The Samsung Omnia II impresses with hardware but fails to do so with software.

The hardware in question: a 3.7-inch, WVGA, AMOLED, resistive touchscreen; a 5-megapixel camera; Wi-Fi; 30fps video recording; and 8 GB of storage with the option to increase that via microSD card.

The software? Windows Mobile 6.5, which is admittedly much better than originally expected; early versions of the Omnia II had Windows Mobile 6.1. The phone also runs TouchWiz 2.0. Admittedly, it's not running a hip new phone OS like Android or webOS, but it will get the job done.

The Omnia II will ship in the United States through Verizon on December 2nd, 2009. It will cost $199.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate, as the standard goes.

The Archos 9 is a nine-inch, handheld tablet PC running Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system. Internally, the Archos 9 is essentially a low-end netbook, with a 1.2 GHz Intel Atom processor and a modest 80-gigabyte hard drive.

Of course, it's a tablet, so it uses a touch interface. Supposedly Windows 7 is designed to better handle this than previous versions of the OS. The tablet also has Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and somewhat more unusually, DVB-T antennae for receiving European TV broadcasts (at least in the European model).

Since there's no physical keyboard, you'll be able to use a touchscreen keyboard, but the touchscreen is resistive and not capacitive, which means it could potentially be a little frustrating to use sometimes.

The device has been priced at $549.99 in the United States, and is available for pre-order. Archos had initially planned to ship this device on October 22nd, but clearly that didn't happen. Now the estimated ship day is "early December," with the retail launch scheduled to occur in the first quarter of 2010.

Expected to ship towards the end of November, the Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader has both a black-and-white e-paper display and a color touchscreen panel. In spite of rumors, the panel is not multi-touch, but you can still use it to flip through different books and documents.

Barnes & Noble will offer e-books at prices lower than their hard copy cousins through an online store, and the device will have access to Google's scanned book library.

The niftiest feature down that alley: you can take your Nook into a Barnes & Noble store and read ebooks for free over the store's Wi-Fi before buying them, just as if you were browsing through the paper and hardbacks there.

The Nook has already been pre-ordering, and it was scheduled to go on sale in Barnes & Noble stores on November 30th for $259. However, The New York Times reported on November 20th that Barnes & Noble was surprised by the volume of pre-orders, and that the Nook is sold out for the holidays. New orders won't ship until January 4th. That's bittersweet for Barnes & Noble, isn't it?

[Images courtesy of Engadget and Gizmodo.]

Originally rumored under the name Palm Eos, the Palm Pixi is the second WebOS phone from Palm, following the much anticipated Palm Pre, and was officially announced on September 8th, 2009 on Palm's blog. The Pixi has a 2.63-inch, 18-bit color, 320 x 400 TFT capacitive display, a full QWERTY keyboard, a rubberized back, various customized versions in the Palm Pixi Artist series, integrated GPS, EVDO Rev A connectivity, 2-megapixel fixed-focus camera with LED flash, 8 GB of storage, an integrated accelerometer, and MicroUSB connector for charging and connecting to your computer.

The Palm Pixi weighs 3.5 ounces and measures 2.17 in. (W) x 4.37 in. (L) x 0.43 in. (D).

The official price for this handset is $100 on a contract after a $50 instant rebate and a $100 mail-in rebate. However, the price has steadily fallen since the debut. You can now pick the Pixi up for $24.99 on Amazon. The superior Palm Pre is only marginally more expensive at $79.99, so that's not very tempting. Both phones are available exclusively through Sprint.

Several videos of the Palm Pixi and the full press release can be found below.

Continue reading Palm Pixi ›

Announced at the 2009 CES and scheduled for release on June 6, 2009 (full press release below), the Palm Pre is a touchscreen smartphone featuring a 3.1-inch 320 x 480 display, a full QWERTY keyboard, and a Synergy function that integrates information from Facebook, Windows Outlook, and other applications to create detailed contact information combine messaging.

The smartphone also comes with a 3-megapixel camera with LED flash, GPS, Bluetooth with A2DP capabilities, and Palm's webOS operating system. You can store information in the phone's 8 GB of internal memory, hook up storage devices with the miniUSB port, and charge the phone wirelessly with Palm's included charger. 

The Palm Pre is $199.99 in the United States after a $100 mail-in rebate and a 2-year contract with Sprint. If you really need to have the phone off contract, it will run you $549 — but it will not be unlocked, so don't expect to activate it on Verizon.

In Europe, the Palm Pre launched on October 16th in the UK and Ireland and on October 13th Germany exclusively on O2. It will launch in Spain at a thus-far-unnamed date exclusively on Movistar. In Canada, the Pre debuted on Bell Mobility on August 27th, 2009 for $199.95 Canadian with a 3-year contract.

On September 25th, 2009, the Palm Pre appeared on Amazon for $99.99 — $100 less than the usual price. That's with a service plan, of course. Then, on September 28th, Wal-Mart dropped the price of the Pre even lower to $79.99. Even more recently, Amazon did the same but additionally waived the $36 activation fee, making the inferior Pixi webOS phone look pretty unattractive by comparison.

Head over to the Product Details page for several video demos of the Pre.

Continue reading Palm Pre ›

Google Chrome is an open-source web browser available for free download. It distinguishes itself from competitors with a minamlistic design and functions such as private browsing mode, thumbnails of favorite websites (now also a feature in Apple Safari), and an address bar search function that makes recommendations based on your search data.

Chrome regularly updates malware and phishing blacklists, and offers desktop shortcuts to specific Google applications. The browser uses a unique Javascript engine built for speed; based on CNET's tests, version 4 of Chrome for Mac is 35% faster than Safari and twice as fast as Firefox.

Chrome is free. The latest version for the PC is 3.0, which was released to the public on September 15th, 2009. There is currently no official stable release for Mac, but an alpha variant called Chromium is currently at version 4.0. The latest versions mainly add speed improvements, but they also offer customization options for the home screen.

New features in Chrome 3.0 include themes, a new-tab page that resembles the often-visited page that comes up when you open a new tab in Apple Safari 4, and some changes to the Omnibox.

Google announced at an event on November 19th, 2009 that the public release version of Chrome for Mac will finally launch before the end of the year. A Linux version was also mentioned, but no release window was given. Google simply said that it's coming along "very well."

Google's Chrome OS is a free, minimalist operating system that will first be targeted at netbooks. It's closely related to the Google Chrome web browser; in fact, the OS is simply a modified version of Google Chrome running on top of a Linux kernel.

Chrome OS is distinct from many other Linux-based operating systems in that it is designed to exclusively use web-based applications like Gmail, Hulu, or Google Docs. Those apps can be minimized to and managed on a dock-like panel at the bottom of the screen. Google intends for the user to arrive on the web within just a few seconds of turning on his or her computer.

As you might have expected given its Linux roots, the operating system was made open source under the name Chromium OS on November 19th, 2009. The first companies to support Chrome OS are Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba. More may follow, but these are the only ones that have been announced to date. Chrome OS won't run on just any computer. Specific hardware will be required; for example, you'll need a SSD instead of a traditional hard disk drive.

The OS actually uses very little drive space. Almost all of its storage and activity takes place in the cloud while the solid state drive is just used to ensure speedy performance.

For a look at the OS in action, watch Google's announcement videos in our product details tab. Then get comfy; the final, public version of Chrome OS won't be available until well into 2010.

Continue reading Google Chrome OS ›

Announced on August 25th, 2009 at a special media event at the New York Public Library, the Sony Daily Edition Reader features a 7-inch touchscreen, e-ink-based, e-paper display with support for 16 levels of gray.

It also has an integrated 3G wireless modem that connects exclusively to the Sony eBook Store via AT&T's  network, so you can pull content from the internet anywhere. In addition to interfacing with Sony's eBook Store, the Sony Daily Edition Reader will also connect via Sony's Library Finder application to multiple participating local libraries, offering you the ability to search by zip code and "check out" eBooks with a valid library card for a period of 14-29 days. At the end of that period, the books will simply expire with no late fees.

The Sony Daily Edition Reader is expected to be available in December of 2009 for $399, and pre-orders began at the SonyStyle website on November 18th, 2009. Hit the product details tab for the original announcement press release.

Continue reading Sony Daily Edition Reader ›

Nokia's N900 handheld internet device runs the new Maemo 5 operating system, which allows you to run several browser and application windows at once — above and beyond for devices like this.

The device has both a resistive touchscreen (3.5 inches and 800 x 480 resolution), a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a 5-megapixel camera with a flash, an FM transmitter, GPS, and 32 GB of storage. You can bump the storage up to 48 GB with a microSD card. Connectivity options include Bluetooth 2.1, Wi-Fi, GSM/EDGE, and UMTS/HSPA, however, the 1700Mhz 3G frequency will only run on T-Mobile.

Among the supported applications is Mozilla Firefox with Adobe Flash 9 support. That Flash playback should be decent since the N900 also comes with a OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics accelerator. Other internal specs include 1 GB of memory and the ARM Cortex-A8 processor.

An off-contract, unlocked N900 is available for order in the U.S. for $649. After a brief pre-order period, it began shipping in Europe on November 10th, 2009. It became available on select Nokia stores in the U.S. and through Amazon on November 18th.

The BlackBerry Bold 9700 was formerly known as the BlackBerry Onyx. The phone features a full QWERTY keypad and a 480 x 360 resolution screen — 20 vertical pixels more than its predecessor. It replaces the old trackball nub with a tiny touchpad, and it runs BlackBerry OS 5.0.

It's a GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS compatible phone with additional 3G network capabilities and Wi-Fi technology. The camera takes pictures at 3.2 megapixels.

The Bold 9700 launched on T-Mobile on November 16th, 2009. It costs $199.99 with a two-year contract and $449.99 without. AT&T has announced plans to carry it for $199.99 on contract as well; business customers can already order it, but other folks will have to wait until November 22nd.

Dell's Adamo XPS appears to be more of an experiment in design than a practical laptop. We say this because while it has the sleek, stylish aesthetic of the Adamo line, it lacks the hardware prowess you expect from the XPS family.

The Adamo XPS is very thin and light; it weighs only 1.5 pounds. It unfolds in an unusual way (look at the pictures to see what we're talking about), and it opens automatically when you apply your finger to a heat-sensor.

That's neat and all, but the hardware specs are underwhelming for a $1,799 laptop. It looks like you'll get a 1.4 GHz Intel ULV processor (dual-core), and the graphics will be a standard, barely-adequate integrated Intel chipset—fine if all you plan to do is web browsing and e-mail, but so much if you want to play HD video, games, or do any kind of photo or video editing. Other specs include 4 GB of RAM, a 13.4-inch 720p display, and a solid state drive.

The Adamo XPS is now available for sale on Dell's website for $1,799, but it won't ship until December 22nd. Dell said it would ship "in time for Christmas," but we suppose it didn't say anything about arriving in time!

The Sidekick 2008 is a T-Mobile messaging phone featuring a full QWERTY keyboard, web browsing with full HTML capabilities, and customizable shell designs. The 2.6-inch display with a 400 x 240 resolution slides out on a hinge to sit above the full keyboard, which includes a trackball and directional pad for navigation.

The phone also comes with a 2-megapixel camera, a video capture function, and 64 MB of internal memory to store the images and clips. It operates through T-Mobile's EDGE network and has access to video and image viewing, Bluetooth, e-mail services, and instant messaging.

Following hardware problems that caused some Sidekick owners to lose their personal data, T-Mobile pulled the Sidekick from the market. It was re-introduced in November of 2009 at a lowered price: $49.99.

The Sidekick LX 2009 improves upon its predecessor by featuring 3G-enabled social networking apps that work with MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Photobucket. All the social applications feature push notifications for updates and messages. The Sidekick LX also features an improved, 3.2-inch, 854 x 480-pixel color display, a 3.2-megapixel camera with auto focus and flash, integrated GPS, and 850/900/1800/1900 GSM/GPRS/EDGE connectivity. 

T-Mobile claims that the device has a talk time of 5.5 hours and standby time of eight days on a fully charged battery. The Sidekick LX weighs 5.82 ounces and measures 5.20 x 2.40 x 0.64 inches. It is currently offered by T-Mobile on contract at $149.99, $25 cheaper than it was before the data loss fiasco that caused a recall.

Microsoft Office 2010, previously known by the code name Office 14, is the 2010 version of the Office suite of document and communication applications made for Microsoft's Windows operating system.

The 2010 suite is expected to include an updated Exchange 2010 business e-mail system that allows you to send personal emails to save on company server space, and new interoperability functions throughout the suite that allow for easier access and integration of third party applications. While there is no word of a price of specific release date, Microsoft has said it will release Office 2010 to manufactures in the first half of 2010.

The beta version of Office 2010 became available for download by MSDN and TechNet Plus customers on November 16th, 2009, and it will become publicly available on November 18th.

Officially announced on July 27, 2009, the BlackBerry Curve 8520 (also known by the Gemini name, and as the 8325 in early rumors) isn't going to turn any heads with its appearance or its specs but if you're looking for basic BlackBerry smartphone functionality and nothing else, you don't need to look elsewhere. The Curve debuted on T-Mobile in the summer of 2009 in both black and frost colors. The phone then became available through AT&T on November 16th, 2009. It costs $99.99 on a contract.

The BlackBerry Curve 8520 supports quad-band GSM / EDGE / GPRS, and features 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, a 2-megapixel camera, 256MBs of RAM, a 512MHz processor, and a microSD card slot with an included 1GB card with support for up to 16GBs currently and expected support for 32GB cards once they become available. The screen resolution is a typical 320 x 240, and of course like most BlackBerry smartphones it has a QWERTY keypad.

The full press release and accompanying video is below.

Continue reading BlackBerry Curve 8520 ›