What’s a lazy Friday afternoon without a bit of completely unsubstantiated rumor mongering? Sure, it’s possible that Ed Zander himself wrote this SCPL mockup on a napkin over a recent lunch, but we’re thinking it more likely the doings of a fanboy with too much time on his hands. Anyways, the specs are as set above: 0.2-inches thick (compared to the 0.27-inch chubster X820 from Samsung), QVGA display, 512MB flash memory, MicroSD slot, 3.5mm headphone jack, FM radio (pushing it), Bluetooth 2.0 and a titanium-alloy build. We’d be pretty happy with about half of that, but we’re sure this won’t be the last savory rumor to drool over before we find out for reals.

What’s a lazy Friday afternoon without a bit of completely unsubstantiated rumor mongering? Sure, it’s possible that Ed Zander himself wrote this SCPL mockup on a napkin over a recent lunch, but we’re thinking it more likely the doings of a fanboy with too much time on his hands. Anyways, the specs are as set above: 0.2-inches thick (compared to the 0.27-inch chubster X820 from Samsung),QVGA display, 512MB flash memory, microSD slot, 3.5mm headphone jack, FM radio (pushing it), Bluetooth 2.0 and a titanium-alloy build. We’d be pretty happy with about half of that, but we’re sure this won’t be the last savory rumor to drool over before we find out for reals.

We know it's a little early to be thinking back to school, but Apple Insider's got it on authority that Jobs & Co. are hammering out a new replacement for their gone-and-mostly-forgotten eMac all in one line. Whereas we can only assume it'll be Intel-based, AI has it that the new eMac will shed the CRT in favor of an LCD monitor, and be based, however vaguely, on the iMac design (though we prefer our own crappy mockup above) -- though if ever there was a Mac machine destined to have an Intel Core Solo, integrated graphics, etc., it would be this supposed budget education machine. So, until WWDC (when we'd imagine this thing would be announced), have a great summer, kids!

[Thanks, Floris]

Following a weekend of stiff-drinks and intrepid mulling, Vodafone Japan Softbank just went official regarding the supposed iTunes playing cellphone they are co-developing with Apple – officially denying it, that is. Well, kind of. See, our brethren over at Engadget Japan tell us that Softbank's response (in Japanese) to the claims made in that un-sourced Nikkei article are mere "speculation. The source is not us. We have nothing to say about it." Hmm, that sounds more like a plea to Apple not to kill the deal than a denial that they're in cahoots on the popularly dubbed, and oft speculated iPhone which is not pictured to the right.

Following a weekend of stiff-drinks and intrepid mulling, Vodafone Japan Softbank just went official regarding the supposed iTunes playing cellphone they are co-developing with Apple – officially denying it, that is. Well, kind of. See, our brethren over at Engadget Japan tell us that Softbank’s response (in Japanese) to the claims made in that un-sourced Nikkei article are mere “speculation. The source is not us. We have nothing to say about it.” Hmm, that sounds more like a plea to Apple not to kill the deal than a denial that they’re in cahoots on the popularly dubbed, and oft speculated iPhone which is not pictured to the right.

Here’s a juicy morsel for you: in his new book, Xbox 360 Uncloaked, gaming industry author Dean Takahashi claims that half of Microsoft’s original Xbox 360 development team began work on a portable console immediately after the home system launched, while the other half was tasked with driving down the 360′s production costs. Takahashi goes on to say that the big M plans to follow Sony’s lead and release the handheld Xbox halfway through the 360′s life span, which would help offset hardware cycle costs and maintain buzz about the brand. The supposed Xbox2Go (that’s what we’ll call it for now, anyway) would likely be released into a competitive landscape filled with PSP2‘s and who knows what kind of crazy Nintendo portables, but Microsoft has certainly shown that it’s in the videogame, uh, game, for the long haul, so we wouldn’t be surprised to see them pump these kinds of resources into the project if it does in fact exist. Oh, and before you start commenting on the device’s “design,” please note that the above picture is simply an artist’s conception created before any word of this got out.

So at the time of this writing, if you were to visit http://www.apple.com/ipod/, you'd be greeted not with the iPod page, but the page shown above with the conspicuous MacBook hardware breadcrumb -- not MacBook Pro. Eh, these things happen, but compound that with the fact that MacRumors is reporting that stores are supposedly receiving new window displays marked "do not open until Tuesday, May 9th" means we could be perilously close to a new product launch -- care to guess which? We'll keep you posted.

[Via MacRumors, thanks Luis]

Yeah Nokia, we know you're hot stuff with your ten phones per minute release pace, but even we're a bit surprised to be seeing spy photos of an N83 slider a mere week after the release of your N72, N73 and N93 handsets. The projected release date for this S60 phone is a bit more reasonable, stated as Q1 2007, but with the sweet specs listed we're really not sure we can wait that long. The phone supposedly has a 2.5-inch-ish 352 x 416 pixel screen, Bluetooth 2.0, microSD, 5 megapixel and VGA cameras, UMTS, 802.11b/g, 4GB HDD (alright, now it's just getting ridiculous), and mini-jack audio. While those specs read just like a fanboy wishlist, we can clearly see the dual cameras and some sort of slide up media controls from the pics, along with plenty of screen real estate. For the rest of it we'll just have to spend a year on Santa's "nice" list and hope he has some sway with the Nokia elves.

This expertly blurry shot of the unannounced and quite glossy Motorola "Canary" phone surfaced today, and it's looking rather sexy from what we can make out of the pic. Just vague rumblings of specs so far, such as a 1.3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, and a microSD slot, but we can confirm that the picture is a real shot of a forthcoming Moto device. Whether this "Glass Phone" will be the rumored "RAZR 2" or whatever is hard to tell, but we'll be keeping an eye out for it for sure.

It might not be much, but it's a good start. Quser.com just noticed this image of the Verizon version of the long-awaited Motorola Q floating around the Verizon website, and they thought they'd share. No more info than this, and we've known the Q was coming to Verizon for about forever, but at least the Verizon users among us can print out the image and play pretend.

Last we heard from our insider in the biz, Palm was going to be launching their PalmOS-powered Treo 700p sometime around or on Monday, May 15th. Not it would seem Gadgets on the Go's got word from a source they deem reliable that the 700p's got a price: $399 for a new 2 year contract, $499 with 1 year contract.  (Oh, they also confirmed our release time frame -- mid May ideally, early June at latest.) That sounds about right if you ask us, but there's only one way to find out: wait for the launch. Ok, well, two ways: we'll keep on inquiring, ourselves. Stay tuned, Treo nuts.

Last we heard from our insider in the biz, Palm was going to be launching their PalmOS-powered Treo 700p sometime around or on Monday, May 15th. Not it would seem Gadgets on the Go's got word from a source they deem reliable that the 700p's got a price: $399 for a new 2 year contract, $499 with 1 year contract.  (Oh, they also confirmed our release time frame -- mid May ideally, early June at latest.) That sounds about right if you ask us, but there's only one way to find out: wait for the launch. Ok, well, two ways: we'll keep on inquiring, ourselves. Stay tuned, Treo nuts.