SlashGear Week In Review - Week 35 2009

Another week has come and gone leaving us with memories and a hoard of cool stories to throw your way for weekend reading in case you missed them over the week. An Asus 900HA netbook was hacked into a touchscreen slate on Monday and we really liked it. DIY gear is so cool, especially when it turns out this good. Monday also brought some details on the Blackberry Storm 2 piezo touchscreen tech. We really hope its better than the original Storm.

Best Buy tossed the Samsung Instinct HD online confirming its most important specs in the process. The phone will sport a 5MP camera that can play and record HD video along with Wi-Fi and lots of social networking. We found out early in the week that Apple's latest OS, Snow Leopard, will ship on August 28 for $29. Bill Gates should be ashamed.

Shuttle swiped some of the team form ECS a while back and it looks like the new employees are going to be working on a netbook for Shuttle. That is just what we need, another netbook on the market. Speaking of another netbook, Nokia whipped its new Booklet 3G out this week with a promise of 12 hours of run time per charge.

The Nokia N97 Mini was reviewed early on Tuesday and the verdict was the keyboard is horrible. That may as well be the kiss of death for the smartphone. Asus' new Eee Top nettop computers were confirmed as coming to the U.S. with the ET2002T and the ET2203T coming with some very nice features like NVIDIA Ion.

Nintendo filed a patent application on a new football controller this week that looks really weird. From the line art, it looks like you plug your remote and nunchuck into it. I wonder how long it will take for someone to put a football through their TV when this thing hits market. Sony let it slide this week that they are still losing money on the PS3 Slim from a hardware perspective. The motion controller spawned from Project Natal is due to hit market in 2010 as well.

Elecom unveiled a cool SSD this week that has 16GB of storage in a design so small it plugs directly into the internal SATA port on your mainboard. It looks like you have to give up any ports beside it though thanks to the fat drive. HIS launched a new HD 4890 iCooler x4 video card this week that is overclocked and has a unique cooling solution. I wondered if putting the heat back into the chassis would cause any issues for the other components of a computer using the card.

Corsair unveiled a new SSD with 256GB of storage called the X256 with seriously fast read and write speeds Tuesday. The SSD will support TRIM for Windows 7 reducing unneeded delete cycles to prolong the drives life. Samsung's Omnia 2 was spied on the Samsung mobile website sporting a Verizon logo. Details are scant, but we know it has a 3.7-inch screen with AMOLED tech.

Motorola announced that it will be holding an event on September 10. The event is expected to be the unveiling of the Sholes and Morrison handsets thanks to the Android drawn on the logo. Sony finally offered up a real competitor to the Kindle this week with the unveiling of its first 3G eReader with a 7-inch touchscreen at $399.

A rumor tipped up Wednesday that has the cheap, plastic MacBook getting an update and possibly a lower price tag. That would be a welcome addition to the Apple line. It's almost disgusting to see cool gadgets gutted and filmed for our enjoyment. The Sony PS3 Slim was torn down and snapped Wednesday and it was almost enough to make the gaming geeks cry.

I talked about the new PocketDock Wednesday that allows you to charge your iPod or iPhone with a plain USB cable rather than the Apple cord you typically use. It also has a 3.5mm output to connect to your home stereo. We also saw a new external Blu-ray player perfect for netbooks this week sporting both USB and eSATA interfaces. The power sipping optical drive gets all the juice it needs from the USB port.

Sirius XM unveiled the XM SkyDock for iPhone and iPod touch. The dock turns the iPhone into a touchscreen controller for satellite radio programming and keeps the phone charged up. The Super USB mobile phone charger showed up this week and charges all sorts of devices at once, it reminds me of a Swiss army octopus.

Thursday we showed off the official video of the slick new Nokia N900 along with its Maemo 5 operating system. This may be Nokia's best chance to fight RIM and Apple on even ground. We found out that Apple will be having an event on September 9 and while what they will be showing off is unknown, we suspect it's the iPod devices with cameras to go along with all those leaked shots of iPod cases.

Thursday Microsoft officially confirmed the rumored price cut on the Xbox 360 Elite. The console price dropped to $299 to combat the new PS3 Slim selling at the same price. The PS3 seems to be the better deal with the Blu-ray player in it to me. Navteq issued a study this week that claims using a GPS with traffic data can save drivers four days per year of sitting in traffic. That's four more days you can spend at the office.

I ran across an external laptop battery later in the week that promises to work with 10,000 different laptop models. The battery claims to be good for about three more hours of use. TiVo filed a lawsuit in an East Texas court against Verizon and AT&T over DVR patents. The court is that of the judge that ruled against Nintendo and other big companies in recent patent suits.

Sony unveiled several new DSLR cameras this week, all of which can store to SD and SDHC cards. The cameras are due in October with the most expensive one selling at $950. Logitech's new Squeezebox Touch was spotted running wild Friday with accessories showing up on the Logitech website. The thing looks a lot like the Harmony tablet style remotes to me.

Yet another iPhone blew up this week in France leaving the teenage boy using it with a headache that lasted about two days. I bet he had to replace his tightie whities too and just didn't mention that part. What's with all the European explosions? Altec Lansing brings back the 80's with a new style boom box called the MIX Boombox sporting all sorts of digital media docks and inputs. I could totally see the thing sighting beside a cardboard dance floor while dancers spin around on their heads.

The Nokia N900 went on pre-order in Germany and Italy Friday at 599 EUR. There is no word on pricing and launch date for other countries yet. We posted up reviews of the new Nokia E52 and E55 mobile phones Friday. We liked the E52 better than the E55.

Another week has come and gone and another week in review in the history books for your perusal. Till next week!