Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

If Santa is looking for stocking stuffers, or if you are just looking for some portable storage at a good price, you may want to check out one of Newegg’s latest “Special Buys.“

Right now, they are offering the Kingston DataTravelor 100 4GB flash drive for just $7.99 complete with free shipping.

I’ve compare shopped the item at some other sites.  Overstock is actually asking $21.99 for the same item. (Which is just ridiculous, even Newegg doesn’t list that as the regular price). . . .

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Sections: Computers, Gadgets / Other, Household, Lifestyle, Miscellaneous, Peripherals, Storage, Web, Websites

AT&T has added another of its “quick messaging phone” with the Quickfire.  This phone’s got 3G, a QWERTY keyboard, touch screen, and a 1.3 megapixel camera in a slider form factor. 

This new phone comes in colors: silver, lime, and orange.  With these kind of colors, AT&T doesn’t look like it’s aiming for business people.  The Quickfire is just a hair under $100 ($99.99).  Of course, that price requires a two-year agreement and actually sending in a mail-in rebate. 

The AT&T site has the Quickfire as “coming soon” and the actual product page is not filled out as of right now, but you can order one today on the AT&T site.

Read: [AT&T Press Release]
Product Page: [A&T Quickfire]

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According to a source, you can opt into the new Netflix Watch Instantly movie player.  The source is The Official Netflix Blog, so it’s probably accurate.  This brings Netflix’s movie player to OS X for the first time (without running Windows) by using Microsoft’s Silverlight.

If you’re a slider and you use both Mac and Windows machines, once you opt into the Silverlight experience, you’re locked into to it for both platforms.  If you’re a Windows-only user, you may wonder why bother with opting in at all?  Well, maybe you hate Internet Explorer and you’ve always wanted to watch Netflix in Firefox.  This is your chance.

However, there is no opting out yet.  If the experience sucks, you’re stuck.  It’s a beta, so you know what that means.  I’m using it now and have already been hit with some errors.  Some movies that used to work don’t play Silverlight yet (mostly Starz offerings). 

Go for it!  [Netflix opt-in link]
Read more at the [The Official Netflix Blog]

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Sections: Apple, Video, Accessories, Web, Web 2.0, Web Apps, Web Browsers, Online Music/Video

HP phones are all business, and the latest announcement from them shows us they will stay with that focus.  While both are based on Windows Mobile 6.1 and feature a new optical gliding navigation (one upping the BB Pearl) the two phones take different form factors.  Both are geared for Europe and are available without a SIM card or as part of a Vodafone package.

The two phones, the Voice Messenger, a candybar style and the Data Messenger, a horizontal slider with full QWERTY keypad look fantastic as compared to other iPaqs.  Style has finally infiltrated HP and hopes are high they’ll bring this sense to the US market.  Both phones feature Wi-Fi, HSDPA, AGPS and 3.1 megapixel camera with flash.

Check out more of these uncharacteristically stylish gems.

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After finding out I was on crack this week, I was reminded of some information I had on BlackBerries.  As you know, Research in Motion (“RIM”) is releasing their Pearl 8220, the first BlackBerry with a clamshell design.  Gadgetell got a chance to speak to RIM and found out that the keyboard on a clamshell BlackBerry will probably never be a full keyboard.

According to RIM, the clamshell format precludes the usage of a full keyboard.  The form factor would become very strange and users just wouldn’t go for it.  That does not necessarily mean that there are not other form factors that RIM could choose like a slider or even a Sidekick-style format. 

If you want a full keyboard and clamshell form factor, just get that out of your head.  It’s just not happening. 

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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…

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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.

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Motorola has added three new music phones to its MOTOROKR lineup, the EM30 candybar, the EM28 clamshell and EM25 slider phone. All three are geared for music lovers who can’t live without their mobile phones. Here’s a quick rundown of the specs and features of each of these new ROKR handsets.

First up we the ROKR EM30 candybar, which is equipped with Motorola’s ModeShift technology for illuminating the phone’s keyboards when shifting from phone to music mode. Aside from these, it also features an FM Radio in addition to its media player functionality, a 2-megapixel camera with 8x digital zoom, a 3.5mm stereo headset jack, text-to-speech recognition, support for Microsoft music ecosystem, airplane mode, CrystalTalk technology, a microSD storage card slot and Windows Media Player 11 support. The ROKR EM30 is a quad band GPRS/EDGE class 12 phone which can give out 360 minutes of talktime and 300 hours of standby time.

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Yet another Sony Ericsson handset being leaked prior to an official announcement. The latest is the G705, a seemingly decent mid-range slider style handset.

The G705 is expected to feature a 2.4-inch display, a 3.2-megapixel camera with flash, built-in GPS, 128MB of internal memory with a memory card slot for extra storage and running the A2 software platform. Sadly it seems that Sony Ericsson has decided to not include two important items, auto-focus for the camera, or a standard 3.5mm headphone jack.

Although nothing official has been announced, the rumor is calling for Sony Ericsson to officially unveil the G705 during an upcoming press event that is scheduled to take place in about two weeks. In the meantime keep reading to check out some pics…

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If Samsung’s INNOV8 i8510 8-megapixel camera is not enough to convince you to buy this new phone once it’s released, its video playback capability might make you do so. The i8510 has been certified by DivX, Inc., making it only the fifth DivX certified mobile handset made by Samsung.

Being DivX certified means the i8510 will make it easy for users to transfer video content from their PCs to the mobile phones through the phone’s TV-out feature allowing users to view PC-like high-quality images and DivX video when and wherever they want. The i8510 runs on Symbian 60 OS and as such, it can also boast of being the first Symbian-powered mobile phone that has been DivX-certified.

Read [Business Wire]

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