More reviews of the Americanized N95 are rolling in, with Wirelessinfo taking a looksie at the 3G version. The quick-and-dirty takeaway is that the double dose of RAM makes things much snappier, even with lots of memory-intensive apps running—the available RAM’s actually quadrupled, since the OS takes up the same amount as before.

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The recently announced HTC S730 was a much needed upgrade to HTC’s Vox. Some quick updates to the device include UMTS/HSDPA, a 400MHz processor, refined QWERTY keyboard, front-facing camera, and a couple other tweaks here and there. We liked the HTC Vox at first, but we soon found out the QWERTY keyboard was nearly unusable and the handset was a little but underpowered. How did the HTC S730 do? We would have liked it to shine, but for us, the keyboard was extremely difficult to type on, better, but not quite there yet. Device speed though was fine. Nothing really got slow of lagged down, even with a multitude of applications running concurrently. While we’re on that subject, we’ll let you know the S730 has 64MB of ROM, and 128MB of RAM, so you shouldn’t feel at all slowed down. Think of it as the baby brother to the HTC TyTN II — smaller, sort of similar specs, etc. We’re going to leave the decision making up to you, though. If you think you’re interested in the HTC S730, be all means hit our gallery below!

Click on over to our HTC S730 Unboxing gallery!

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No, it doesn’t have the amount of hype and speculation an iPhone did before its release, but we don’t think there has even been this much anticipation for a BlackBerry, ever. The hidden-in-a-dark-secret-underground-lab BlackBerry 9xxx has sent out a couple distress calls to us, pleading to let people know it’s coming and what it should have in store for the incredibly faithful and addicted BlackBerry users. First off, 3G. It most certainly will have a 3G radio and we’re not talking about the European bands. (The actual 3G bands are not yet clear, but we can only assume North American 3G is a go.) Second, this isn’t your momma’s 3G, this is going to be HSDPA. Forget the Wi-Fi scam, this is real speed with simultaneous voice and data! That isn’t the best part, though…we’ve been told it will rock a 600MHz processor! Finally. We shouldn’t have those necessary and annoying lag times when performing basic tasks, and there should be a drastic reduction of the bottleneck for Internet speeds on the device. What we reported ages ago still seems to be spot on — RIM is actively looking at integrating a Backup/Restore function to facilitate transferring your entire backup to an on board memory card. We’re trying to lock down a solid release date at this point in time, but if we had to guess, we won’t see it this year. Most likely early ‘08. You’ve got our address, RIM. Shoot one over, OK?

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Verizon isn’t kidding around this fall, with four new fashionable phones, a couple of which might divert a few iPhone dollars from archrival AT&T. It’s those exact four that Engadget Mobile got the scoop on last weekend, the Juke, Pearl, Venus and Voyager. A few of the details have changed, but the basic gist is the same. The Samsung Juke is the first “flick” phone to hit the States, and arrives with 2GB of built-in storage, A2DP (which shows up in all these phones) and a VGA camera, and comes in blue, red or teal. Verizon’s BlackBerry Pearl is the first Pearl to get EV-DO and a 3.5mm minijack, and also adds Verizon’s VZ Navigator service, which is standard across these phones. The Venus slider sports an interesting dual screen setup, with the bottom providing contextual touch controls and the top one acting like all normal-like. Venus, with black or pink color options, is the real fashionphone of the group, and rocks a boring 2 megapixel sensor, but there’s a microSD slot for up to 8GB of expansion. Finally, the Voyager (pictured) does it all, with a full screen touchscreen on the outside, and a second screen on the clamshell interior, facing a gargantuan QWERTY keyboard. V CAST Mobile TV makes an appearance, as does a microSD slot and 2 megapixel camera. All of these phones are supposed to be out by Thanksgiving, but no word on price or exact dates — though the Juke and Pearl are hitting first, to be followed by the Venus and then the Voyager.

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We got to spend a little alone time with each of Verizon’s new phones for the holidays, and we found plenty to like. We started out with the Samsung Juke, which is meant as an entry level music device. There’s no EV-DO on board, and therefore no V CAST Music Store, but as a “phone that happens to be a low-end 2GB DAP,” it should do just nicely, and A2DP is always nice. We could go for a stronger spring action flick motion, and when open the phone seems quite awkwardly long, but it’s all solid and usable enough.

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The next-generation Zune has just been announced, coming at you with a price tag (which we already saw) of $249 for the 80GB hard drive model and $149/$199 for the 4GB and 8GB flash-based models respectively. The new features in all models, which were leaked early, are wireless syncing with your computer automatically when you’re in Wi-Fi range—something users have been clamoring for since even before the first Zune—as well as videos in the Zune Marketplace and new music, some of which are DRM-free. The Zune Pad is actually touch sensitive, much like the iPod’s Click Wheel.

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Our main man Ed Colligan is on the scene once again, this time giving some serious lip service to investors on the future of Palm and its “upcoming” new OS. According to reports, Ed informed the the crew of dudes and dudettes (via the company’s Q1 FY08 conference call) that the Centro systems team and Foleo engineers are “totally focused” on delivering the Linux-based OS (Palm’s in-house work, not ACCESS’s ALP), and announced that it will be available by the end of the next calendar year. Fleshing out his bold statements, Colligan noted that the new platform will retain the ease of use and developer support of the badly ailing current Palm OS, and that it will enable the company to deliver the UI across various products, including Foleo-like devices. The Palm honcho went on to say that development has gone, “As well as possibly could be expected,” and added that the company has no plans to hand over the smartphone market to anyone else, telling investors that its next generation of products will be “revolutionary device types.” Just like Fox Mulder, we want to believe — but it’s going to take a lot more than honeyed words to hold our interest, Ed. Hey — feel free to invite us over to the pad for some hands-on.

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That was quick. Just a few hours after peeping their S730 in the wild, HTC has upped and made it official. They also pushed out the P6500 enterprise phone to keep it safe and feeling protected. The S730 is just what we heard: 400MHz Qualcomm processor, “worldwide 3G,” HSDPA data, WiFi (of course), auto-sliding QWERTY, and Windows Mobile 6 with 256MB of flash memory. The 3G/HSDPA P6500 then, targets vertical sectors including logistics companies, hospitals and the police by combining Windows Mobile 6 Professional with a 3.5-inch screen, 3 megapixel autofocus camera, barcode and fingerprint scanning capabilities, GPS, and 2x SDIO slots for additional memory or accessories. It even boasts a remote-wipe capability to keep all your dirty little conspiracies under wraps where they belong. The S730 hits Europe in October while the P6500 is set to pop in November. Again, no pricing.

Read — S730
Read — P6500

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