Filed under: Cellphones

We got a Treo here, everybody, the 680 to be exact. It is, as we all well know by now, going to go for $200 after two year service agreement (with unlimited data plan), and will be available as of Black Friday. Wii for the kids, Treo 680 for yourself. Decisions can be difficult to make, wouldn’t you say?

P.S. -It’s not without at least one review, either.

Read - Laptop, 4/5, “does the best job of making it simple to juggle voice calls, messaging, the Web, and PIM functions”

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

So, it’s been awhile since we’ve seen or heard from the Archos 604 WiFi, that new wireless-enabled portable media player may well put the Zune to shame. Well, we’re here to give you some happy news — according to TechWeb, this bundle of sexiness will be released in US in the next fortnight. To review, the Archos 604 WiFi is loaded up with a 4.3-inch 480 x 272 touchscreen, a version of the Opera browser, and Windows file sharing; so gather up your cash over the next two weeks, as this will likely drop for something in the neighborhood of $500.

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Filed under: Cellphones

Now that we know the Treo 750 is poised for a Cingular release here in the US, we’re kind of over Vodafone’s version of this Windows Mobile 5 smartphone, but because we’ve got mad love for our European audience, we’ll keep covering it until they pry us kicking and screaming from our keyboards. Following numerous spy shots, reviews, and announcements regarding this device, there’s pretty much nothing that we don’t know about its feature set — quad-band GSM with UMTS, 300MHz CPU, 240 x 240 pixel screen, Bluetooth 1.2, miniSD expansion, 1.3 megapixel camera, and of course, still no WiFi — but despite all the interest, a solid release date has yet to be announced. Well, until now that is, as Vodafone has finally updated its UK site to list an October 2nd launch (why do we feel like this thing has been “launched” like ten times already?), with that same vague pricing window of “free to £127.66 ($242.90).” So, congratulations dear friends across the pond, you’ll have your gadget-loving hands all over the 750v in a few short days; us Americans, meanwhile, are just preparing ourselves to go through the whole dog-and-pony show of leaks, rumors, and false starts all over again.

[Thanks, Nirav M.]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, Peripherals, Storage

Xbox wasn’t showing up to TGS empty-handed, nosiree. They’ve finally stepped up with a couple of interesting, albeit expected, announcements. First up: the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive finally has a price and date of launch — for Japan. The land that forgot the Xbox are first to have their HD DVD add-on announced, due to hit overseas streets on November 17th for ¥19,800. That’s about $170 US, which is not only an awesomely and unexepectedly low price for an HD DVD device (especially when bundled with a Xbox 360 Universal Media Remote), but it’s also a good indication that the US version of the device should be around the $200 range when released in the US, as we’ve been predicting. Part two: a software update this year will enable 1080p output on the friggin’ Xbox 360! Your rig will finally benefit by pushing the full 60 megapixels per second of visuals to your compatible HDTV. Sorry, no HDMI cable yet (or ever?), though, this is only over component and VGA. Users can expect 1080p upscaling immediately on current games and DVDs and native 1080p on compatible HD DVD titles, but Microsoft hasn’t yet announced future games that will rock 1080p natively. Watch out Sony, that whole 1080p song and dance isn’t such a marketing edge for you guys anymore.

P.S. -Just to sate your curiosity, we were chatting with Shane Kim about this stuff and asked specifically about 360s with an internal HD DVD. Microsoft’s answer is and continues to be a staunch no. That whole thing about paying for what you need, etc.

Update: It would appear there’s some contradictory information already — Reuters is reporting that it’ll be November 22nd for ¥20,790 (about $180 US). Our press release and conversation with Shane Kim are both pretty straight up about November 17th for ¥19,800, so we’ll see how it unfurls. Ultimately it shouldn’t matter too much to those reading this post, we’re still talking about the Japanese release of the device.

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Laptops

The funny thing that happened when Apple decided to make the switch to Intel was they couldn’t any longer espouse the merits of their typically non-standard processor architectures as, um, apples and oranges with PCs. In other words, Apple had to start keeping up with the jonses in a very flat, discernible, and easily quantifiable way: PC speed benchmarks (which were made even easier with Boot Camp). So yeah, you could say we find it a little odd that since being announced in late July (i.e. two months in real-life time, or six years in Engadget time) and shipping in August, we’ve yet to see only one prominent manufacturer neglect to launch some Core 2 Duo laptops of their own. So it’s on shaky faith we tell you that the latest in an already irritatingly long line of C2D MacBook (Pro) rumors has Cupertino’s entire line of laptops done with the damned upgrades, and company just waiting on the marketing department to line ‘em up and knock ‘em out. Of course, it would be market-suicide if they didn’t launch these before the holiday season (unless they wanted to bundle them with Vista that is — we kid!), so don’t be surprised if you wake up to some new Apple laptops any day now.

[Thanks, Chris]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Gaming

Well, the details are in. The Wii’s coming November 19th, and it’ll cost you $250 damn dollars. Surprised it’s not under two bills? Don’t be, it’s a lot less than a lot of people are willing to pay right now. At the Nintendo event later today in New York (we’ll be there) we’ll catch a glimpse of the 25 game announcements preparing to be made, as well as more official launch details — but in the mean time we know it’ll ship with Wii Sports (baseball, bowling, golf, and tennis — all very addictive), Super Mario Galaxy will not ship in 2006 (boo!), it’ll have a photo streaming service, news and weather channels (most likely a part of WiiConnect24, but still a bit bizarre), and Opera for browsing the web; new titles will run you $50, while Virtual Console games will cost between $10 and $50 apiece. But really this stuff is all you really needed to know, isn’t it? November 19th, $250. November 19th, $250. And yes, they’re still apparently on track to meet their four million unit goal for their 2006 launch. Still, stay tuned for more deets, they’re inevitable.

P.S. -Why are you still here? Shouldn’t you be reading Joystiq’s live coverage of the Nintendo event going on in Tokyo right now?

[Via Wii Fanboy]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Cellphones

Filed under: Handsets, LG, Verizon Wireless, EV-DO, CDMA

It’s laid so bare at this point it’s almost kind of an open secret, but contrary to what we’d heard earlier (which was a week off), we’ve got launch dates and prices for Verizon’s LG VX8500 Chocolate phone. Starting July 31st you’ll be able to snag the phone online, and come August 7th you can get it in stores. The price? Not too terrible: $359 without contract, $249 with 1 year, and $199 for two years committed to the carrier. Might be a little more than we’d originally expected, but outside the Q you’re not likely to see a sexier EV-DO device on Verizon for a little while yet.

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Filed under: Software, Symbian

My, how you’ve grown, Symbian. For those of us that have followed the platform since its EPOC roots, it’s with a tear in our eye that we hear version 9.3 of the veteran smartphone operating system has gone out the door. Although something of a maintenance release, the new cut has a little something for everybody: native support for WiFi, over-the-air firmware updates (FOTA), USB 2.0 on-the-go, HSDPA, push to talk, and improved memory management are among the listed improvements. Apparently, v9.3 has been kickin’ around for a while behind the scenes, as a Freescale / S60 reference platform is immediately available and Symbian claims handsets are already in development for 2007 releases — we suppose the v9.1-based N73 will have to suffice until then.

[Via Reg Hardware]

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Filed under: Laptops

See that pic up there? Word around the Internet is that it shows an ad for the upcoming MacBook laptop that Apple “accidentally” posted to its website before quickly taking it down. Nothing in this supposed screencap — which shows a starting price of only $999 and black or white case options — immediately screams fake to us (they gotta release the darn thing sometime), but then again, it wouldn’t be very difficult to mock up something like this in Photoshop, either. Real, fake, we surely can’t tell — but if Apple doesn’t show us the goods sometime this week, they’re gonna have some serious ’splaining to do to their legions of anxious fans and weary tech bloggers.

[Thanks, Phlash65]

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Filed under: Handsets, Motorola, Verizon Wireless, Windows Mobile, 1xRTT, EV-DO

Purportedly originating from a Verizon Wireless site, full details on Motorola Q specs and launch price have been posted to a Phone Scoop forum, and things are looking up for the much-delayed device. No mention of the A2DP support listed in the manual on the FCC, and most of the other specs we already knew, but we were interested to see the listed battery life at only about 4 hours of usage time. Luckily there’s nearly 9 days of standby time, and everything else seems pretty solid. However, we were most interested to see the prices, at a rumored $349 with a 1 year contract, $299 with a 2 year, and $419 with no contract at all. If all of this holds true, that’s not too bad for a QWERTY Smartphone, and hopefully a trend we’ll be seeing more of in the future. Now just release the dang thing!

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Filed under: Handsets, Motorola, Verizon Wireless, Windows Mobile, 1xRTT, EV-DO

Purportedly originating from a Verizon Wireless site, full details on Motorola Q specs and launch price have been posted to a Phone Scoop forum, and things are looking up for the much-delayed device. No mention of the A2DP support listed in the manual on the FCC, and most of the other specs we already knew, but we were interested to see the listed battery life at only about 4 hours of usage time. Luckily there's nearly 9 days of standby time, and everything else seems pretty solid. However, we were most interested to see the prices, at a rumored $349 with a 1 year contract, $299 with a 2 year, and $419 with no contract at all. If all of this holds true, that's not too bad for a QWERTY Smartphone, and hopefully a trend we'll be seeing more of in the future. Now just release the dang thing!

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds

So we don't actually have any new information on the U.S. pricing and release date of Nintendo's DS Lite; rather we're simply here to pass on the fact that these important details will supposedly be available on Thursday. Our hot sister blog Joystiq is reporting that a recent 1UP podcast revealed both the May 4th announcement as well as the actual pricing/launch info, but the latter deets were bleeped out in order to conform with pesky embargoes and non-disclosure agreements. You can be sure that we'll be on high alert later this week to bring you all the info as soon as it's available, and remember, the sooner you start standing in line for your new DS, the sooner we can post amusing pics of people suffering for their hobby.

[Via Joystiq]

Filed under: Handsets, RIM, T-Mobile, GSM, EDGE

Well, if the word of the Boy Genius wasn’t golden enough, we now have video to back up the man’s claim that internal communications indicate that the svelte new BlackBerry Pearl 8100 is set for launch on Tuesday, September 12th. Expect this device to start popping up in stores this upcoming week of August 28th (even though you won’t be able to buy them), with some stores reportely getting the device as early as today. T-Mobile is apparently enforcing strict communication limitations on employees to prevent them from discussing anything regarding the 8100; looks like our anonymous tipster who sent us in the video below wasn’t looking too closely at what kind of behavior that very memo was mandating!

Watch [MPEG-4]

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Filed under: Handsets, Features, RIM, Verizon Wireless, 1xRTT, EV-DO, CDMA

[Thanks, Dizzle]

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Filed under: Handsets, RIM, Verizon Wireless, 1xRTT, EV-DO, CDMA

We told you it was coming, we told you how much for and when, and now the BlackBerry 8703e is on Verizon’s site — yours for $249 with a two year contract, or $399 for a one year contract. We’re a little sick of writing about this thing, so please, go get it (or not), and let’s all enjoy our Sundays, shall we?

[Thanks, Phil]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.

Filed under: Handsets, Motorola, GSM, CDMA

We knew Motorola had something (really) skinny up its sleeve way back in July, and after it got the ole thumbs-up from our constituents over at the FCC, we knew a whiz-bang release couldn’t be too far out. Thankfully (at least for India), today’s the day, and the MOTOFONE will finally find its way into (and surely out of) slim fit pockets everywhere. Moto announced immediate availability of the GSM-based F3 within India today at a dedicated event held in New Delhi, and stated that “international markets” could expect to get their palms on one “in the coming weeks.” Furthermore, the CDMA sibling (F3c) is slated to hit shelves “before the end of 2006.” While pricing details were cleverly omitted, we’re sure they’ll surface soon when local carriers jump on the bandwagon.

[Via Mobiledia]

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.