The Nook sets itself apart from the pack with an innovative dual display, one part electrostatic ink book screen, and the other part a thoroughly modern 3.5-inch full-color touchscreen for navigating between menus and book covers.

Much like the Kindle before it, the nook can download books via Wi-Fi or 3G connections, and it offers a high-contrast 16-shade E Ink display for reading books. Free 3G coverage is provided by AT&T, while you’ll get free Wi-Fi whenever you’re visiting a B&N store. And it can read open standard files like PDF and e.pub documents -yay! Did I happen to mention the Nook runs on Google’s open source Android OS? Ruh-oh. Kindle’s on the ropes now.

Barnes & Noble will even let you sample a little bit of each book before you buy – sorta like the music previews on iTunes. The nook even lets you “lend out” books to your friends for up to 14 days at a time. They don’t even need to have a Nook – you can share them to a cell phone or computer too. You can even sync your books own to your iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Mac or PC and pick up wherever you left off reading.

Barnes & Noble plans on offering over 1 million download-to-own eBooks, and a variety of subscription magazines and newspapers in its electronic bookstore, and the nook has enough storage on board to hold up to 1500 of ‘em. And if you’re a real bookworm, you can stick in a 16GB MicroSD card and carry around a your own mobile Library of Congress with up to 17,500 books.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The nook will ship starting in late November, and will sell for $259.99 (USD). You can pre-order one now over at the Barnes & Noble website.

The Satio has a gorgeous widescreen (16:9) 3.5-inch touchscreen interface, with a super-sharp, auto-rotating 640×360 display. It also runs on the Symbian OS platform, which means there are tons of applications you can download and run on the handset. And if you’re into mobile photography, you’ll really love this. The Satio has an astounding 12.1-megapixel digital camera with 12x digital zoom. The camera offers face and smile recognition (I want a camera with frown recognition!), touch-screen focus capability, and a bright Xenon flash. It even can Geo-tag your photos and upload them directly to Picasa. This is definitely way more camera than you’re used to finding in a phone.

Did I happen to mention that the Satio is a full 3G phone, with support for GSM GPRS/EDGE and UMTS HSDPA networks? Plus it’s got built-in WiFi, Bluetooth and a GPS too. Yep, just like the iPhone, the Satio comes with Google Maps – connected to the phone’s A-GPS module. Oh yea, there’s also an FM Radio with RDS track information. This jack-of-all-trades can even play Java games and ships with mobile versions of Facebook and (correction, no Facebook app) YouTube too. Sweet.

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The Satio comes silver and “bordeaux” case colors, and will start to ship on October 13 in the UK. No word yet on a North American release. UK readers can order the Saito from the Sony Ericsson Store.

[Full Satio Specifications]

Homade’s NanoTV provides your old Nano 3G with a cozy home inside a tiny TV cabinet. The mini TV completely conceals your Nano, and magnifies the screen from the original 2-inches up to a whopping 2.8-inches diagonal. The TV cabinet even has a miniature VHS deck built into the front, complete with tiny little RCA connectors. Plus there are a couple of little speakers inside the case so you can listen to your TV without any headphones on.

You can grab the NanoTV 3G over at ThumbsUp!UK for £17.99 (appx. $29.50 USD). Too bad they’re not making these for newer Nanos, but if you’re still using a VHS deck, you probably don’t even have a Diamond Rio MP3 player yet.

[via 7 Gadgets]

I wish Nokia would add HSDPA connectivity as well. Portable USB modems – the ones as small as a flash drive – are becoming popular here in the Philippines, but the 3G speeds suck donkey dong, with a very theoretical maximum speed of 384 Kbps. Good thing the Booklet 3G also has WiFi. What I find most interesting about this netbook is the 12-hour battery life. 12 hours! If that is indeed true, then we should thank Intel for coming up with the Atom. Unless of course it turns out that the netbook only lasts an hour when it’s playing HD content.

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Please let it be below $400 please please please. With that kind of battery life plus an HD-capable processor I’ll gladly take back all my netbook-bashing and buy one for myself.

[via Ars Technica]

The first thing you notice when you first look at the ARENA is its unique is its 3-D user interface options. Which offers something like an iTunes cover flow on its side. And it doesn’t just work for your media, but for navigating all of your applications. There’s also a 3-D cube layout which lets you find your way around your media and applications by manipulating a 3-dimensional cube. And yes, Virginia, the ARENA offers tactile feedback under your fingertip as you interact with the display.

The ARENA packs a substantial 3-inch touchscreen display running at super-sharp WVGA (800 x 480) resolution. Oh, and did I happen to mention that the ARENA offers Dolby Mobile surround sound? With a screen like that and surround, if you want to watch movies on a mobile device, this could be the one. There’s also a built-in FM transmitter to send your audio to your car or home stereo without wires.

Looking to take some photos or shoot some video? The ARENA offers a 5-megapixel digital camera, which lets you access the type of adjustments that you’d normally only get on a standalone camera. And you can shoot DVD quality video at up to 30FPS. There’s even a manual focus mode, and you can shoot slo-mo video at up to 120FPS.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The ARENA is a full 3G phone, running on HSDPA 7.2 networks, and also has built-in Wi-Fi and A-GPS. There’s 8GB of onboard memory, and MicroSD slot which lets you add up to 32GB of additional storage.

Want to see it in action? LG has launched the online ARENA emulator, in case you want to see the device in action.

And it packs all of this into a case that measures just 105.9mm x 55.3mm x 11.95mm, smaller than the svelte iPhone 3G. The iPhone might finally have a true challenger. Expect the ARENA to hit Europe this March, then go worldwide later this year.

[LG ARENA Website]

The covers have a swirly ridged surface which makes it anti-slip. They have a list of colors that I could share with you, but some of them are silly names (”cloudy” for “gray”? seriously?) Ergo, I will tell you in my own words that the colors included in this combo 10-pack are light pink, yellow, orange, kelly green, goldenrod, royal blue, white, black, light gray, and dark gray.

The covers are made of 100% silicone. They’re tailor-made for the Apple iPhone 3G. The case has openings for the LCD screen, headset, dock connector.

Of course, merely having an iPhone 3G makes you cooler than most people. But being able to match it to your outfit each day? You just got bumped up from “cool” to “straight pimpin’.” You can buy the 10-pack for $69.90 here.

[via Chip Chick]

The company refers to this product as “the natural evolution of a long-necked dinosaur.” I think this is a bad marketing slogan, because by now everyone knows about the ginormous asteroids and we’ve all seen Jurassic Park and it’s just not working for me on any level. But, maybe that’s also partly because the Soaripod looks almost exactly like the evolution of this Gorillapod I got like 3 years ago to hold up my digital camera.

You can buy one here for $29.99. Now for the lame part: they don’t have one that fits your shiny new iPhone 3G yet, only your ancient, crusty, old 1st generation iPhone or iPod Touch (maybe that’s where they got the dinosaur slogan from – Ed.). They fit on other cellphones, video players, and smartphones as well, but exactly which ones aren’t specified.

[via GeekSugar]

If you want your own, head to Big Chief and download the PDF. A little cutting, a little glue, and voila- you will know that you are truly a super-obsessive and impatient Apple fanboy/girl.

And who knows, if it’s dark enough in the room maybe you can convince some rubes that you somehow got your hands on one early…

This would be a good conversation starter (examples: “How do you keep a candy bar in your pocket without it melting?” or “Excuse me, my Valrhona is vibrating.”) But the raised rectangle design looks like it adds a fair amount of bulk to the iPhone- and we all know that iPhones are pretty ginormous as it is, and that they take up more than their share of pants-pocket realty already.

It looks like the ChocoCase is made for old-skool (as of yesterday) 1.0 iPhones and probably won’t fit correctly on the upcoming 3G version, which is going to be more rounded and a tiny bit thinner. Nonetheless if you’re planning on sticking with your iPhone Classic, you love silicone chocolate, and you want to have an even more deformed pocket silhouette than you already do, then you can pick up this case for $29.99 from gizfever. You get the nifty box with a screen protector and brown silicone iPhone case.

The iPhone 3G looks very much like the original iPhone, with a slight modification to the case (a little more tapered and just a fraction of an inch thicker), and will come with either a white or black plastic back (instead of the more substantial brushed aluminum of the v1.0 iPhones). Under the hood, the 3G models support both HSDPA and UMTS high-speed internet connectivity, which transfers data about 2x quicker than the pokey EDGE network of the original models – a welcome upgrade.

The phones support A-GPS (assisted GPS) technology, allowing them to rapidly triangulate your current location using a combination of satellites, cell towers and Wi-Fi data. Of course, it’s all seamlessly integrated with Google Maps to provide turn-by-turn directions.

The new models will support the much-anticipated iPhone AppStore, which will open the door to tons of downloadable applications. One cool thing announced was the fact that the store will support downloads via both phone networks (files <10MB), and Wi-Fi (files >10MB), so you won’t have to sync up to iTunes to grab new software. If you happen to own an original iPhone, the AppStore will be available for free as part of the iPhone v2.0 software update,  while iPod Touch users get the proverbial short end of the stick with a $9.99 charge for the update. The update also adds Exchange support, contact search, improved e-mail management, among other things.

Contrary to popular belief, the iPhone 3G did not start shipping today, but will be in stores around much of the globe on July 11th, 2008. The 8GB model will retail for $199, while the 16GB model will sell for $299. Current models (if you can find ‘em) retail for $399 and $499, respectively, so these represent a 50% price cut, even though the new phones have more features.

No date was confirmed for the V2.0 software upgrade for current owners, but I wouldn’t doubt it hits day-and-date with the new phones in July. As with the original iPhone launch, you’ll need to head over to an Apple or AT&T Store to get your hands on one when they hit the streets.

[iPhone 3G Specs]

While the XPERIA X1 runs on the Windows Mobile Platform, Sony Ericsson developed a slick new user interface which gives it a much more forward looking design than most WinMo devices. Sony’s new “panel” interface shows nine tiny tiles which represent individual application windows. When touched, they open up to display the application using a smooth animated style.

It’s a full 3G phone, working on just about every phone and data network you can think of, supporting Quad-Band GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, HSUPA, and UMTS standards. Most of Sony’s X1 propaganda fails to mention Wi-Fi connectivity, but this spec sheet I found says “Utilize high-speed Internet at Wi-Fi™ hotspots at airports and other facilities”, so I’m hoping it really does.

The X1 really is loaded to the hilt with features. There’s a 3.2 megapixel digital camera with video recording and even video chat on high-speed networks. Internet surfing is achieved using the Internet Explorer Mobile browser. Unlike iPhone’s tower-triangulation navigation, the X1 offers true aGPS maps and directions. All the requisite PDA features are there, including E-mail, an alarm clock, calculator, calendar, document readers, address book, and task manager. And yes, it all syncs with Outlook and Exchange via ActiveSync. Heck, it even has push e-mail support like a Blackberry.

Of course, there’s full media playback support using Windows Media Player, including wireless stereo headset connectivity over Bluetooth A2DP. The X1 features a beautiful 3-inch TFT screen with a whopping 800 x 480 resolution (that’s way sharper than the iPhone’s already ample 480 x 320 display).

While the phone only has 400MB of on-board memory, but you can store up to 8GB of media files on optional SanDisk Micro or Memory Stick Micro memory cards. Behind its touchscreen display, the phone’s QWERTY keyboard than slides out to form an elegant arc when viewed from the side.

When closed, the X1 measures in at 4.3 x 0.7 x 2.1 inches, making it just a hair smaller than an iPhone on the width and height, but about 1/3rd thicker. Weight is 5.1 ounces, just a tiny bit heavier than the iPhone’s 4.8 ounces.

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My greatest concern about the X1 is it’s Windows Mobile roots. While Sony Ericsson has clearly stepped up their game in the interfaces shown here, I’m afraid it all could just be a facade for WinMo’s less-than-stellar roots. I guess we’ll just all have to wait until we can get our hands on one to see. Expect the XPERIA X1 to make its way to stores sometime in the second half of 2008. Pricing hasn’t yet been revealed.

[Xperia X1 Product Page]

Top Global’s pyramid-shaped 3G Phoebus MB6000 takes most EV-DO, UMTS, HSDPA and EDGE/GPRS mobile network cards and lets you share your data connection through a built-in (802.11b/g) Wi-Fi access point. It’s compatible with a wide variety of PCMCIA cards from companies such as Sprint, Verizon, Alltel and AT&T.

While it’s certainly not as fast as a native Wi-Fi connection, it’s good for locations where Wi-Fi and wired connections aren’t readily available.

The 3G Phoebus is available from X-treme Geek for $289.00.

The F520 is similar in many ways to the F700, with a slick, Flash-based user interface, touchscreen, media player and true 3G connectivity. The F520 however has a really cool trick up its sleeve; the keyboard slides in two directions: one to reveal a limited phone dialer, and the second to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard. It also has a 3-inch diagonal (480 x 272 resolution) screen, which is actually a little larger than the screen on the F700. It’s got a 3-megapixel camera, full HTML web browsing and video playback too.

The more I see phones like this one, the more I think that Apple is going to be challenged keeping up with the pace of the mobile phone industry. Companies like Nokia, LG and Samsung are used to churning out dozens of new models every year, so are able to react to market changes very quickly. Conversely, Apple is used to producing just a handful of iPod models every year or two. This may give them some advantages on the quality front, but I’m not sure that’s going to be enough to keep up with the joneses.

[via Gizmodo]

The Samsung Ultra Smart F700 features a sleek, modern design that’s a little more rugged looking than Apple’s iPhone. For starters, the F700 has a large, 2.78-inch touchscreen display, running at 240×400 resolution. In addition, it’s got a full QWERTY slide-out keyboard lets you quickly type e-mails and text messages. It’s a full triband GSM phone, with 3G support for EDGE, GPRS,UMTS and HSDPA high-speed wireless service, as well as Bluetooth.

The phone features robust multimedia playback capabilities for MP3 and MP4 files as well as a variety of other formats. The F700 also has a solid 5-megapixel digital camera, with a smaller secondary camera for teleconferencing. A full HTML web browser is also included. While the F700 doesn’t feature some of the fancier features of the iPhone such as the accelerometer or multi-touch display, nor does it offer WiFi access, it does one-up the iPhone with its expandable memory, 3G support and slide-out keyboard.

Keep an eye out for this one later this year.

[via Newlaunches]

The Aura does one up the iPhone in a few significant ways by offering UMTS and HSDPA (3G) high-speed connectivity, expandable storage via an SD slot and a slide-out keyboard. The bad news? The Aura is just a concept design, and isn’t expected to be produced any time soon.

Don’t be surprised if more and more manufacturers start to clone the iPhone’s full-size touchscreen display and other design touches. But like Mac OS X vs. Vista and TiVo vs. other DVRs, the difference still lies in the quality of the user interface and underlying operating system.

[via CrunchGear]