Hasta La Gadget!

Garmin’s first foray into smartphones–almost two years in the making–could very well be its last, if the hugely disappointing Garmin nuvifone G60 is any indication.

Despite the fact that it doesn’t do many of the things people expect smartphones to do–like record or play video, support MMS or instant messaging, stream music, run mobile TV, play games, or run any apps whatsoever–Garmin and AT&T are calling it a smartphone *and* charging $300 up front for it. That’s $200 more than the iPhone 3G for those keeping track at home.

That said, it’s an excellent GPS device, and it *does* make calls and take pictures. If that’s enough for you–and it shouldn’t be–Amazon is now discounting the G60 to $100 with a two-year contract, just days after the thing hit the market, as Engadget reports. I’d still buy the iPhone 3G in a split second. But hey, at least the price is semi-palatable now.

Sony Ericsson and T-Mobile have introduced the Equinox, a 3G-capable flip phone with built-in GPS and a 3.2 megapixel camera. It includes flashing pulse effects that you can assign to five favorite contacts, in Amber, Sapphire, Beryl, Diamond, and Amethyst. It also comes with changing wallpaper schemes.

Sony Ericsson preloads a video recorder app that uploads straight to YouTube, as well as an FM radio, stereo Bluetooth, and gesture control for rejecting incoming calls or silencing an alarm–perfect for simulating a snooze button without actually smashing your cell phone on the nightstand.

There’s also a 2.2-inch, 240-by-320-pixel LCD screen. Look for the Equinox at T-Mobile stores and online at www.t-mobile.com beginning today.

Sprint has announced it has launched 4G WiMAX mobile broadband service throughout the Philadelphia area. Sprint 4G costs an extra $10 per month over current Sprint 3G mobile ad plans, and is capable of delivering speeds up to 10 times faster than 3G (though less than that in the real world, as we’ve found in our testing).

Last week, Clearwire, Sprint, and Comcast announced plans to turn on 4G service during the month of November in Austin, Chicago, Dallas, Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh, San Antonio, and Seattle, with Honolulu and Maui following in December. All three companies sell 4G plans for the same service under different names.

Head over to www.sprint.com/4g for a full-blown coverage map.

Spring Design has unveiled Alex, which the company claims is the first e-book reader powered by Google Android. It’s also the first reader with two screens: a 6-inch panel based on e-ink (specifically, monochrome EPD, or electronic paper display) for regular reading, and a separate 3.5-inch color touch LCD for browsing the Internet and supporting content for the main screen.

In fact, that second screen is an entirely self-contained Google Android device. Alex includes a Wi-Fi radio, as well as internal 3G support on both EV-DO and GSM networks–assuming Spring Design can find carrier support for the thing.

Alex also includes earphones, stereo speakers, an SD card slot, browser bookmarks and history, and the ability to transfer content from the touch LCD to the e-ink display for easier reading. Spring Design said it’s currently in talks with said carriers, and is targeting a release before the end of this year.

T-Mobile has just posted a message to its Sidekick forum saying that the company has recovered ‘most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the outage.’

T-Mobile plans to begin restoring data as soon as possible. It’s going to start with personal contacts, and then move on to calendar, notes, tasks, photos, and high scores–because we all know how important those are.

‘We now believe that data loss affected a minority of Sidekick users.  If your Sidekick account was among those affected, please continue to log into these forums for the latest updates about when data restoration will begin, and any steps you may need to take. We will work with T-Mobile to post the next update on data restoration timing no later than Saturday.’

Finally, here’s the current word on just what the heck happened: ‘We have determined that the outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back-up. We rebuilt the system component by component, recovering data along the way.  This careful process has taken a significant amount of time, but was necessary to preserve the integrity of the data.’