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Nokia's mystery device? The Nokia N97

Twenty-four hours after teasing us with news of a major product announcement, Nokia officially took the wraps off its mystery smartphone on Tuesday at the Nokia World 2008 conference in Barcelona, Spain. And despite some close guesses, no one got it quite right, so without further ado, let us introduce you to the Nokia N97.

Part of the company's high-end N series of multimedia computers, the N97 trumps all previous models with a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard and a tilting 3.5-inch touch screen (anyone else reminded of the AT&T Tilt or Sony Ericsson Xperia X1?). Yes, there's the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet, but the N97 includes phone capabilities and is designed for the "needs of Internet-savvy consumers."

For example, the smartphone provides easy access to a number of social-networking sites, and the Web browser supports streaming Flash videos. The N97 also introduces something Nokia calls "social location," which uses the capabilities of the integrated A-GPS sensors and electronic compass to automatically update users' social networks, or let them share their location via photos or videos with friends.

The Home screen can be personalized with widgets of favorite Web and social-networking sites. Finally, the N97 is fully compatible with Nokia's Ovi Internet services, which include the Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, and the N-Gage gaming platform--though these services have yet to fully launch in the United States.

The Symbian-based smartphone also features a music and video player, a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, and a whopping 32GB of onboard memory that can be expanded with a 16GB microSD card.

The quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) world phone is HSDPA-capable handset, but it currently supports only the 900/1900/2100MHz bands (AT&T's 3G network runs on 850/1900MHz, while T-Mobile runs on 1700/2100MHz). There is integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, however. … Read more

Five financial Android apps to regulate your dough

With the economy in continuing decline, keeping tight control over your money is no longer just for obsessives. These financial apps for Google Android help you count every penny.

Personal Budget Droid is a simple budget- and bills-tracker that lets you create multiple monthly budgets for groceries, housing costs, and so on. You enter every budget name and transaction by hand, but the app keeps a transaction history and calculates how much you have left for each category.

The more sophisticated FireWallet works with budgets inside various accounts and protects your information behind a four-digit pin you change from the … Read more

Countdown to Nokia's new product announcement

In the tech world, it's rare that a new product remains a complete secret from the prying eyes of gadget enthusiasts and bloggers, but somehow Nokia has done it. On Tuesday, in conjunction with the Nokia World 2008 Conference in Barcelona, Spain, the Finnish cell phone manufacturer will reveal a new device, and it's a complete mystery.

According to Robert Scoble, Nokia executives have been bragging that "the Internet has no clue" what it's about to announce, and that all guesses, including a new touch-screen cell phone (Engadget Mobile thinks it could possibly be a … Read more

White T-Mobile G1 on sale now

On Monday, T-Mobile set free the white version of the T-Mobile G1, joining the previously released black and bronze models. The white G1 will cost the same as the others at $179.99 with a two-year contract and is available online and in stores.

According to Silicon Alley Insider and DigiTimes, HTC, the manufacturer of the first Google Android smartphone, expects to ship 1 million G1s by the end of 2008, which is 67 percent more than its original estimate of 600,000. It's unclear how the sales break down in terms of region and demographics, but it's … Read more

Opera Mini 4.2 beta now surfing Google Android

Opera Mini 4.2 beta, a test version released for Java phones just two weeks ago, on Monday became the first third-party browser available for Google Android.

Opera Mini for Android, which was previewed in April, includes most of the familiar Mini 4.2 features: zooming, saving, bookmarking, and searching for in-line text has stayed intact, as has syncing via Opera Link and swapping skins.

We couldn't make the video playback workaround that debuted on other Java phones work in this build, though T-Mobile's USA's G1 phone does support video playback (see our review on TuneWiki.) We … Read more

A view on EVFs

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 has made history as the first non-SLR digital camera to sport interchangeable lenses. And while it exceeds my expectations with respect to speed and photo quality, it lives down to them, unfortunately, with respect to the shooting experience, thanks to its use of an electronic viewfinder. (For the uninitiated, an EVF is a little LCD display used for eye-level shooting.) While EVFs aren't new--they're a staple on megazoom cameras and camcorders with eye-level viewfinders--I realized I'd never cohesively stated why I dislike them.

Some people have no problem with EVFs, and I daresay … Read more

First Look video: Quickpedia for Google Android

Quickpedia isn't the only Wikipedia-scouring app for Google Android, but it's the best we've seen so far.

The free application makes it easy to search and browse Wikipedia for articles, throwing in a few tiny twists along the way to make navigating, reading, and learning interesting tidbits a breeze.

You can see it all unfold in this First Look video.

The real deal on G1's virtual teardown

Tuesday, I linked to a Dow Jones story on CNN's Money Web site about a virtual teardown iSuppli did on T-Mobile's fancy G1, the first commercial smartphone to run Google's Android. Some readers had issues with the story, and I'm going to address those here.

First, I quoted the price of the G1 at $399 instead of the $179 new customers typically get. This was due to a communications mixup between me and one of my T-Mobile marketing contacts. He was giving me the unsubsidized price, not the retail price, probably thinking I was inquiring to … Read more

Report: G1 costs 10 percent less to make than iPhone

Update: 4 p.m. Wednesday: Let's get this G1 cost thing straight, shall we? Writer Matt Hickey clarifies some of the points he made in the post below and thanks readers for their feedback. This post was also altered to reflect the correct retail price for the G1.

When it comes to the next-gen phone wars, two handsets immediately come to mind: Apple's iPhone and the G1 from HTC and T-Mobile, the first commercially available phone to run Google's Android OS.

The G1 retails to new customers for $179, while the basic-model iPhone goes for for $199. … Read more

Google, T-Mobile too mum over Android security?

When it comes to telling customers about security weaknesses, there's a fine line between alerting customers and inviting attacks. With T-Mobile G1, the first phone to run Google's Android operating system, I think the companies are erring on the side of inadequate disclosure.

I've been testing a review model of the G1, and an update arrived first on November 1 and then a second a week later. Only by dint of much pestering and more than a week of waiting did I find out from Google what was in those two Android patches.

And T-Mobile has been … Read more