Our friendly FedEx man was kind enough to deliver us the soon-to-be-released Casio G’zOne Commando from Verizon Wireless. Unlike most full-touchscreen smartphones, this Android 2.2.1 device is designed to be abused. The Commando meets military standards 810G for immersion, rain, and shock, dust resistance, vibration, salt fog, humidity, solar radiation, altitude, along with low and high temperature storage.  The handset, which is not the lightest full-touchscreen we’ve handled — but certainly ...

Not really digging the $800 price-tag set to be placed on the 3G Motorola XOOM tablet? Help may be on the way. A recent filing shows that the FCC is testing a “wireless tablet with embedded WLAN” manufactured by Motorola. Now, there’s no way to know exactly what this is… but our money is on a Wi-Fi only XOOM. The tablet in question, being referred to as the IHDP56LU1 in documentation, is only having its Bluetooth and Wi-Fi a/b/g/n chipsets tested — there was no mention of a cell...

It looks as though the worldly Samsung Galaxy S will be one of the very first smartphones to be knighted by the Wi-Fi Alliance as Wi-Fi Direct certified. Wi-Fi Direct is a newly minted protocol that will allow enabled electronics to make device-to-device connections with the speed, range, and throughput of 802.11b/g/n. Samsung’s generic GT-I9000 is now listed on the Wi-Fi Alliance’s site as a Wi-Fi Direct compatible device.As a note, any Wi-Fi enabled device can gain Wi-Fi Direct certification by ...

Anxiously awaiting the 4G version of the Galaxy S? If you answered with an enthusiastic ”yes”, then you may be happy to know that Sprint’s second 4G handset might land in August, possibly on or before the 20th. This tentative launch date is a based upon the observation that the Epic 4G is scheduled to debut on Samsung’s Galaxy S On Demand Live Show website on August 20th. Both the Vibrant and the Captivate episodes debuted on or after the handset’s respective launch dates,...

According to some sleuthing and inside information provided to the folks at Hiptop3.com, the upcoming rumored Sidekick LX 2009/Blade may run the open source NetBSD OS and not some funky Windows CE version with the Danger UI tacked on top. Rumors of the Sidekick getting some Windows CE love began circulating after Microsoft acquired Danger in early 2008. It is hard to perpetuate those rumors in the face of a late October 2008 job posting at Microsoft “seeking a talented NetBSD software developer interest...