It is barely a week before civic-minded citizens of this country head to their assigned polling stations to vote for their government leaders. After the billions of pesos have been spent in political advertisements, after the politicians have crisscrossed the whole archipelago, pressed the hands of almost everybody in almost all the towns and villages, all that everybody can do for the next seven days is wait.

And hope that those who have heard their spiels and promises would buy everything they said. While the more jaded and cynical among us would say that the best packaged candidates win, there are some of us who choose to believe that the public would choose the candidates whom they trust and perceive as honest and capable enough.

It may be easier said than done. After all, this election period has been one of the loudest ever we have had. All those brickbats and insults the candidates have thrown at each other, all their efforts to be loudest — in their mistaken belief that being more strident than their rivals would help them get the people’s attention — might only have let them cancel each other out.

So, good luck to all the politicians who invested their money, time, and efforts (for some, who pawned their honor, if they had any left, and their future). And for us, the people, may God bless us with the leaders we need, and not of the kind that we deserve.

Symbian 3

Nokia is set to release in the third quarter of 2010 the Nokia N8, the first smartphone based on the Symbian 3 operating system. Equipped with a 12-megapixel camera and built-in video editing suite, the N8 will be available in selected countries, and will cost about $492.

The world’s largest handset vendor hopes that the N8 would help it compete with Research In Motion and Apple, its main rivals in the high-end phone market.

I just wish Nokia would release this smartphone in the local market, real soon.

Samsung’s Galaxy

Meanwhile, Korean electronics powerhouse Samsung recently introduced the SHW-M100S smartphone. Otherwise known as the Galaxy A, it is the company’s first Android-powered smartphone available in the Korean market. The company also released various Android applications on Samsung Apps, its own online applications store.

The Galaxy A comes with support for video telephony, and is equipped with a 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED display. Powered by a 720MHz processor, the handset comes with terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB), and support for DivX.

With the online apps store, Samsung hopes to offer smartphone consumers with a long list of options as far as applications are concerned.

Available in Korea starting end of April 2010, this is one Galaxy I hope soon finds its way to our islands.

That’s all for the meantime, folks. Join me again next time as we keep on watching IT.