Good Stuff

Samsung and Sprint have just introduced the MM-A900, a new handset designed to go head to head with the ultra-popular RAZR from Motorola (it’s codename is “Blade”). This device is much cooler looking than just about anything I’ve seen from Samsung. Perhaps that’s because the took a RAZR, tweaked it a little bit, and called it good.

Motorola’s RAZR phone has been wildly successful. Some say that without it, Motorola would have gone quietly into the halls of the has-been. According to The NPD Group, Motorola sold 30% of the 31.6 million handsets sold in Q3 of 2005. They turned a profit of $1.75 billion dollars that quarter, on revenue of $9.42 billion.

Last week, RIM and Verizon Wireless released the BlackBerry 7130e smartphone. This is their first device to take advantage of Verizon’s new EV-DO high speed wireless network. Verizon claims EV-DO will deliver download speeds between 400 and 700kbps.

Nokia has confirmed that they will be halting production of their N-Gage gaming phone until at least the beginning of 2007. Sales of the device have been quite disappointing. Nokia predicted it would sell 6 million N-Gages over the last three years. Alas, it only managed to move about a third of that.

The Creative Zen Micro Photo is another extremely portable digital music player, designed to compete with the likes of the iPod Nano. While it doesn’t quite have the cool factor of the Nano, it’s still a pretty good looking device.

Just in case you didn’t get your shiny new XBox 360 yesterday morning at 12:01 AM, you now have a second chance. For a mere $1000 or so (less if you’re lucky), you can have one on eBay.

On sale this Friday, the 25th, the magenta Motorola RAZR from T-Mobile. That should be hard to miss. The cost will be $249 with a one year contract.

The Sony Ericsson W800i is more than just a cell phone that can play MP3s. This is a phone that was designed from the beginning to be a digital music player. The W800i ships with a 512MB Memory Stick PRO Duo, which will hold about 125 songs, or more if you don’t mind decreasing the audio quality.

If you can live with being different (i.e. not using an iPod), the iRiver T10 is a good looking option. It will also play Microsoft WMA files, making it a good choice if you use MSN Music instead of iTunes. It’s not as teeny as the Nano, and doesn’t hold as much music, but it’s fairly inexpensive compared to the Apple alternatives.

The Canon Powershot S2 IS is a very slick looking 5MP digital camera. Of course the most obvious feature is the 12x optical zoom lens with image stabilization. If you’ve ever tried shooting with a camera with a good optical zoom lens, you’ll never want to go back. The quality of shots you’ll get is just leagues above anything you’d get with a smaller point and shoot using digital zoom.