AT&T landed another Nokia S60 device today, and some of its hardware reminds me of the old Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. The Nokia Surge is being touted as a “socially supercharged smartphone” probably due to the full, slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard and the squarish directional pad seem borrowed and matured from the N800 line to me. But don’t mistake this for an Internet tablet alone. It’s a full smartphone that’s 3G-capable as well. At only $79.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate, it’s not going to compete with Nokia’s E71x or other high-end smartphones, but it looks capable enough for someone stepping up from a feature-phone:

• Quad band GSM, dual-band WCMDA/HSDPA
• Symbian S60 platform, v3.2
• 128MB internal memory, 8GB expansion via microSD slot
• 2.4″ QVGA display with auto screen rotation
• Integrated GPS, Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR, with AD2P support
• 2 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom
• Full HTML browser with Flash support
• Email support with Mail for Exchange 2.9
• Support for AT&T services: Navigator, Mobile Music, VideoShare
• JuiceCaster is pre-loaded to share vids and pics from the phone to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr

For folks finding their feature phone not quite up to snuff for social networking, mail and browsing, the Surge looks like a nice entry point into the smartphone market for under $100. I don’t like the 2.5mm headphone jack, but I do appreciate the dedicated buttons on the front of the unit.

We’ve long felt that Wi-Fi is a must for smartphones, and while some of you disagree, Sprint’s on board. Fierce Wireless is reporting that the carrier will require Wi-Fi in their “PDA equipment,” which sounds like smartphones to me. Sprint is introducing RIM’s BlackBerry Tour this weekend, and like Verizon’s edition, it isn’t equipped with Wi-Fi. That will change next year as Sprint is reportedly planning a version of the Tour that includes a Wi-Fi radio.

Some dissenters in the past felt that their 3G radio is more than enough signal. Not to harp on a hot topic again today, but it’s in areas where carriers have those pesky bandwidth caps that Wi-Fi can be a huge lifesaver. Aside from gaining faster throughput, you’re not hitting your data cap when using a Wi-Fi network for voice, data, or media. Verizon hasn’t yet made the commitment to include Wi-Fi on every handset, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see them to follow suit at some point.

This may be another one of those U.S. challenges, so if any readers outside of our country can share the Wi-Fi handset landscape with us, please do.

Just when I thought I could give up on Fantasy Football, something has lured me back in. Honestly, it’s probably easier for me to just donate my $50 entry fee than actually spend time and effort playing the game. No, I’ll be hooked again and it’s all Pre Central’s fault. They were tipped off that Sprint’s NFL Mobile service hits the Palm Pre on August 1. A Sprint support page confirms the info: The NFL Mobile app is slated for over-the-air delivery to existing Palm Pre owners, while all new Pre handsets sold after that will have the software pre-loaded.

There shouldn’t be an extra charge based on the NFL Mobile product page, as the service should work with Sprint’s Simply Everything data plan. That’s good, since I’m already contributing to my local league, not to mention the time, effort and anguish invested in sad results on a weekly basis. How could I have had the No. 1 pick last year and blown it on an underperforming LaDainian Tomlinson? Ugh. In any case, I’ll be watching live NFL Network games, listening to game audio of other games and getting Red Zone alerts right on my handheld. Maybe that will offset the pain and misery of my poorly performing team?

Folks waiting for resolution higher than 1024 x 576 on an HP Mini 110 need wait no more. Portable Monkey peeped the $30 option on HP’s Home & Office product site that outfits your netbook with a 1366 x 768 matte display. The base Mini 110 with XP currently starts at $329, so a 10 percent premium for nearly 78 percent more pixels is a pretty solid deal.

Yes, I did the math, although I had to use a calculator since I ran out of fingers and toes. 1024 x 576 gives you 589,824 pixels, while a 1366 x 768 display yields 1,049,088 pixels. And of course, with more than 720 horizontal lines, the display option qualifies as high-definition. This option appears to be available only on with Microsoft Windows XP as the operating system, so HP Mobile Internet Editions need not apply.

I’d consider pairing the $30 Broadcom Video Acclerator option with this higher-quality display, although I believe it requires use of the included ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre software. Pity the Mini 110 doesn’t have an HDMI output. With video acceleration and optimized software, we could have piped HD video from HDMI to the big screen.

We’ve debated HTC’s headphone solution in the past, and while some don’t mind the mini-USB adapter often found on these handsets, it’s all about to change. MobileCrunch recently got this comment from an HTC representative:

“The vast majority of devices we launch after Hero will have a 3.5mm jack. Devices that we have already announced but that still come out after Hero will not necessarily be a part of this change.”

That news is music to many ears. I’d expect that the HTC mini-USB port won’t be going away on new devices, as it’s used for charging and moving data to a computer. But the inclusion of a standard headset jack means you won’t need that little mini-USB adapter to plug in your headphones. It’s not that the adapters are expensive, since we’ve seen them for as little as $5 in the past. HTC sometimes includes them as well. But adapters are just one more thing to carry or lose. And the current solution forces your headphones to be plugged into the bottom of the device. For some, that doesn’t matter, but I personally prefer a 3.5mm jack at the top of my device.

The Missing Sync has long been the way for smartphone owners to keep their data synchronized with their Macs. The program has been available for most smartphones and now can add the Palm Pre to the list of supported phones. Version 1.0 of the Missing Sync for the Pre has some interesting features that take advantage of the special Synergy technology on the Pre.

Synergy is the Pre’s ability to have PIM information shared among the various apps on the phone along with info from the web. Missing Sync provides synchronization of iCal, Entourage, Address Book, iTunes and iPhoto on the Mac with the Pre. Using Synergy the Pre will then present Mac Address Book contacts with Google and Facebook contacts pulled from the web. Mac iCal calendars also appear layered into the Pre calendar app.

Proximity syncing is supported with this version of Missing Sync as the program can be configured to automatically sync over Wi-Fi whenever the Pre is near the Mac. The ability to sync Safari bookmarks to the Pre is coming soon via a program update when available.

The Missing Sync for the Pre is $39.95 and can be found on the Missing Sync web site.

Amazon has lowered the Kindle 2 price from $359 to $299, as the company looks to push more of its small e-book readers out the door. The newest Kindle, the larger DX, remains priced at $489, and Amazon expects to start delivering them in three to five weeks. The Kindle 2 is shipping now.

Kindle books now count for a full 35 percent of Amazon’s book sales, which works out to about two Kindle books per device sold per month. It would appear that e-books are here to stay, given these huge sales numbers.

T-Mobile had their myTouch 3G press event this morning, at which it confirmed the launch of the next-generation Android phone in the U.S. The myTouch 3G is also known as the HTC Magic and is the successor to the original Android phone, the T-Mobile G1. T-Mobile is making the myTouch available for pre-order already for existing customers only with a guaranteed delivery date of August 5. The phone will cost $199 with signing of a 2-year contract.

HTC is producing some cool accessories for the myTouch, including a battery extender that plugs onto the bottom of the phone. There will also be a dock available for easy charging of the myTouch.

Image courtesy Gizmodo

The main surprise coming out of the press event was the T-Mobile statement that the very exciting HTC Hero Android phone with the HTC Sense interface will not be coming to the carrier. This phone is the first with HTC’s innovative new interface but it is not a “Google-branded” phone, which leads me to wonder if that’s why T-Mobile is not going to bring it to the U.S.

I haven’t been able to see the personal benefits of using an air mouse. Those are the wireless mice that move the cursor around the screen when you wave the mouse around in the air. I’m sure there are folks who find the air mouse to be the best thing since mice lost wires, but I’m not one of those. I do have to admit the Loop Pointer looks like a pretty nice implementation of the air mouse, though.

The Loop Pointer is basically a circle with buttons and a scroll wheel on the mouse. This looks like it could be a great mouse solution for Media Centers. It would also be a fantastic presentation pointer, I’ll bet. It’s expensive at $99, but some might find that reasonable.

(via TRFJ)

A Facebook app using the genuine Facebook API has been released for the Android platform. Babbler is a full app offering Facebook function to Android and comes in two versions: a free, ad-supported version and a paid app without ads. The paid version of Babbler is $1.49 in the Android Market. So what can you do with Babbler? From the Babbler web site:

• see your newsfeed and your friends’ walls
• comment & like wall posts
• change your status
• write on walls
• view friends’ profiles
• view events
• browse friends’ photo albums and tagged photos
• background notifications
• background photo/video uploads
• share link from Browser or Youtube
• share photo/video from Gallery
• new UI with tabs

Since Babbler is a native Android app using the Facebook API, you never have to enter your User ID or password into the Babbler app, it gets that from Facebook.