Tech & Gadget Stream

Amazon.uk will be making available the new NWZ OLED Walkman from Sony from May 10th onwards, and that pretty much points toward a market entry for the rest of Europe as well. As for folks who live across the pond, the first of (we hope) many OLED Walkmans will be released sometime in the summer. While OLED is a clearly superior technology compared to LCD, it will take some time to catch on as more and more manufacturers learn to incorporate such technology into their devices. Would you pick up the new Sony Walkman, or are you happy with your iPod currently?

By now most of us already know that the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD will be powered by Symbian S60 5th Edition instead of Windows Mobile, which is a departure from what the first Omnia i900 used. There were rumors going around that there would also be a Windows Mobile 6.5 version of the upcoming Omnia HD, however that rumor seems to have been quashed by certain sources. Apparently Samsung picked Symbian over Windows Mobile because of Microsoft’s delay in getting Windows Mobile 6.5 out of the door. The interesting bit is that Samsung wants to launch more handsets with its Omnia branding, and some of them will run Android, so it seems like we’ll be getting an Android-powered smartphone sooner rather than later.

SanDisk will be shipping its slotRadio device at the end of this month, so folks who are looking for an MP3 player of some repute minus the Apple logo can always give this a twirl to see if it suits them. This MP3 player comes with a microSD memory card slot for your choice of pre-loaded music, while others who prefer to do nothing but purchase music off the shelf can do so with the pre-loaded Billboard hits cards that will house more than 1,000 tracks that are already categorized by genre. You can pick up the slotRadio from March 31st onwards for just $99 a pop - and it comes with a card that already has more than a thousand songs.

Bell has issued a statement for its recently launched BlackBerry 8230 handsets only if they're running on the OS 4.6.1.162 build. Bell customers who are affected will receive an SMS that instructs them on how to upgrade the OS to the latest 4.6.1.182 build. Stores throughout the country are already receiving updated units even as you read this, so sales of newer units should not be affected by this problem. If you're already running on the latest build, just ignore this and live your life as usual. It still amazes us till this day that such a boo-boo can occur in the manufacturing line. Ah well, guess whenever there are humans around, there is always room for some margin of error.

Alltell Wireless is first off the blocks where the Palm Treo Pro is concerned, beating out Sprint as expected. Available at Alltel's online and retail stores, this CDMA version was already available as a pre-order last night, beating the March 5 deadline by a few hours. The CDMA version of the Treo Pro will be similar in most hardware specifications as its GSM model, although the processor has been bumped up to a beefier 528MHz while the internal memory hits 512MB. Other features include a touchscreen display, 2 megapixel camera, GPS navigation, Wi-Fi connectivity, Bluetooth support, 3G and a microSD memory card slot. The Alltel Treo Pro will run on Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and will retail for $199 after a $125 mail-in rebate and a 2-year contract. Well, at least each purchase online comes with a free Bluetooth headset.