Kensington PowerBack iPad Case adds 5 hours of Battery Life and Kickstand

Today Kensington announced a selection of new iPad accessories including the Kensington PowerBack iPad case which includes a battery promising up to 5 extra hours of power and a kickstand that provides three different angles for working on your iPad. Additionally the company announced the Kensington Wall Pack Duo Charger and PowerBolt Duo Charger which offer in home and in-car charging of two iDevices such as an iPad and an iPhone.

The PowerBack iPad case slides onto the iPad and comes with a 4400 mAh battery with up to 5 hours of life. The case allows users to charge the iPad by Micro USB without removing the iPad from the case. The PowerBack’s Steel kickstand allows users to position the iPad in typing, portrait or landscape mode without holding the iPad.

The case has an LED battery life indicator and an opening to direct the speaker’s sound to you. The PowerBack iPad case is available for preorder from Amazon with a retail price of $129.99. (additional images at the bottom of the post.) Be warned, the extra battery life comes with a pound of added weight.

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Nokia debuts trio of Symbian 3 phones

The trio joins the previously announced Nokia N8 in running the revamped Symbian 3 platform, which includes more than 250 new features and improvements, such as a simplified user interface, enhanced multimedia features, and more customization abilities. According to Nokia, the devices will also offer a richer Ovi Store experience with promises of more popular and unique apps and a more user-friendly interface.

As for the devices itself, there's a little something for everyone, both in design and price. Specific release dates were not announced at this time, but all three are expected to ship before the end of the year. Here's a breakdown of each model.

Nokia E7: The E7 was designed with the business user in mind and features a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and 4-inch, polarized AMOLED touch screen with ClearBack technology--perfect for working on office documents and e-mail, Nokia says. We're looking forward to checking out the ClearBack display, as it claims to improve outdoor visiblity. The smartphone offers Exchange ActiveSync support, as well as a 3G support, an 8-megapixel camera with a dual LED flash and HD video capture, and free navigation via Ovi Maps. The E7 will be available in five different colors--gray, green, white, blue, and orange--and will retail for around 495 Euros ($636 U.S.).

Nokia C7: For the social butterfly, there's the Nokia C7. The smartphone has a 3.5-inch AMOLED, glass touch screen with multiple home screens that can be customized with live updates from your social networking accounts, including Facebook and Twitter. The handset also comes with an 8-megapixel camera, Bluetooth 3.0, and 8GB of mass memory. The C7 has an estimated unlocked price of 335 Euros ($430 U.S.).

Nokia C6-01: Last but not least, the more budget-friendly (260 Euros; $334 U.S.) C6 packs social networking and multimedia into a small package. It has a stainless steel and glass design with a 3.2-inch AMOLED, ClearBack display, and comes with the same camera as the other two, a front-facing camera, and support for Ovi Music (not available in the U.S. yet), among other things.

Overall, quite a promising lineup from Nokia but it remains to be seen if any will be picked up by a U.S. carrier. What do you guys think of the devices?

Via : cnet.com

Nokia makes E7 QWERTY slider official: 'beautiful and all business' (update: specs)

Nokia's just unveiled its aluminum-clad E7 QWERTY slider handset. One of the new family of Symbian^3 devices, it has a 4-inch tilting touchscreen display on the front and an 8 megapixel imager capable of 720p video on the back. Yummy. It's said to be the best business device Nokia, or anyone else, has ever produced and comes with the touted ability to create PowerPoint slides on the go. The E7 also features Nokia's new ClearBlack Display sorcery and is expected to ship before the end of the year in exchange for €495 (before taxes and subsidies). You'll find the full press release after the break.

Update: By now you'll have noticed that the E7 and N8 are almost identical outside of the E7's 4-inch display and slightly bigger chassis required to host it. There are a few other differences, though. For example, The 12.9mm-thin N8 has an FM transmitter and 2mm charging connector unlike the slightly thicker 13.6mm E7. The E7's bigger display also trims back the reported talk time to 540 minutes (the N8 does 720 minutes).

Of course, as part of the business focused E-series, the E7 also features a healthy set of preloaded apps including Mail for Exchange (with MS Outlook sync of contacts, calendar, and notes and multiple calendars with meeting request support), IBM Lotus Notes Traveler, Quickoffice dynamic premium, Adobe PDF reader, and F-Secure Anti-theft. The N8 counters with the better camera and stereo mic, thanks to a big 1/1.83-inch 12 megapixel sensor and Xenon flash that require some extra girth on the backend. Oh, and no MicroSD slot on the E7 -- you get 16GB and that's it.

Via : engadget.com

BlackBerry Curve 3G launching on Verizon for $30

We would've never figured on Verizon carrying over the "Curve 3G" name from this phone's GSM counterpart, considering all of its older Curve models have already had EV-DO -- but branding consistency trumps logic in this case, we suppose. Given what we know about the GSM model, you can probably guess the specs: 2 megapixel cam and BlackBerry OS 5 with upgradeability to 6 are both in the cards, though interestingly, Verizon's official specs just list 802.11b/g for WiFi -- there's no mention of 802.11n, which the current Curve 3G has under the hood.

Regardless, perhaps the best feature is the price: $29.99 on contract after a $100 rebate, making it one of the most affordable brand new smartphones on the market -- assuming BlackBerry OS is your cup of tea, of course. It'll launch in business sales channels this Thursday, while in-store availability for us lay folk follows "in the coming weeks." Follow the break for the full press release.

Via : engadget