Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

The LG Shine is the Korean company’s next attempt to change the landscape of the cellphone market. Though one can argue that the Chocolate phone has made little effect when compared to the Motorola RAZR, I believe that it was the handset that brought music to the forefront of consumers’ minds when purchasing a new cellphone.

The next model up from LG is the Shine that we had dropped back in October. Where the Chocolate phone excels in music geared to teenagers and other music junkies, the Shine’s positioning has it for professionals. Named for its shiny mirror-like facade and stainless steel casing, the Shine features a 2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, an MP3 player, and a scroll wheel on the front.

No longer will it be exclusive to Korea, as LG plans to introduce it to the European and North American market next week at CES. In their effort to make it a big bash for the sleek stainless-steel Shine, the LG folks plan to set up a booth made entirely of stainless steel. The GSM version will be released in Europe in the first quarter of 2007 and soon thereafter in the rest of Asia and the United States. No pricing information has been announced yet.

Read [FarEastGizmos] Via [SlashGear]

White chocolate, shiny chocolate, flipping chocolate, what will they think of next?

The Chocolate Platinum handset will be next in line for LG. The new handset, the KE800 will be a GSM, tri-band, EDGE handset (Cingular’s higher speed data network), double the internal memory (256MB instead of 128) plus the same microSD slot, a new 2 megapixel camera with auto-focus and macro mode, FM radio, and stereo Bluetooth support. The touch sensitive buttons will remain, but the iPod-like circle (aka non-working scroll wheel) will be removed.

It also must be using low-fat milk because it slimmed down to 9.9mm (0.39”) instead of 15.2mm (0.6”) which is 35% slimmer.

Read [Phone Arena] Via [Crave]

After weeks upon weeks of mouth watering rumors, you can finally satisfy your craving and sink your teeth into the official White Chocolate phone by LG (aka the Verizon LG VX8500) this Halloween.

If you were internet/TV-less for the past 3 months, the Chocolate offers V CAST Music, touch-sensitive navigation keys, a music/video player, 1.3 megapixel camera/camcorder, Bluetooth, and a microSD memory port.

Trick or treat!

Product Page [Verizon] Via [SlashPhones]

Around the world, the LG Chocolate phone has gone through a few “flavors” now in black, white, pink, and even red.  To this point, Verizon has only jumped on-board with the standard black one so they could market the hell out of it - and they’re doing quite a good job in fact.  Now it looks like they have plans to launch the white one, which we can cleverly dub the White Chocolate phone, in the States this holiday season.  I wouldn’t expect any changes in the specs department, but it looks like others see a premium price coming with the device.

Read [MobileMag] Via [CrunchGear]

Those of you dying for some Chocolate but don’t do slider phones your wait has shortened. We though that the LG U830 shown in Berlin was going to go sweet but it looks like the flip phone will be slightly altered to be the the Black Sapphire MG810. It will have a 1.3 megapixel camera, 176 x 220 internal display (and 96x 96 external), media player that supports MP3 and AAC, Bluetooth, FM radio, 128MB of flash memory, and GRPS.

We’ll keep you posted as the cocoa comes in.

Read [Engadget]

Lots of big things this week pumping out of gadgetell.  We first got our hands on the LG Chocolate phone last week, then just a couple of days later, we took a peep at the Samsung SCH-a990 3.2 megapixel camera phone.  We also hand a chance to test out both the Sprint and Verizon versions of the Treo 700p for the review.  We also have a hunch that AOL will finally stop sending CDs to your house since they’ve officially declared themselves a free service (and are firing 5,000 to prove it).  If you missed anything this week, check out the list below.

Reviews

• Gadgetell Review: An invisibleSHIELD to protect your Motorola Q
• Gadgetell Review: Palm Treo 700p for Sprint and Verizon
• Gadgetell Review: ScreenTek gives your notebook a face lift

• Peep Show: Plantronics releases five new Bluetooth headsets with style, in-style
• WTFH: More car manufacturers are offering heads up displays
• Peep Show: Samsung SCH-a990 3.2 megapixel camera phone
• How To Tuesday: Get songs off your iPod with iTunes

• AOL to can 5,000 out of it’s 19,000 employees
• The mouse is for slow folks, give me a keyboard and some shortcuts
• 2 GB SanDisk microSD card; teeny weeny card that packs a punch
• Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0 Alpha 1
• Sony releases PlayStation Spot for their PSP in Europe and Australia
• No power, no cables, no problem; Wi-Fi goes Green
• Griffin’s take on the iPod home media center trend
• Nokia N93 can improve your golf swing
• Keep your eyes on the snow and your hands in your pockets
• Lexar USB JumpDrive Lightning with PowerToGo software puts your PC on a stick
• Interview with Mozilla lead engineer discussing the “Road to Firefox 2?
• Griffin overs a vizor to cover your iPod
• LG will drop more Black Label handsets early next year and more chocolate flavors as well
• You talk with Bluetooth, now print with Bluetooth
• Samsung network laser color printer
• Vaja silver for your RAZR
• 3 cases in 1, a trio for the nano
• iTunes adds content from TBS and CNN
• AOL is free for all, changes their line to “You’ve got ads”
• Underwater boats for the rich
• Porsche P9611 GPS
• Video of Apple OS X Leopard?
• News we missed this past week
• On-board calling will take flight on Ryanair
• Microsoft IE 7 will automatically replace IE 6
• Griffin keeps your tempo so you pick up yours
• Firefox patches more holes with version 1.5.0.5
• The day Microsoft crashed
• Perplex City uses RFID to spur more hype in San Francisco, leading to a $200,000 reward
• Verizon’s LG Chocolate phone officially launched
• Ben Q’s Speaker
• Microsoft plans to spend hundreds of millions to compete with Apple’s iPod/iTunes
• Apple issues worldwide battery recall for 15-inch MacBook Pro
• Palm pulling out of agreement with PalmSource for next gen PalmOS
• Shure isolates you from the world with the E Series
• Granite Digital lets you store up to 1.5 TB on your G5