I just spent some time with the new iPod nano... needless to say that it is super light and thin (that’s not new). The camera is oddly placed on the bottom of the device where your fingers would tend to be. That said, it's easy enough to hold it rotated at 90 degrees and use the widescreen or take the less intuitive approach of holding it on both sides to snap a movie. The video quality and frame rate seemed OK, although I did spot some motion blur here and there. It's too hard to tell on the tiny display We'll have to look at it on a computer… and on YouTube.

By now, there's no need to introduce the iPhone 3GS: if you're looking at this review, chances are that you are just wondering how it feels and if you should jump on the wagon and get one. However, you want to know if everything that you would be enjoying on the 3GS is worth the price that the device and plan cost. Also, what are the alternatives out there? In this iPhone 3GS review, I will tell you how the iPhone has been working for me in the past month and you will hopefully be able to extrapolate from my experience what yours will be. The review is slightly aimed at those of you who don't have an iPhone yet, but if you do have one and want to upgrade to the 3GS, you might want to read this.

By Sean Captain - Samsung introduced two radical new cameras today with nary a word about traditional specs, such as megapixels and zoom lenses. Instead, the story was about features that make it easier to take and share pictures.

"In the age of connected lifestyle, a company cannot get by with selling a box that simply takes pictures," said the company's U.S. co-president, Tim Baxter, before showing off the new models.

Self Portraits

First up was the Samsung TL225 "Dual View" camera, which sports a 1.5-inch LCD on the front so that you can frame self-portrait photos. (And the zoom lens that starts at a wide 27mm will allow you to get a few friends in the picture, too.) The screen also displays a "3-2-1" countdown when you use the timer function, and it even shows animations to capture the attention or babies so they will look at the camera.

By Sean Captain – In a room paneled with old-growth wood at Manhattan’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Sprint and Samsung today announced the latest move in each company’s green efforts, the Samsung Reclaim -- an eco-oriented quasi smartphone.

Samsung reduced the eco footprint of Reclaim in several ways. Forty percent of the phone – mainly the back portion, is made of “bioplastic” derived from corn instead of petroleum, and it eliminated some environmentally suspect substances, such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Samsung also says that 80 percent of the materials in the phone itself can be recycled. And Reclaim cuts energy use with a new charger that, per Sprint, is 12 times more power-efficient than EPA’s Energy Star program requires. The charger has a light that alerts you when the battery has been filled and you can unplug it. (Of course, you can do this with many phones just by checking the charge icon on the screen.)

Feature wise, the Reclaim is a cousin to Samsung’s Exclaim model. Though not true smartphones (their apps run on BREW and JAVA rather than a full OS), both offer rudimentary Web browsing (via an EV-DO, Rev B 3G connection – alas, with no Wi-Fi option), email, Sprint’s GPS navigation, and access to social networking sites Facebook and Myspace.

We got our BlackBerry Curve 8520 and it is time to unpack it: In the box, you will find the usual things: phone+SIM+battery+charger+earplugs+USB cable+manual and CD. Upon picking up the BlackBerry 8520, we immediately noticed how light it is (106g or 3.74oz). My BB 8900 weighs 111g, The MyTouch 3G weighs 117g and the iPhone 3GS weighs 135g (all with battery).

Upon booting, you will find the newer user interface introduced with the BlackBerry bold, although running at a lower resolution (320x240). The user interface is OK, but reading text or webpages is definitely not as nice when compared to a Bold, 8900 or more recent BlackBerry phones.

The trackball present in the 8320 has been replaced with a trackpad. I guess that it is more durable and possible less expensive to integrate. I thought that it was ok, although I still prefer the trackball to navigate the icons but I bet that scrolling a page in the web browser is better with the trackpad. It might just be because I got used to it.

My head hertz, trying to understand all this tech

By Sean Captain - We'd been planning for a while to see LG's LCD TVs at the new Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, Manhattan tonight. Then we got a surprise invite to see an LCD from their compatriots and rivals, Samsung, the same day. So here's our overview of the new Korean TV landscape.

In some ways, LG is playing catch-up to Samsung. With their new SL90, LG steps into the LED edge-lit TV world, and shrinks the set to just 1.15 inches thick--beating Samsung by a whole 0.05 inches! The SL90 seems to embody the "seamless, borderless" design move that LG execs mentioned a few times at the reception. While the screen does have a slight bezel, it's virtually a monolithic sheet of glossy electronics. Inside, it packs a processor that doubles the frame rate to 120 per second (or 120 hertz). That automatically eliminates the stuttering look of film transferred to video and can also smooth out motion blur if you engage a feature that generates extra video frames between the originals.

By Sean Captain – True to its name, online video service Vudu seems to have found some magic to do what had long seemed impossible—stream Blu-ray-esque video to TVs. Embedded in four new LG models (with more coming) the video app plays in real time, with no hard drive or flash memory to store up even a few minutes as a cushion against clogged-up networks. And while you won't get the full experience on bargain-basement DSL, even a decent cable broadband connection appears to be enough.

Those with long memories (like two years) will recall Vudu as a pioneer, introducing in 2007 the first Internet set-top box with good performance and good content. Having pre-loaded the first few minutes of every title on it hard drive, Vudu could start playing movies and TV shows instantly, in standard definition. But as quality went up, so did the wait time—running to several hours to download 1080p movies in a format the company calls "HDX."

By Sean Captain – LG is very enVious these days. (Sorry, couldn't resist that one.) Along with a new touchscreen version of its dual-screen flip phone, the company introduced an upgrade of the classic design. The new enV3 opens up to provide a larger screen, at 2.6 inches with a higher resolution of 320 by 240 pixels. On the outside, a four-way touchpad replaces the old up and down arrows, allowing you to control more functions--such as selecting music playback--without opening the phone.

By Sean Captain – Several years on, LG's special twist on the clamshell phone is still going strong. As always, messaging fiends can fold the latest enV open to reveal a roomy keypad and now enjoy a large (three-inch) internal screen with a generous 800-by-480-pixel resolution. The phone now sports an equally spacious screen on the outside. In place of a keypad and mini LCD, this enV has a roomy full-frontal screen with – you guessed it – a touch interface. Unfortunately, it's the cheapo resistive-type that requires more of a firm press than a true iPhone- or Palm Pre-style touch.

The Nokia N97 is the tip of the spear in Nokia's smartphone lineup. It is the most powerful, smartest and fully featured phone of the company. It is also the first Nokia phone to make use of a large touch-display and that alone has raised the expectations from die hard Nokia fans that have refused to switch over to the iPhone. And Nokia has put quite a lot of work and thought in the N97. I had a first look when Nokia was still developing the N97 and I was looking forward to get my hands on the final product. In this review, I will tell you how I used it, and how well it did. Does the Nokia N97 live up to the hype?

JBL partnered with Roxy to launch these headphones a month ago and I have tested them for a few days. I like the bright and fun design that for sure is appealing to the young generation and might be targeted to the female audience, given the color palette (pink and orange) and the picture on the product page, however there is also a green and blue version, for the boys who do not dare to wear pink. The product comes with a cool looking pouch ornamented with bright colored drawings (see gallery), I like the subtle organic design that "grows" on the headband as well.

Now that we've spent some quality time with the mBook, including a live blogging field trip, let's go over the pro and cons of using one of the smallest PCs out there. First, I would like to share the context: during a discussion with Intel, we were asked how we would use this MID and what kind of problem we could put it to work for. We thought that it would be useful to have a tiny computer during an expo so that we can go from booth to booth and post immediately. Intel loaned the mBook to us and we set out to try posting live from their Search Day and see how the mBook performs. The computer was subsequently returned to Intel.

As you can imagine, using such a tiny computer isn't without challenges, that's why the Mobile Internet Device (MID) category is still in "soul search" mode. The bottom-line is: it worked well for us, but we had to adapt our workflow to it.

I just got a Umid mBook, a mobile internet device (MID) powered by an Atom processor. Out of the box, it runs Windows XP Home, but I might try to install Windows 7 which is more finger-friendly (kind of). At the moment, I have turned the unit on and inspected the physical aspect of the mBook.

We've played with it before (CES, and elsewhere) but it is still amazing to see Win XP (or Linux) run on a device that is so small and light (330g/11.6oz). Right now, the battery is charging and we will see how long it can hold. The trick with these devices is to find what they can do for you, given their small size – I mean other than being very cool! It's a good example of limitations mainly induced by "us" (humans) - our eyes can see only so much and our fingers aren't getting smaller - if anything, the latest stats show that we’re getting bigger… This costs $599.

By Sean Captain

Publisher's note: unlike the older Palm Pre mini Review, this post was written with the final retail version of the Palm Pre.

Remember the old "Don't call it a phone" ads for wireless company Helio? I was reminded of the "don't call it" imperative when I first laid my fingers on the new Palm Pre from Sprint this evening. Everyone wants to know how it compares to Apple's iconic handheld. Is it an iPhone killer?

No, it's not. And that's not a bad thing. It's simply different. Despite having a capacitive touchscreen, snappy animations and even many of the same designers (defects from Apple's iPhone team), the Pre is a very different device.