The Nokia N900 is still on a pre-order basis, but that’s apparently not an issue with Amazon as they’ve further lowered its price to just $479.99. This price is inclusive of a $50 mail-in rebate which previously stood at $560. We’re not sure why they decided to drop the price of the Nokia N900 by almost a $100 even before its released, but hey, this is definitely good news for interested buyers. As a quick refresher, the Nokia N900 comes with a 3.5-inch touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, a slide-out QWERTY keypad, and runs on the company’s latest Maemo 5 OS. So, will you be pre-ordering a Nokia N900 today or are you still hoping for further price cuts in the coming weeks?

[amazon via engadgetmobile]

With a decently-sized 3.7-inch touchscreen, 5-megapixel AF camera with dual-LED flash, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, a speedy Arm Cortex A8 processor running under the hood all packed in a slim 13.7mm thin body, the Motorola Droid strikes the right balance between style and function.

Sure, there will be comparisons made between this Android offering of Motorola and the iPhone, but one serious drawback to Apple’s mobile phone is its lack of a physical QWERTY keypad. The Droid has the best of both worlds, a touchscreen and QWERTY keypad, which makes it appealing to a more people. How about BlackBerry phones then? RIM smartphones have been the top choice of business folk, but with the company still banking on an aging BlackBerry OS, the Android platform is definitely the way of the future. Google, in general, is a very aggressive company and they’re certainly not resting on their laurels with Android churning out updates one after the other as they try to perfect their mobile OS offering. Apart from being an open OS, this dedication is what makes Android extra special and appealing to consumers.

Bundled Android with the perfect hardware combination, then you’ve got one heck of a phone, and that’s exactly what the Motorola Droid is. Of course, this just my opinion so how about you guys? Which phone do you think deserves the best smartphone recognition for 2009?

[via engadgetmobile]

It doesn’t come with a 12-megapixel camera but surely won’t disappoint with its 8.1-megapixel camera, 3.5-inch AMOLED touchscreen, and 720p video recording and playback. The Kurara also features a Cortex A8 processor (yup, that’s the same type of processor that can be found on the Nokia N900, Zune HD, Motorola Droid, and the iPhone 3G S) complemented by 256MB RAM and a PowerVR graphics chip. We’re not too sure though how well the PowerVR stacks up against the Nvidia Tegra, but as far as the S60 interface is concerned, its pretty speedy on this baby.

It’s expected to hit Europe in the latter part of February for €500 or $745 in US currency excluding tax and carrier subsidies. It’s pricey alright, but hey, if it lives up to expectation, I’m sure people wouldn’t mind paying that amount for the Kurara.

[via engadget]

Given that the BlackBerry Strom 2 hands-on experience of Engadget wasn’t as positive as we hoped it to would be, don’t set your expectations too high with RIM’s latest touchscreen offering. Nonetheless, it’s hard to dispute that its still better than their first release. Sans any contract, its retailing for $599.99, but the good thing here is that if you get it bundled with a 3-year contract, it drops down to a more reasonable $199.99. Current BlackBerry Storm owners probably won’t be in a hurry to upgrade to this new phone as it’s basically just a minor upgrade to the original Storm, but for you first time Canadian RIM switchers out there, is the Storm 2 and its price good enough to meet your expectations?

Incidentally, the iPhone 3G S is now also being offered by Telus in Canada so it would be interesting to see which one is a better sell for the Canadian carrier.

[telus via bgr]

The Nokia N900 has a 3.5-inch touchscreen, the famed Maeomo browser, 32GB of internal storage, WiFi. GPS and a slideout QWERTY.

[via engadget, phoyo from amazon]

Techcrunch is saying that the Google Phone will be more exciting than the Motorola Droid and even the following super Android phones that will come–Droid and the HTC Dragon will serve as a warm up to–how do we say, The One?

Google will not instantly go to manufacturing–the phone will be made by a big mobile company, perhaps Motorola again? Google is said to be in total control, though, as far as design and specs, and the phone will not carry any other brand but Google’s. The manufacturer could be Taiwanese or Korean, but the safe bet goes to either LG or Samsung. The Google Phone will be backed up by a major advertising drive. It’s going to be Apple vs Google after today and in the foreseeable future, and Google will have another solid source of revenue, besides their Adwords.

[source]

Many users and reviewers have noticed (duh) that the Motorola Droid’s camera autofocus feature isn’t working properly. It just snaps out all of a sudden. Now, all of a sudden, the problem is gone. The crazy thing is, they must’ve sneaked in a bug fix. People are getting paranoid, except that maybe there’s no bug fix at all and the camera autofocus, well… it self-healed.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the case as Dan Morrill of Google explained that it’s a timestamp issue on the Motorola smartphone’s autofocus routine and the problem will be back in the next cycle of 24.5 days. That’s how it long for the Droid’d autofocus to completely heal and it will remain healed until the next 24.5 days.More about the Motorola Droid autofocus problem at the link below.

[via mobilecrunch]

The Sony Ericsson online shop in the UK has just put up a pre-order page for the XPERIA X10, and lists it as launching in February 2010.This is the most specific launch date we’ve got at the moment which could also mean that it will be released around the same time as well elsewhere (cross your fingers guys). Aside from running on Android, the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 also boasts of a 4-inch touchscreen, 8.1-megapixel AF camera, 1GHz Snapdragon processor, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and features their new UX interface, Mediascape, and Timescape apps that helps set this baby apart from the rest of the Android pack.

[sony ericsson shop uk via engadget]

SciPhone brings us one of the first Android dual-SIM phones available at the moment. (For a real quick unboxing video in French, scroll to the end of this post.) The SciPhone N21 has been available for a month now but we have yet to come across a video of the Android-based SciPhone. Beareyes, has an unboxing going on in their site. Oddly, Engadget’s logo makes a cameo (anyone know for what strange reason a test unit meant for Engadget ended up at this Chinese site, leave a comment below) on the packaging of this popular iPhone clone. SciPhone is one of the better-selling iPhone clones, though recently they have been gearing toward a more non-iPhone look, so adopting the Android OS shouldn’t be taken as a simple economic decision–SciPhone wants to strike out on its own.

SciPhone N21 uses a 624MHz of the Marvell PXA310 processor. It has a 3-inch touchscreen LCD, 5 MP camera, accelerometer, WiFi, Bluetooth and , of course, the dual-SIM slot.

Update: the official unboxing above was originally published by Engadget Chinese. They have more photos at the link.

The French unboxing of the SciPhone N21:

[source]