The Garmin-Asus Nuvifone is vaporware no more! Boy Genius has unveiled some information about several upcoming AT&T smartphones, the G60 among them. The nuvifone G60 is a collaboration between the famed GPS manufacturer Garmin and PC-manufacturer Asus. It will cost $299 with a 2-year contract after a $100 mail-in rebate.

That’s a bit pricey for even a high-end smartphone. The G60 has a 3 megapixel camera, a 3.5″ touchscreen, a Linux-based OS, 3G capability, and a Garmin GPS. To be honest, the nuvifone doesn’t sound quite as awesome now as it did a year ago. That said, having a quality GPS built-in will save users the expense of a TomTom car set. No release date has yet been announced, but it’s expected out before the end of October.
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Mobile phone giant KDDI has teamed up with Tokyo-based Flower Robotics to develop a new concept mobile phone/robot system designed to monitor and learn the user’s behavior and communicate via a home TV set. Pink Tentacle reports.

“Called “Polaris,” the prototype system consists of a mobile handset that monitors the user’s daily activities and an artificially intelligent robot sphere that charges the handset and displays data on the user’s TV.The Polaris system is designed to learn the user’s lifestyle by collecting data, analyzing activity, and identifying trends. The robot keeps a database of information accumulated through the handset, such as the user’s daily travel and walking habits, calls and email messages sent and received, and online transactions. Using this data, Polaris learns to predict the user’s behavior and offer relevant advice and information.”

This is a pretty simple construction that actually doesn’t look as ridiculous as it sounds. The dock rotates, taking advantage of the iPhone and iPod Touch’s accelerometer and making use of allowing movie-viewing landscape mode. Not bad!

Today at the Mobilize Conference, Motorola and T-Mobile announced the Motorola Cliq, a new Android handset. They call it “the first phone with social skills.” It is a touch-based handset that has Motorola’s new MOTOBLUR service on board. The Cliq is a sideways slider that has a full QWERTY keyboard and 3.1-inch HVGA touch-screen display. It has a 3G, Wi-Fi, 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, video capture at 24 frames per second, 3.5mm headset jack, full HTML Google browser, and Google services. It will support microSD cards up to 32GB. It will be available in titanium and white, pricing wasn’t disclosed. It will be sold worldwide as the DEXT starting in 2010.

Kwikset’s SmartKey has been lacking in intelligence for quite awhile, but at long last, the outfit has finally added a pivotal feature here at CEDIA: true remote locking and unlocking. The new remote access control solution is being dubbed SmartCode with Home Connect — an unnecessarily lengthy way of explaining how the company’s keyless locks can now communicate wirelessly with other devices. Users can also check-in on door lock status when they aren’t automatically arming / disarming, and you can initiate customized scenes upon entrance and exit in order to more accurately pretend that you’re Prince. There’s no mention of pricing, but given that you’ll need to hit up a Control4 retailer to get your hands on this puissant technology, we’d recommend bringing the bank.

HTC has been getting in on the act today with the unveilling of the Touch2, a compact WinMo smartphone that will be one of the first devices to run WinMo 6.5, which will itself be unveiled on 6th October. Other pioneering efforts include support for Windows Marketplace and Microsoft My Phone. HTC’s TouchFlo UI has been given a revamp with lessons learned from the popular Sense UI found on HTC’s Android devices.
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“Not a day goes by that someone doesn’t want some piece of the huge Michael Jackson pie. So it was only a matter of time that more wares kept popping up authorized or not displaying his image.  So without further ado I present the Michael Jackson IMITO A8 Cell Phone Ultimate EDITION. Basically a cheap phone with a laser image of MJ on the back of it….lovely.  Available in blue, silver, rose red, purple, green, and brown. The Michael Jackson IMITO A8 Cell sports a Dual Card Sim Card option, Stereo Bluetooth,FM radio,Phone call tracing, Multiple language support ( so people from other countries can get ripped off too), and 2.0 TFT screen.  All  this for the bargain basement price of $82.15. I’m sure the attorneys for Michael Jackson’s estate will get a Google alert right – about – now.”

In a potential advance for the forces of paid content, The Economist is introducing a trial program today that lets New Yorkers use their cellphones to order overnight home delivery of the new issue at the regular newsstand price. AdAge reports.

“New Yorkers who have signed up for weekly texts announcing each issue’s topics will also receive a URL for a web page they can visit to order the issue. Those who order by 9 p.m. are guaranteed a hand-delivered copy by 6 a.m. the next morning — in time to beat the commute.The weekly texts go out on Thursday afternoons, meaning recipients can get overnight copies before newsstands get them at about 9 a.m.
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The once rumored Nokia Xseries is now official as Nokia has just announced two devices to spearhead this new range of phones: the Nokia X6 and the X3.

The Nokia X6 is their latest full-touchscreen device that features 3.2-inch display, Carl Zeiss equipped 5-megapixel camera with dual LED flash, WiFi, Bluetooth, TV-out, on-device video editing tools, A-GPS, Ovi Maps, full web browser with Flash Lite support, 32GB memory, and an astounding 35 hours music playback battery life. Unlike their previous touchscreen phones such as the 5800XM and 5530XM, the Nokia X6 is definitely much slimmer measuring a mere 0.55-inches thin. It’s due in Q4 with a price of 459 Euros (around $652) excluding tax and subsidies.

Well the wait is finally over, Sony Ericsson have finally announced the much leaked X2. It’s the successor to last year’s X1 and is again sporting WinMo, this time the 6.5 variety. The new smartphone retains the same basic design as the X1 with a pull out keyboard and of course the XPERIA panels interface, which has seen a bit of a revamp with some new panels added. The customer service side of things stays the same with a very high level of service included in the purchase price. There is a dedicated XPERIA technical team to help customers and customers whose handsets breakdown abroad will receive a replacement device.
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It’s been a while since the world has been as excited about a Nokia product as they are about the N900. The fact that it runs on the Maemo 5 OS instead of Nokia’s old (lackluster) standby, Symbian, is reason enough alone to be giddy. We know this phone will be hitting the T-Mobile network this October and, if Boy Genius is correct, it’ll be hitting the AT&T and Rogers wireless networks in fairly short order.
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Another video for you today, this time the Nokia 5230 touchscreen. The video goes through the usual stuff i.e. showing the handset off, demonstrating a bit of web surfing, etc. Nothing really to write home about. The handset does come out looking a bit, well ‘incommodious’ and doesn’t really seem to make a splash. Of course matters aren’t helped by the frankly awful 80s soundtrack playing in the background.
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MetroPCS today began online sales of the Samsung Messager II (SCH-R560). Compared to the original Messager, the new model is sleeker, has a new QWERTY keyboard design, steps up to a 2 megapixel camera (from 1 megapixel) and adds video capture and EVDO high-speed data. MetroPCS is selling the Messager II for $149. The phone was first leaked two months ago on Samsung’s web site. A variant of the phone is already on sale in Canada as the Vice.

Vodafone has released its latest in mobile broadband, and major cities in the U.K like London, Birmingham and Liverpool will be among the first to receive the benefits. 14.4Mbps is in theory the peak rate, but customers can expect to see speeds varying from 1Mbps to 4 Mbps with a practical maximum speed of 10.8Mbps. Vodafone has also reported that 80% of its datacards/dongles and 3G handsets can take advantage of the new speed. We would rather trust user reports, so if you’re using their service, could you drop a comment?

Mobile coupons — usually text messages with discount codes sent to a cellphone — are becoming the blue-light specials for the digital age, reports The New York Times, promoting last-minute clothing sales, two-for-one entrees and cheap tickets to the theater.

“While some mobile coupons are sent directly from a retailer to a customer who has signed up for mobile updates, the other way for bargain-seekers to get up-to-the-minute deals is to subscribe to a mobile-coupon aggregator. At Web sites like 8coupons, Cellfire, Yowza and Zavers, users can sign up for different retailers’ promotions in one place. The opt-in model means subscribers get only offers they want to receive, making each one worth reading.”

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