

Good news for existing iPhone users who want to upgrade to the new 3GS but were put off by the horrendous queue. SingTel has extended its early upgrade offer until the end of July. With this offer, you only need to pay $300 to top up your existing contract to buy the iPhone 3GS, if you qualify for this offer that is.

SingTel had previously sent out mailers to selected customers telling them that the offer was valid between 10 and 12 July. However, it is now sending SMSes out to customers to tell them that the offer has been extended to July 31.

This will undoubtedly reduce the queues at Comcentre. The launch of the iPhone yesterday saw long waits of up to seven hours as people lined up to buy the 3GS. Whereas some people simply wanted to be among the first to get the new iPhones, others were there because they wanted to take advantage of the early upgrade offer during the weekend window. (Click here to see a Youtube video of the scene yesterday evening, taken by someone after he'd gotten his new iPhone 3GS).

The scene of long lines at Comcentre yesterday are being been repeated today (see pictures here and here for instance). Earlier this afternoon, SingTel announced that it was no longer taking in walk-in customers for the 3GS and that the current waiting time for those in line is six hours.

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Long queues at Singtel's iPhone 3GS launch

The Singapore launch of the 3GS on Friday night was marked by long queues, even for those who pre-ordered. The first person to pick up his iPhone from Singtel began queueing at 9am on Friday, 11 hours before the 8pm launch.

According to news reports, Jackson Low, a medical tests subject recruiter (?!), is no stranger to queuing for the iPhone. Last year, at the launch of the iPhone 3G, he was the second person in line where he began queuing five hours before the midnight launch. To ensure he would be first this year, he went down extra early. For his pains, he received his iPhone from Singtel group chief executive Chua Sock Koong and Singapore chief executive Allen Lew.

Singtel yesterday estimated that about 1,500 to 2,000 people were expected. At 11pm, Singtel announced that the queue had closed, but those in line could expect to wait about six hours.

Despite the long queue, it was relatively orderly. However, people were naturally unhappy about having to queue, especially those who pre-ordered. Singtel had two queues, for pre-orders and walk-ins. However, those who pre-ordered ended up waiting for many hours as well. Complaints about the long wait were rife on Twitter and local forum Hardwarezone. People have posted tweets about waiting as long as seven hours to get the new iPhone. Posted @M0T0chan: "Just showered after an almost-7-hour wait at the SingTel Comcentre for my iPhone 3GS 32gb Black. Dead beat...this was longer than last year". Another person, @audreyhuang, was less polite. "stupid singtel!!!!!!!!!! waiting in line for more than 6hours! im so fucking tireddddddddddddddddddddd."

The iPhone 3GS is being launched only at the Singtel shop at Comcentre. Special offers were made to attract people to upgrade this weekend for the launch.

The launch event continues today and Sunday as well. At the time of this writing (10.45am), long queues have already been reported at Comcentre.

To alleviate the queue, Singtel is offering to ship the iPhone 3GS to the homes of people who order online.

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1.5 hours to go before launch

And with 1.5 hours to go before the Singapore launch of the iPhone 3GS at 8pm today, the lines have started! See pix here by @tyoshida or this by @vsithasa, or this by @bitsmedia.

Track the situation live via Twitter (search for Singtel or comcentre).

Let's hope for their sake that it doesn't rain.

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Gothere.sg now iPhone-friendly

Gothere.sg is one of my favourite local sites because their site makes it very easy to get around Singapore. Now I have a new reason for hearting them -- gothere.sg has a mobile site that is iPhone-friendly.

Visit gothere.sg on your iPhone now and you will be greeted with an appropriately formatted page, and the ability to detect your location using Safari's new location-aware capabilities. (This has been up since June 19, but I only just found out. Oops!)

According to Toh Kian Khai, the director of business development at Gothere, the company has avid iPhone users and they are planning a native iPhone app. They're not making promises, but September is a date that is being bandied about. Looking forward to it guys!

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Singtel closes pre-orders for iPhone 3GS

If you haven't made reservations to buy your iPhone 3GS this Friday, Saturday and Sunday, you're too late now. All reservation slots have been snapped up, according to Singtel. At the launch, priority will be given to those who have pre-ordered, according to the telco, which suggests that you can turn up and queue but you'll have to take your chances.

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Saturday slots snapped up

Singtel says that all the slots for Friday and Saturday have been booked. If you want to pick up your iPhone this weekend, you will have to do it on Sunday.

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Buying the new 3GS? Choose your plan carefully

If you're buying the iPhone 3GS from Singtel and you want to save money, look beyond Singtel's iFlexi plans. If you opt for Singtel's normal calling plans, and you add Singtel's Broadband on Mobile plan for data, you can get a better deal than if you go with Singtel's iPhone-specific iFlexi plans.

Why? Because Singtel's iPhone-specific plans don't allow you to download very much. The iFlexi plans give you a maximum of 3GB of free data a month. Singtel's Broadband on Mobile data plans, on the other hand, offer up to 50GB of free data a month. Add on an appropriate calling plan, and you're ahead of the game.

Let's say you take Singtel's most expensive calling plan (the iThree plus), and you take the most expensive BBOM plan (the 7200). In total, you will pay $265.36 ($192.60 + $72.76) a month. For that, you get 2,000 outgoing minutes, 2,000 SMSes and 50GB of downloadable data a month with a promised download speed of 7.2Mbps.

If you take iFlexi premium (the most expensive iPhone plan), you pay $205 a month. For that, you get 1,500 outgoing minutes, 1,500 SMSs, and 3GB of downloadable data a month at a promised download speed of 7.2Mbps.

In both cases, you get a free iPhone 3GS. However, for an extra $60.36 a month, you get 500 more outgoing minutes, 500 more SMSes, and, most importantly, you will get 47GB more downloadable data a month. (How much is 47GB of data worth? At $2,831 per GB, you will end up paying over $130,000 if you download an extra 47GB over your ceiling).

Will you need 50GB a month? If you watch lots of Youtube videos over 3G or if you use your iPhone for tethering, you'll be grateful for the fact that you never need to worry about going over the limit.

If you want to save even more money, consider going with a BBOM plan with a slower download speed. If you get the BBOM 2000, it comes with 50GB of data a month at 2Mbps speeds. You'll only pay $37 a month for this plan.

Is BBOM 2000 slower than the iFlexi plans? In theory, yes. In practice, it's hard to say. I'm on the BBOM 2000 plan at 2Mbps. My wife is on an iFlexi plan at 7.2Mbps. I did a series of tests last August/September, comparing the download speeds of our two phones. I never saw a three-fold difference in download speeds. In fact, most of the time, the download speeds were very close.

So the moral of the story is, if you research your options before signing on the dotted line, you should be able to save yourself a fair bit of money.

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No more Friday slots available, says Singtel

If you were hoping to pick up the iPhone 3GS this Friday but you haven't made a booking, you're out of luck. Singtel says all the Friday slots have been fully taken up. Fortunately, slots are still available for Saturday and Sunday.

This is quite remarkable given that the site has been extremely flaky since Monday. It won't recognise me as an existing user and it is unable to register new users.

I was at Comcentre today and I asked a customer service person about the problem. The guy said that a lot of people were having problems registering on the site.

Singtel obviously has another winner on its hands with the 3GS.

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Scoreless Music gets backing for Chordica

Armed with a $200,000 development budget, local iPhone app developer Scoreless Music is preparing to bring its innovative musical app, Chordica, to the next level. According to company founder and developer Joash Chee, the money is the result of investor interest, as well as support from government bodies and private companies.

Joash promises that the new and improved app, to be renamed Chordica Pro, will be a huge leap forward over the current version. Chordica Pro is slated to be released at the end of the year. For intellectual property reasons, Joash is coy about revealing too much about the new features at this time though. "Let's just say that it is, at minimum, a threefold increase in function and user experience," he says. His lawyers believe that they might be able to get up to three patents out of the new app.

Joash is extremely bullish about the potential of Chordica Pro. "When everything rolls out as planned, it will open up a revenue stream that even Apple has not capitalized on yet. There's increased potential for viral growth and we are talking possible half a million USD in sales of the app alone within a year of its release."

Apart from working on Chordica, Joash is also busy retooling his other apps. His three free apps, Keyfinder, ChordChanger and Chordica Lite, will be bundled into a single suite called the Scoreless Music Suite. The suite will be a paid app, though if people want to, they can still get all three as separate apps for free.

According to Joash, the aim is to free up Springboard space and to provide a logical consolidation that users have been asking for. The Scoreless Music Suite is expected to be in the App Store by the middle of the month.

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Singtel iPhone 3GS pricing released

Come Friday, you will be able to pick up the new 32GB iPhone 3GS from SingTel at prices ranging from free to $678, depending on the plan you subscribe to. Upgrades for existing iPhone owners available. Full details here.

Update: Existing iPhone 3G users who have been on Singtel for at least six months can upgrade to the 3GS by resubscribing for another 24-month contract. You'll have to pay $600 for the privilege though. You can, however, trade in a 16GB 3G (for $300) or 32 GB 3G (for $400) to offset that $600.

Via Channelnews Asia because the Singtelshop website won't allow me to register as a new user and won't recognise me as an existing user.

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Local app update: iHealth Sg

If you need to get to the nearest hospital or clinic or if you want to find an emergency room with the shortest queue, there's an app for that.

The Ministry of Health has just made iHealth Sg available for free on Apple's App Store. Developed by 2359 Media, the app, probably the first government iPhone app, is a comprehensive guide to GP clinics, polyclinics, hospitals, laboratories and nursing homes in Singapore.

You can search for a clinic or hospital nearby using the iPhone's GPS ability.

Pick a facility and it will give you its address and phone number. You can also locate it on the map. By far the coolest feature though is the ability to check out the queue at polyclinics or hospital by viewing the waiting room webcams.

Clinics which have been registered as Pandemic Preparedness Clinics have also been marked out. These are special clinics that people with flu-like symptoms should go to for assessment when the H1N1 situation reaches the mitigation phase following the sustained community transmission.

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SingTel to sell iPhone 3GS on Jul 10

SingTel has just announced that the Singapore launch for the iPhone 3GS is Friday, July 10. Details on pricing will be released next week, according to the press release.

You can register to get an update on pricing and launch details from SingTel here.

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