We all need to reserve judgment until we actually have one in our hands, but we have to admit — the Samsung Glyde for Verizon sure seems to get more beautiful every time we get new shots of it. These particular shots, of course, are designed to be especially beautiful since they’re stock photos to be used for press and promotion. Are you really here to hear us blab about ‘em, though? Heck no, you aren’t! Go ahead, get a little clicky down below for the full gallery.

So we’ve had a SanDisk Sansa Fuze hanging around the office for a few days and already we can tell you that fans of the Sansa line will find it a welcome addition to the line. The interface feels pretty snappy and it’s got some of the geeky things you’re after (FM radio, microSDHC), a solid 1.9-inch display, and a price $70 cheaper than the nano at the 8GB level. Plus, we know it sounds old school, but we’re really into the tactile click wheel, and the Fuze has the best one we’ve used in a long time. Check out the photos below, including a couple side by sides with a you-know-what.

If the original Rainbow Six Vegas felt like the first night of a trip to Sin City, its recently released sequel feels like the second; a little worn, but still a lot of fun. There’s still a casino’s worth of content and the best gameplay this side of Caesar’s Palace. Plus, the introduction of a sprint button not only increases your speed, but also quickens the pace of the entire game. On the other hand, the cooperative play has been pared down a little and the expanded experience gains are about as glamorous as pillow mints–even if you are grateful for them. A third night of this might be too much to handle, but if you like to place bets with bullets at all, you’ll definitely want to put some money down on Rainbow Six Vegas 2.

Despite the name Tom Clancy in the title, the Rainbow Six games are hardly known for their ace storytelling skills. Having said that, the way the original Vegas ended on such a terrible cliffhanger ending, when all it really had to do was give you a reason to kick some terrorist butt, was especially disappointing. Fortunately, the campaign in Vegas 2 makes no such errors. You no longer play as Logan Keller. Instead, you hunt terror and save hostages as a custom character referred to as Bishop in the campaign. Although the specifics of the overarching story are pretty easy to lose track of, one thing is clear: There are terrorists and you have to get them before they get Vegas. However, there are a couple of great scenes in the campaign. For example, there is one where you’re supposed to meet up with a guy to find chemical weapons, only the terrorists meet up with him first. Because he’s wearing a communication device, you can hear the proceedings as you make your way through the level. First, the terrorist in charge rails angrily, then the guy pleads with him, then the terrorist rails some more, and then the guy starts screaming “NO, NO, not THAT!” Then there are no more words, just animal noises of pain, fear, and more than a little loathing. Other moments don’t seem quite as authentic, especially those that involve civilians. While it’s nice that they’re in the game, you’ll occasionally lose if you fail to prevent the terrorists from executing one of them. That’s just plain silly because it’s unlikely that a group of commandos would leave a bunch of terrorists and weapons behind because Hank the Hostage bit the dust. Also, it’s so easy to die in Vegas 2 that you really don’t need the extra “game over” screens.

Just like in the previous game, you play through each stage with your two not-so-trusty sidekicks. They’re like roulette wheels in the way they oscillate between deadly efficacy and utter helplessness, though the odds are actually stacked in favor of them doing the right thing. Their normally smart, super-effective behavior actually makes it even more striking when they get stuck behind the occasional box. The campaign isn’t very long, but it has its share of awesome firefights and is a good way to warm up for the online play.

Although many of the locales aren’t the first ones that would come to mind if someone asked you to imagine a shootout in Vegas, they are inventive, nonetheless. There are a few nondescript warehouses, generic loading docks, and lame industrial areas that could just as easily be in Rainbow Six Fresno. But, then, there’s also the theater level. This is a full-on replica of a decadent theater complete with stage, backstage, seats, and a balcony. The tricky thing about it is that one team has easy access to the balconies, while the other is pinned by the somewhat open stage. If a player from the latter group can make it across and exit stage left, hopefully with a close-range weapon like a shotgun, he can get all No Country for Old Men on the snipers watching the action below. How quickly the hunters become the hunted.

The best way to cross any open space in Vegas 2 is to sprint, and that can now be accomplished with the push of a button, which is similar to what you’ve done in nearly every shooter that’s come out since Gears of War. But unlike the reckless and half-blind dash in that game, Vegas 2’s version is easier to control. It’s also more versatile because you can sprint sideways, as well as forward. However, when you see a grenade rattle on the ground in front of you, you’ll wish you could also sprint backward (you can’t); realism be damned. Sprinting is a small, minor addition to a great big game like this, but it has a major impact on Vegas 2’s pace and gameplay. It’s obviously a good thing to be able to run a little faster when you’re trying to close in on a flash-blind enemy, and it goes with the shotgun like peanut butter goes with jelly. Sprinting around a corner while pulling the trigger on a shotgun blast before the gun is even half on the screen and catching your enemy with a mouthful of buckshot is one of the sweetest kills the series has seen. Less obvious and less gory is the overall effect on the pace of the play. Sprinting provides a welcome shot of adrenaline, especially online.

We’ve all been waiting to see what ASUS’s Eee PC desktop would turn out to look like, and HotHardware is claiming these shots are the real deal. Yeah, we know, it’s a bit reminiscent of a certain motion-sensing game console, but besides these kind of grainy photos we’ve still got almost nothing to go by. Yet!

Mere mortals will need to wait until the third quarter of the year — if not longer, depending on their region and tolerance for some probable price gouging in the early going — to get their hands on the mighty Nokia N96. On the other hand, Mobile-review apparently knows the right hands to shake and eyes to wink to get hold of a prototype unit extraordinarily early, and they’re taking full advantage of the opportunity. A few hours of your time devoted to the novella of a review will net you a deep understanding and appreciation for the N96’s strengths and follies, but in a nutshell, the site seems to come away with a pretty ambivalent opinion of a device that should be knocking everyone’s socks off — especially for a sticker price that’ll hover in the $800 arena. Problems included a penchant for picking up dirt and fingerprints (the price you pay for a beautiful glossy face, we suppose), a cramped nav key layout with the tricky touch-sensitive Navi Wheel front and center, audio performance that wasn’t bad but was expected to be far better in light of the dedicated DSP, and a “shovel”-like feel in the hand, a symptom of the phone’s generous dimensions. Everyone owes the production version of the N96 a chance to show its true form when it’s released later this year — and hey, at least Nokia’s got a checklist of things that need improvement in the prototype now — so we’re keeping our chins up that this’ll still make the N95 8GB a proud daddy when it comes time to hand over the crown to the Nseries kingdom.

The flexfuel-compatible Aston Martin Vantage GT2 that we first reported on back in January has finally been captured in the photo studio. Not surprisingly, it’s a looker. After all, the Vantage is a car that activates the pheromones in many a gearhead. Making it Le Mans Series-worthy just piles on the awesome. The car makes its competition debut for James Watt Automotive on April 5 in the European Le Mans series at Barcelona, and it’s also good to go for ALMS if any teams decide to take the plunge. Without further ado, have a look for yourself. We like the subtle Gulf colors — who knew orange lipstick could be so pretty? If baby blue and orange doesn’t do it for you, check out the menacing black car that participated in the Paul Ricard test session with the rest of the Aston racers. The phrase, “It’s all good” applies here.

We thought Wipeout Pulse was great, but a quick glance at the UK charts makes it look as if we might have been the only ones. When it came out in mid-December 2007 on the PlayStation Portable, the game limped into the UK PSP chart at number 20, and it’s managed to climb only to number 15 since then. And when it comes to the all-formats chart, it never even entered the top 40. These are worrying signs for Sony, especially considering that the franchise helped launch both the PlayStation and the PlayStation Portable in the West. Thankfully for us, this poor performance hasn’t put Sony off the series just yet, and it’s readying a PlayStation 3 update for a PlayStation Network version of the series. Wipeout HD, as it’s called, will contain tracks, ships, and music from previous games in the series and will polish it off with shiny new 1080p graphics.

Wipeout HD contains eight tracks in all, six from Wipeout Pure and two from Wipeout Pulse. Although their layouts remain the same, the extra power of the PlayStation 3 allows for plenty of visual enhancements to these familiar courses. Another reason to play the PS3 version is the new motion-sensitive control. Long-term Wipeout fans may remember that the series is no stranger to alternative control systems, given that it was compatible with Namco’s neGcon controller back in the day. You might think that the floating ships of Wipeout would be a perfect fit for Sixaxis control, but it currently feels loose and unresponsive compared to the standard controls. That said, it has been implemented fairly well, and you can choose to apply motion control to just the pitch of your ship, or to both the pitch and the steering. Sixaxis motion control is set to off by default, but Wipeout fans may get a kick out of trying the control system.

Running in 60 frames per second up to 1080p resolution, the game is smooth and detailed, and both factors contribute greatly to the atmosphere of the game. Adverts for racing teams and futuristic products are now much more visible on the track, and background details such as cameras and buildings are much easier to pick out. There are some really nice incidental details too, with the vehicles having a grimier look than we’ve seen before. We particularly like the ghosts that appear once you set a lap record; they appear on the track thanks to small, floating projection units.

Wipeout HD’s visual design is just as sharp as you’d expect from the series. The menu system has a beautiful balance of white space and clean lines, and the race information is presented in an accessible and informative manner. As with Wipeout Pulse, the campaign structure is split into lots of small events, with race types such as Single Race, Speed Lap, Time Trial, and Zone within each category. Single Race pits you against seven other ships, with weapons on the track to pick up and destroy the competition. All the weapons from Wipeout Pulse have been brought over and given a visual makeover, so a hit from a rocket now produces a beautifully honeycombed explosion. The Speed Lap requires you to beat a record time over the course of seven laps, whereas the Time Trial asks you to beat the course under a specific time. The Zone mode isn’t new, but it looks better than ever on the PlayStation 3. As you guide a reinforced craft through zones at ever-increasing speeds, the track changes colour while billboards display visualisations for whatever music track you’re hearing.

The campaign structure is well set out, and you don’t have to place first in every single race to progress; you can even choose to skip some completely if you prefer. There are also other unlockables for completing races, such as new tracks to play in the single-event mode, whereas staying loyal to the same team will unlock new skins for that craft. However, we were unable to see an option to either create or download custom skins from the Wipeout HD Web site at this point.

If you did play Wipeout Pulse, then all of this should sound like familiar territory. In fact, the games even have the same soundtrack, with standout tracks being Mason’s “Exceeder,” Booka Shade’s “Steady Rush,” and Kraftwerk’s “Aerodynamik.” Thankfully, you can also use custom soundtracks in the game by importing tracks into a soundtrack on the PS3’s dashboard and creating a playlist. From there, you can choose to listen to your playlist in the order that you created it or randomized.

The photo mode also makes a return, allowing you to pause the action during any race or replay to take a picture. Although the photography options aren’t as plentiful as they are in Project Gotham Racing 4, you can add speed blur to your photos, zoom in and out, or opt to show the heads-up display. Once perfected and taken, images are saved onto the PlayStation 3 hard drive as JPEGs that you can edit and export later.

Like Wipeout Pulse, HD is a difficult game, with clever enemy opponents that use shortcuts, and some harsh times to beat in the other modes. In another similarity to Pulse, HD’s campaign is huge, with eight events consisting of about 6-10 races each. Though we’ve seen all of the eight tracks and teams in the previous PSP release, downloadable content has been promised. There’s no word from Sony yet about whether the new content will cost money, but given that Wipeout Pulse has followed the premium-content route, we’d guess it’s inevitable. We can only hope that Sony will do something along the lines of the free sponsored content that they created for Wipeout Pure.

Unfortunately, our preview build of the game didn’t feature online play. We understand from Sony that the game will support eight-player online races in the final product, along with leaderboards that show the best lap times and race records. We have no reason to doubt any of those claims, given that Wipeout Pulse on the PSP also has all of those features. Wipeout HD will have a one-up on its handheld brother, though, because the PlayStation 3 supports voice chat online.

Our build of Wipeout HD was clearly approaching a finished state, and there were relatively few bugs to be seen. The only problems that we encountered were the occasional bits of slowdown when a lot of ships were onscreen, and one funny bug on the Chenghou Project track that let us crash into a magical billboard to complete a lap. There’s still plenty of time for Sony to fix all of this before the game is released on the PlayStation Network sometime in the next three months.

Right on time, the Nokia 3555 flip has come to add precisely zero spice or flair to T-Mobile’s nascent 3G lineup, a ragtag group of middling phones that currently includes the Samsung t639 and t819 along with the Nokia 6263. To be fair, the $50 price on contract is plenty easy on the pocketbook, but we don’t see anyone getting too excited about the VGA camera or bland styling — and it’s not like there’s an expansive display here to take advantage of mobile browsing atop T-Mobile’s AWS UMTS network or anything cool like that. Alas, you can get this blue bundle of joy starting today.

Nokia today unveiled the Nokia N82 in stylish black, letting users geotag images captured on the integrated 5.0-megapixel camera.

The 5.0-megapixel camera features a Xenon flash and Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus with a dedicated assist lamp, fast reloading between shots and DVD-like quality video capture.

Taking advantage of its integrated A-GPS functionality and high resolution camera, the Nokia N82 automatically tags images with capture location metadata, making it possible to view the capture location on a map either on the Internet or on the device itself. When it comes to sharing, users can upload their pictures or videos directly from their N82 to services like Share on Ovi, Flickr or YouTube. By installing Nokia Sports Tracker application, consumers can share their whereabouts and travel route with others on the Sports Tracker website - including the capture locations of images. The Sports Tracker mobile widget will soon be made available with many new and existing S60-based converged mobile devices.

The Nokia N82 supports microSD memory cards of up to 8GB which allow the device to hold the user’s choice of up to 3,600 high-resolution pictures, 5 hours of high quality video capture, up to 6,000 songs or all of the available regions for the Nokia Maps application.

The Nokia N82 in black is expected to start shipping within weeks, with an estimated retail price of approximately 400 euros, before taxes and subsidies.

AT&T and Research In Motion (RIM) today announced the BlackBerry Pearl 8120, a global handset with built-in Wi-Fi.

The BlackBerry Pearl 8120 features a large, ultra-bright 240 x 260 px display that supports more than 65K-colors - measures just 4.2″ x 2.4″ x 0.5″ and weighs 3.2 ounces. Combining BlackBerry email and messaging capabilities, the Pearl 8120 includes RIM’s SureType keyboard with word completion, built-in spell-checker and user-customized dictionary - as well as simultaneous voice and data access when connected to a Wi-Fi network.

The BlackBerry Pearl 8120 also features multimedia capabilities, including a 2.0-megapixel camera with video recorder, an advanced media player, a 3.5-mm stereo headset jack, externally accessible microSD / SDHC memory slot for additional storage and Bluetooth 2.0, with support for headsets, car kits, stereo headsets and other Bluetooth accessories. The BlackBerry Pearl 8120 also provides support for Wi-Fi 802.11b/g networks, giving customers access to public hot spots, corporate wireless local area networks and home Wi-Fi networks.

The BlackBerry Pearl 8120 can keep users who are abroad connected with wireless email, Internet access and other mobile applications through data services with data-roaming in more than 145 countries. Customers can also use the BlackBerry Pearl 8120 to make or receive voice calls in more than 200 countries.

The BlackBerry Pearl 8120 is available for $199.99, with a two-year contract, unlimited data plan and $39.99 voice plan.