On the Road: Stop 2 - California

Im back from Brazil but out on the west coast though.. I got in sunday morning saw my parents, dog and a few friends did laundry and repacked and flew out monday around noon to San Jose for Spring VON that starts today. I totally came unprepared as the weather is cold and rainy.. definately not Brazil weather.
So Brazil was fun, yes the language barrier was an issue... yes the exchange of money was too but overall a good trip..My friend Jessie kept me laughing when I got peanuts thrown at me or ripped off by the ice cream guy..lots of parks in the city but other than that not a very touristy place..good food though.. two places I recomend that I went out to was el Figuerea and Bars de Arts...I couldnt find a souvenir store to save my life though.. anyway onto a recap of Telexpo as promised. As I said earlier the main attractions were the mobile booths like motorola, siemens, and Kyocera. and it would make sense since Brazil has a mobile ownership that will reach nearly 80 million individuals by 2006, making it the 5th largest mobile population in the world (ranked after China, USA, India and Japan). and 3G has all the hype just like in Mexico..while here in the US my friends still have a hard time figuring out what the difference is between CDMA and GSM.
I got to play some more with some of the Nokia phones especially liking the 8800 and the N91 ...
Siemens hands down has the best design in mobiles Ive seen targeting women the right way with cell phones in "pretty" colors and feminine graphics and bling bling...where LG has some really cool phones with great features but the design leaves me wanting something cooler looking and not so clunky. my top 4 awards for this show are as follows:
-Best phones: Siemens and Nokia
-Best Booth: Kyocera, Siemens and Nokia
-Best Booth Babes: Nokia and LG
-Best phone Design: Siemens
here are some pics from my e680..quality isnt the greatest but you get the picture

Kyocera had one of the most popular booths with lines wraped around their booth of people waiting for free ice cream popsicles... and they had a dj playing some dope tunes.. I give props to their marketing dept for being on this whole "slider remix" branding.. how clever.. name the phone after what 18-28 year olds are into ..the whole dj culture? the electronic music and free ice cream definately kept people around at least to check out their phones..I checked some of their handsets and was not impressed at all even if I wouldve gotten the free ice cream.

The Nokia 8880 definately keeps my attention for the most slik design but its $800 price tag scares me as much as that shark screensaver

This LG Cyon 3d game phone was actually pretty cool even though the actual design was not something I would be seen walking around but I got to play the snow boarding game on it with its motion sesion sensors translates movements you do to the phone onto the game..

This Last LG handset..the SB 130 even though again I didnt love the design..its capability of play and pause live TV as well as deal with every multimedia-type task was impressive..

so thats it for the telexpo recap..if you read this far hope you enjoyed it..well the redbull and vodka is starting to wear off and im still on East coast time so its time to hit the sack..tomorrow VON starts and I have to get up early..