Gearfuse

Many Blackberry users have been holding out on the iPhone because of the device’s lack of a real feel keyboard. The iTwinge adds an actual tactile keyboard to the phone, while making it look uglier than any Blackberry ever released.

Big thumbs got you down? The touchscreen of the iPhone has caused some serious issues for some users who have larger than average fingers. I’ve never had much of a problem thanks to the phone’s auto-correct feature, but I’ve heard that large thumbed users have trouble pressing letters on the touch keyboard, their plump digits leading to double button presses and incorrect letters. iTwinge slips right onto the bottom of the iPhone and seamlessly adds a tactile touch to the device for around $30.

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Rumors of an upcoming Samsung phone running Google’s Android OS were abound throughout the first quarter of this year. Now Samsung has laid those to rest and announced the I7500, an Android-powered phone that will drop in Europe this June and has already landed in Korea. What can it do? Aside from all your basic media playback bullshit (MP3, videos, etc.), it comes with a 3.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen, GPS, WiFi and 8GB of internal memory. The camera is 5-megapixels, but that doesn’t mean shit unless it has a decent lens and CMOS sensor.

HSDPA-capable and equipped with Bluetooth 2.0, the I7500 is going to be the first Google device that people will actually want. For now, we’ll have to wait around and see if AT&T gets it sometime this year.

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Take this one with a grain of salt considering how away September is, but according to SlashGear, RIM is working on a new version of the Storm for Verizon. The touchscreen device will finally get WiFi in addition to fixes that will fix issues that plagued the original Storm. Obviously, Blackberry App World will be included but that’s about the extent of the details right now. I’m going to assume that RIM will take the opinions of first-time Storm consumers and put them to good use when designing the next-gen Storm.

Or at least we’ll pray that’s what’s going to happen.

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OK, the first part might be total wishful thinking, but the touchscreen mirror part is definitly on the upcoming wave of the future. The Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems unveiled their touchscreen mirror system at the Cebit IT trade show this week, and let me tell you, it’s totally going to change the way you brush your teeth and trim your balls.

While the technology behind the mirror’s creation isn’t what you would call “new” or even “new-ish,” the system is still pretty cool sounding. Are you tired of having to remind Grandpa to wash his dentures? That’s the way of the past. In the future, your mirror will remind all of the elders in your life to wipe their own asses and maybe, if we could be so lucky, will guide them through changing their own damn diapers. I mean, really, what could they have possibly eaten?

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Forget netbooks. Displays and portability are both overrated. You need peripherals with entire PCs shoved into them and you need them now, hungry man. Lucky for you, ASUS had just enough time to whip up a keyboard with a whole goddamned computer shoved inside it. Standard 1.6Ghz Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, etc. Not a powerhouse, but hey, it’ll do.

The kicker is that the Eee PC Keyboard has a small five-inch touchscreen you can use in conjunction with an external display. It even has HDMI out! Wow! I hope you’re as wet as I am, ’cause I’m ready to drop the $400 on this bad boy.

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Can people actually afford such extravagant luxury during our current economic crisis? Bang & Olufsen seems to think so and is rolling out its new BeoSound 5 luxury audio system today across North America. For the exorbitant price tag of $5900, you get the base system, which will no doubt require additional purchases to make the most out of the unit.

But luxury you will get. A 10.4-inch touchscreen lets you browse your music and create special playlists based on your music collection’s beats and dynamics, similar to iTunes’ Genius feature. There’s also a 500GB hard drive for your tracks, which should be plenty of room. Look for the BeoSound 5 at your nearest upscale mall.

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My goodness! Palm has made a triumphant return to the industry by announcing a phone that will compete with Apple’s iPhone. It’s called the Pre and it features a 3.1-inch touchscreen, 8GB of onboard storage, a 3MP camera, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth and an operating system that relies on web apps. In fact, Palm claims that developers who know HTML, CSS and JavaScript will be able to easily build apps for the Pre. I wonder how Apple is feeling right now. A bit concerned, I’d imagine.

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Vince stumbled upon this DIY kit while searching Google for Voltron wallpaper. This do-it-yourself touchscreen kit is available on eBay and said to work with both the Acer Aspire One and Asus Eee PC 900/901.

You can buy it now for $95.95 coupled with a $25 dollar shipping fee. There’s no soldering required and it comes with drivers to support Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Touchscreen Minesweeper? Count me in.

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The team at PhoneWreck has gone and done something that no other Verizon Wireless subscriber dare not do: dissect the Blackberry Storm bit by bit. Head on over for the full review to find out what that crazy new “clickscreen” looks like under the hood. From what I can gather, it looks like the screen uses a single button to recognize typing movements. And take a look at that huge stepper motor for vibration functions; it’s huge! Anyone who likes getting inside popular electronics should most definitely view the Storm from the inside out.

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One part iMac and one part Eee PC, the Eee Top is a touchscreen PC with a 15.6-inch display that will retail next year. It features a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM and 160GB of storage. Six USB ports, WiFi, a card reader and a built-in webcam top it off, making it quite the impressive PC. Knowing Asus, it’ll be sold for a relatively inexpensive price. One of the last PCs being sold with Windows XP, I can see demand for the Eee Top come its release next year.

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