Apple Tablet Rumored for early next year

After what AppleInsider claims has been four years of development "riddled with setbacks," Apple is purportedly finalizing its long-rumored tablet for an early 2010 launch. AppleInsider claims to have been tracking the device get bounced back to the drawing board repeatedly over the past few years, but says that Steve Jobs is finally happy with the product and there's an internal go-ahead to get this thing ready for next year, barring any other setbacks. Purported specs include a 10-inch screen, 3G data and a custom ARM processor courtesy of its P.A. Semi purchase -- after previously considering Intel's Atom, as the story goes. Rumors elsewhere point to Verizon data instead of AT&T, but that might just be wishful thinking. While AppleInsider still claims the device is positioned somewhere between an iPhone and a laptop, its inside sources apparently didn't give the thumbs up to early artist renditions of the handheld, and so AI's new and "improved" render is above -- striking fear in the heart of aesthetes everywhere.

Possible Samsung NVIDIA Tegra chipped phone

NVIDIA's Tegra chip has shown itself to be quite a gem, especially in the field of augmented reality zombie destruction. Looks like Samsung agrees with that sentiment, and has confirmed that it's currently developing a smartphone with the powerful processor. That's not a lot to go on, but knowing the capabilities of the CPU, we're excited. It's probably safe to assume an AMOLED touchscreen is a given, as well as a plethora of TouchWiz widgets, but whether or not the phone goes with Windows Mobile or Android is still a mystery. A recent rumor suggested one of the "top five" smartphone makers would be releasing a $199 GSM-based Tegra device by year's end -- no indication if these two reports are one in the same, but we'd love to see what Sammy has in store sooner rather than later.

Kingston's 256GB Thumb drive

We're sure that it's only a matter of moments before a 256GB thumb drive this bulky is something of a joke -- hell, it wasn't so terribly long ago that cramming 256MB into something this size was an accomplishment. That said, if you're a netbook user looking for a storage bump, it looks like Kingston's got your back: this guy boasts transfer rates of up to 20 MB/sec. read and 10 MB/sec. write, and for all of you Vista fans, supports Windows ReadyBoost. Now, for the bad news: only available in Europe and the UK, and custom made upon your order (presumably after the check clears) this modern technological marvel will run you £565.67 ($924).

URC MX-5000 Awesome Universal Remote

URC has rolled out some pretty impressive remotes in its day, and it looks like it now has another claim to fame with what appears to be the first universal remote control with haptic feedback. That comes in the form of the company's new MX-5000 remote (pictured above with the touchscreen-centered MX-6000), which has a 2.7-inch touchscreen that URC says provides a "'very satisfying sensation" when you press one of the onscreen buttons. Otherwise, you can expect it to pack built-in WiFi, narrowband RF and IR to let you control just about anything you can throw at it, along with an included base station to accommodate various IR and RS-232 components and, of course, a built-in rechargeable battery and charging base. No word on a price just yet, but URC says the MSRP will be "less than $1,500.

$99 For a Blu-ray player!

Whether you want one for a cheap Father's Day gift, player for a second room, or just a low barrier to entry for Blu-ray ownership we certainly won't judge, and we suspect more than a few will be tempted by Meijer's offer of a $99 Curtis Mathes branded CMMBX130 Blu-ray player. Add on coupon code DOTMJR09 for free shipping, and its easy to over look its lack of surround sound analog outputs or Profile 2.0 support for the cheapest new Blu-ray player we've ever seen. Inside is the same Broadcom 7440 chipset that powered much higher priced players from Samsung and others in the past, so while the absolute latest in energy efficient, fast loading, BD-Live connected goodies may escape you, we figure that extra Benjamin or two in your pocket will be more than enough to compensate.

Acer's Upcoming Handsets

Acer’s upcoming handsets made their debut at Computex in Taiwan and well, we just don’t ever seem to get tired of seeing “Snapdragon” listed in a handset’s specs. The F1 is the top of the line model featuring a 3.8-inch WVGA display, the coveted 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 300MB available storage memory (ROM), 89MB available program memory (RAM), 5 megapixel camera with flash and auto-focus, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, HSDPA, GPS, FM Tuner, 3.5mm headphone jack and Windows Mobile 6.5. The L1 and C1 are entry level smartphones with the L1 being a slider and the C1 a full touchscreen device. The L1 features a 2.8-inch 240×400 touchscreen display, a 5 way navigational button, 12 key numeric keypad and Windows Mobile 6.5. The C1 also features 2.8-inch 240×400 touchscreen with handwriting recognition, 528MHz processor, 2 megapixel fixed focus camera, microSD expansion, built-in stylus, and Windows Mobile 6.5. All three handsets are slated for release later this year.

The New Iphone 3g?

The biggest announcement and biggest question mark is the new version of the iPhone. A new model is coming for sure, but we don't know what will be in it.

Most probably, the new Apple cell will keep its current design. Since Steve Jobs came to Apple, dramatic industrial design changes have only happened across various generations of gut changes. Historically, the iMac, the Powerbook/Macbook, or the Mac Pro went through several iterations before experiencing a complete redesign. It's too early for the iPhone to change its face dramatically, specially when the current form factor works so well. And, after all, there are only a few ways to do a touch-screen phone. The iPhone 3G's design is simple, elegant, and works extremely well, so there is no reason to see a big re-design now.

Some people are talking about multiple color versions. With the iPod mini, nano, and shuffle, color became a way to convert the low-end hardware into fashion accessories. The iMac also went through that phase, which was later abandoned. The iPod, however, always stayed either white or black, becoming an icon on its own right. The iPhone is also a higher-end icon. Down the line—maybe in a different incarnation, as the iPhone OS product family expands—color will appear. But for now, looking at Apple's past history, logic dictates that the iPhone won't see the variety of colors that the iPod nano has now.

Other rumors point at something called "the unibody iPhone", which is a retarded notion at best. The iPhone is already "unibody." It may not be carved out of a single piece of aluminum, but there's no need for that. It is a single surface—which is made of plastic to make reception better—and a glass top. It doesn't get any simpler than that.

Amazon Kindle DX

Just as with the Kindle 2, Amazon posted the Kindle DX product page while the launch event was underway. Specs-wise, there's not much here we didn't know: the big changes are a larger 9.7-inch screen that rotates to landscape display, a PDF reader, and more storage space at 3.3GB. The big news is actually the flat $489 price tag, which seems on the high-side of realistic to us -- although the subsidy-pricing rumors weren't totally inaccurate, as the New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe will offer subsidized on-contract Kindles to customers who can't get at-home delivery when the DX ships this summer. (Yes, that's a pretty lame restriction.) Amazon's also announcing a wide range of textbook publishing partnerships, with tomes from Addison-Wesley, Wiley Higher Education, Longman & Prentice Hall and many others available -- and what's more, Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, Reed, and Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia have all signed on to distribute 'hundreds' of Kindle DXs to students this fall.

Toshiba NB205 Netbook

This updated netbook will feature a chiclet keyboard as an option and have a standard six-cell battery. Another cool feature is a USB port that will actively charge external devices even when the netbook itself it’s powered up.

The design on this netbook is slimmer but still shares some specs with the original NB200 including 1GB RAM, a 1.66GHz Atom processor, Bluetooth and a 160GB hard drive. There will be several systems available including a base model, the NB205-210 in black for $350 and an upgraded version, the NB205-310 that adds the chiclet keyboard, and color options in pink, white, blue and brown for $400.

Samsung U440 Gloss

Today U.S. Cellular announced the availability of the Samsung u440 Gloss. The Gloss is a clamshell with full QWERTY keyboard for messaging. It has stereo Bluetooth, a 1.3 megapixel camera, music player and supports microSD cards up to 16GB. The Gloss can access U.S. Cellular's easyedge content center. Pricing information wasn't immediately revealed, but the phone is available at U.S. Cellular's retail locations.

HP Mini 2140

Even though the HP Mini 1000 is only a few months old, Hewlett-Packard was actually an early player in the Netbook field. The company's business system side came up with the Mini-Note 2133 in spring 2008, with a solid, brushed-metal chassis and a nearly full-size keyboard. Unfortunately, this predated Intel's Atom CPU, and rather than using the Celeron processor that came with the very first Netbooks, HP went with an underpowered Via C7-M, which pretty much killed any chance it had of becoming a mainstream product.

Now that the plastic-clad, Atom-powered consumer version has become a hit, HP's business side is taking another crack at the Netbook market with a radically updated version, the $499 HP Mini 2140.

It keeps the aluminum construction and big keyboard, but updates the components to an Intel Atom CPU, and adds an accelerometer for the hard drive, and a full ExpressCard/54 slot--a Netbook first (Lenovo's S10 has a smaller Express Card/34 slot).

Thanks to those added features--and some concerns about the added weight aside--the 2140 is currently our favorite Netbook less than $500.

Citizen i:Virt M Bluetooth watches

Man, talk about a long time coming. The last time we saw a line of i:Virt watches from Citizen, it was a bright fall day in 2007, and obviously our style threshold was entirely different. Thankfully, the outfit's latest line of Bluetooth-enabled timepieces are far sexier, though we have to say -- the fact that they only support Softbank phones makes us shed a tear on the inside. As with most other BT watches, these too will display emails, alert you of incoming calls and even clue you in on the latest news (via RSS, we suspect). Both the TM84-0341V and TM84-0342V feature a stainless steel case and a life of around five days with a full charge.

I love the way Best Buy just skips those annoying mail in rebates!

Best Buy may not be launching the Pre exclusively, but it's probably the place to go if you're scouting one come June 6th. Why? Pretty simple, really -- you'll leave the joint with an extra Benjamin in your purse. You see, those who waltz into a Sprint store will be forced to pay $299.99 up front (with a two-year contract) and wait eons for a $100 mail-in rebate to return. Over at Best Buy Mobile, you'll pay $199.99 free and clear, sign your contract and proceed to send us loads of personal hands-on shots. Be honest -- which scenario sounds superior to you?

Motorola's first iDEN QWERTY

Today Motorola introduced a new iDEN phone, the full-QWERTY equipped i465 Clutch. The Clutch is semi-ruggedized and offers PTT, threaded SMS and MMS messaging, as well as POP3 email support. It has Bluetooth 1.2, VGA camera with video capture, and uses microUSB for charging and data transfer. The Clutch will become available during the second quarter of 2009. Sprint has not said it will carry this device, but it is compatible with Sprint and Boost's iDEN network.

Palm Eos?

Okay everyone -- grain of salt goggles on? According to PhoneNews, not only is a GSM version of the Palm Eos (AKA Mini Pre, AKA Pixie, AKA Castle) coming to AT&T sometime in the near future, but Sprint will be getting its version of the Centro-like device come Q3 2009. The site claims that 'sources within Sprint' have 'confirmed' the launch window for a phone with specs similar to those on the device we hit yesterday, and that said device is actually in testing right now. Of course, just as we mentioned with the Eos news, this isn't actually confirmed by anyone at Palm (or even close) right now... and you know how much the internet loves a rumor. Still, this would make a lot of sense as Sprint and Palm are all but joined at the hip, and it helps jibe some of the differing reports we / the blogosphere has heard about carriers.

T-Mobile Sidekick LX

Not that big of a secret but finally made official at the stroke of midnight, T-Mobile’s Sidekick line-up finally gets a much needed refresh. It’s been covered a bunch before but here are the major selling points (or just random lines of text you can ignore):

* A stunning 3.2″ 854×480 resolution Sharp F-WVGA screen
* Integrated Facebook MySpace and Twitter (finally!)
* GPS support! Live Search is now GPS-powered, too
* 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera with improved video capabilities
* Microsoft Exchange support
* T-Mobile 3G/HSDPA
* Other really cool stuff you don’t know about

The new Sidekick LX will go on sale May 13th nationwide for $199 on a two year agreement.

Beckham featured in terminator-inspired Moto Aura ad

Never before in the history of humankind has a company that's been doing so badly had such an enormous amount of money to waste. Enter Motorola, and, consequently, their new Aura advertisement featuring David Beckham doing what he does best: absolutely nothing. There's not much that we can say that the Terminator-inspired ad won't say for us, so putter on after the break and catch the ad itself, plus Beckster beefcaking it up like a pro and sharing his innermost insights on Moto's $2,000 phone.

HTC Introduces the Snap at CTIA 2009

HTC kicked off the show Wednesday morning by introducing the Snap, its newest QWERTY device. We haven't seen one in this form factor from the smartphone manufacturer in a while (think back to the T-Mobile Dash) and given the design, it's no surprise that the handset is optimized for e-mail and messaging.

In fact, HTC thinks e-mail is so important it has created a new feature called Inner Circle that prioritizes your e-mails based on your preferences. By pressing the dedicated Inner Circle button, the HTC Snap will bring e-mails from a preselected group of people to the top of your in-box so you can read and reply to them immediately.

The new functionality was created in response to a Harris Interactive study that found 44 percent of U.S. adults are overwhelmed by the amount of e-mail they receive, and 55 percent of U.S. adults prioritize five or fewer people with whom they communicate via e-mail.

The HTC Snap offers Microsoft Direct Push Technology for real-time e-mail delivery and automatic synchronization with your Outlook calendar, tasks, and contacts via Exchange Server as well as support for POP3 and IMAP e-mail accounts. The smartphone's full QWERTY keyboard also features "extra-large domed keys" to provide for a better typing experience.

Moving beyond messaging, the Snap will run Windows Mobile 6.1 and comes with integrated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, GPS, 256MB ROM/192MB RAM, a microSD/SDHC expansion slot, and 2-megapixel camera/camcorder. The smartphone measures 4.5 inches tall by 2.4 inches wide by 0.4 inch deep and has a 2.4-inch QVGA nontouch display.

The HTC Snap is expected to be available in select channels during the second quarter of 2009 and will be rolled out worldwide during the second half of the year. Here in the States, we'll get our on own version of the Snap, called the HTC S522, this summer and it will support AT&T's 850/1900MHz HSDPA bands, though it'll be sold unlocked and not through the carrier. Pricing was not revealed at this time.

New cable brings iphone & 3D support to Vuzix eyewear

We know your pain, Vuzix users. You hop on the subway just trying to enjoy a little in-your-face action before the workday begins, and within minutes the accusations and stereotypes start flying. 'Look, it's Geordi La Forge!' 'LeVar Burton, what's good?!' 'Can I try my Zune on that?' Depressing, really. Unfortunately for you, Vuzix's latest cable will not make any of that any more sufferable, though it will enable you to use your existing eyewear with Apple's iPhone and enjoy the spoils of side-by-side, interlaced and anaglyph 3D content. Said cable will be bundled in with the company's iWear AV230XL, though existing customers will definitely want to snag the standalone version for $39.95.

Blackberry Niagra 9630 OS is a good mixture of Bold & Storm features

We know you're hungry for some more details on the BlackBerry Niagara 9630, so here we go. Crackberry's released the second part of its impressions with the device, this time focusing on the OS 4.7.1 that they note functions like a hybrid of the Storm's OS 4.7 and Bold / Curve 8900's OS 4.6. Features lovingly borrowed from the SurePress-equipped touchscreen include app switching by pushing down the menu key, trackball gestures in the photo gallery, a revised profiles menu, bubblier boxes in the options menu, and possibly a new memory manager within the media center. On their own, these all seem pretty minor, but they add up to a much more pleasant experience. Judging by the preview, it looks it's still shaping up to be one of the best 'berry's you can buy. The CB crew conjecture this might actually be the upcoming OS 5.0 in disguise, judging by their similarities. We'll find out for sure sometime in May.