Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

This is where we call out the tech moves that seem odd, out of touch or just plain straight up smokin’ crack.  This week sees posturing, positioning and flat out insanity.  Can you hear the drum beating for Black Friday?  It is getting nuts in here! Here is what caught my eye this week:

Join me as I call out these guys for totally suspicious acts:

• Gadget makers
• Classmates.com
• Bloggers that leak good stuff
• Korean dictionaries.  Yes, I am serious about that one.

Follow the link to hear more.  It is almost guaranteed to brighten your Friday.  Almost.

MORE »

So we’ve all been hearing hints and rumors and whispers in the window about the much talked about BlackBerry Storm.  Well, it looks as if there may finally be some confirmation about when the Storm is actually going to hit the Verizon stores.

According to a very trusted source, there is a document floating around from Verizon giving some specifics on launch dates.  It says that the Storm is due to show up for a pre-launch at 123 corporate Verizon stores on November 20th. 

Keep reading for more details.

MORE »

A few more images of an upcoming Walkman handset from Sony Ericsson have recently leaked out.  This time the images are of a red slider-styled Rika.  It was not that long ago when we first saw the G705 make an appearance, of course, in addition to the new color, these latest images also clearly show the Walkman branding.

As of now, an official release date has not been announced. Unofficially, we are hearing that it will be coming sometime in October with sales beginning a little closer to the holiday shopping season.  Keep reading to check out another pic of the G705 in red…

MORE »

Finally, someone found the paddles, charged to 350 and zapped some life back into Moto.  These images of the Moto Q11, captured by a website I’ve never heard of, show a phone that looks rather modern.  There certainly is no mistaking this phone for anything else but a Motorola.

Haptic changeable buttons?

The businesses-y Moto Q9 was launched on AT&T back in November.  This update does not bring the haptic changeable keypad I was hoping for, opting for actual hard buttons.  The keypad’s shape looks to take up less real estate of the Q11 vs the Q9.  This phone is still the phone equivalent of an oar blade: flat and wide.  Whatever, at least it is something new.

The rumored specs and keypad image are just a click away, hit more to follow.

MORE »

At this point, it is not a secret that the Ocean 2 will be coming. We have already seen the FCC approval come way back in March, and even saw a leaked and blurry shot show up a few months later in June. But sadly, up till now, we have not seen any real quality images of the upcoming device. Now, courtesy of the FCC we have a few shots and not only do they show off a good amount of detail they are also nice and clear.

The Ocean 2 is not expected to hit the market until sometime in January of 2009. But the good news is that aside from these nice images, we also have a few new details. Obviously, from the pics you can see that the Ocean 2 will retain the same dual slider design as the original Ocean which gives you a numeric keypad along with a full QWERTY keyboard so you can show off your texting skills. Otherwise, it is expected to feature a QVGA display, 2-megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, EVDO 3G, a microSD card slot, full HTML browser and a touch sensitive navigation pad.

MORE »

You have to love the stream of information coming from the FCC, at times they remind me of that friend who knows a little to much, but does not know when to keep their mouth closed. Well the latest bit of information to come is in the form of the Nokia 2680 slide that was recently pictured with a nice clear AT&T logo.

Overall the Nokia 2680 is not much to get excited about, its a pretty low-end slider-style handset that features a camera, music player and FM radio. However what is interesting about this comes from the original Nokia announcement for the 2680 which announced this as a handset for emerging markets, well it looks like AT&T now has an emerging market. I wonder how they would feel after hearing that.

MORE »

Without any official announcement from RIM, the upcoming BlackBerry 8210 and 8220 have both been unveiled by online retailer Expansys. Of course, the 8210 and the 8220 are better know as the KickStart, which marks RIM’s first venture into the clamshell market.

Thanks to their online retail appearance we can confirm they will be featuring an internal 2.6-inch display with a 320 x 240 resolution and external 160 x 128 resolution display. Other features include a 2-megapixel camera with flash and video recording capability, Bluetooth 2.0, microSD card slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack and quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900MHz) support.

MORE »

It looks like nothing but good news for BlackBerry loving T-Mobile users as there are a few new options coming available shortly.

First up we will see an expansion of the current Pearl 8120 lineup. Not the most exciting of additions, but lets get them out of the way before we move on to the real goodies. The Pearl 8120’s features will remain the same, but it will also be available in Tahitian Green, Indigo and Light Blue in addition to the currently available Ruby, Gold and Titanium.

Now that the 8120’s are out of the way, we can also tell you that the Kickstart (or possibly the Pearl 8220) will be available sometime in late September or early October and although the pricing has yet to be officially confirmed, the rumored $49.99 is still holding.

MORE »

We have just recently seen the Eee PC 900a show its face in some leaked images, and although it seemed to be just another model in the never ending Eee PC lineup, we were hoping for something special.

Sadly, the specs have been revealed and honestly we are not really sure why Asus even bothered, its just another Eee. It will feature the 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor but that is about where the excitement stops.

Other features include what seems to be the standard now; an 8.9-inch display with a 1024 x 600 resolution, 1GB of RAM, built-in card reader, 0.3-megapixel webcam, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, VGA out, and three USB ports.

The Eee PC 900a will also be available in a 8GB or 16GB SSD option, but sadly Bluetooth will not be included. The 900a will be available beginning August 21 and retail for 299 EUR (around $465 US).

With all the different models and options now available, it seems that Asus should just make a few standard case sizes and then offer them in a selection of colors and allow the user to configure them as desired.

Via [jkkmobile]

• Asus Eee PC 1002HA now available with US retailers
• Eee box gains home theater features
• Micro Center’s Black Friday 2008 weekend sales

Although we were pleasantly surprised to see Asus returning to their roots with the recent information that surfaced showing off the new additions coming to the Eee PC 701 series, this latest image would normally just be chalked up as yet another model in the never ending Eee lineup.

However, we did notice one interesting bit worth mentioning, the newly pictured model is the Eee PC 900a, and although there has not been any official word, some speculation (and hope) is that the “a” is in place for Atom, as in the processor.

Otherwise, like I mentioned its just one leaked image as of now, but still it shows something to hope for, that is assuming you are not already burnt out on the never ending models of the Eee PC. Seriously Asus, I am a fan of the Eee lineup, I have one myself, but even I cannot keep up anymore with what you have going on. Lets try and bring it back to just being simple, low-cost, easy-to-use notebook like you started with.

Image [Blogeee] Via [thegadgetsite]

• Asus Eee PC 1002HA now available with US retailers
• Eee box gains home theater features
• Micro Center’s Black Friday 2008 weekend sales