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 the heaviest at 5.4-ounces— sports a ruggedized composite case which protects a 5 megapixel auto-focus camera with flash, 1460mAh battery, 512MB RAM, 3.6-inch WVGA touchscreen display, and a host of other assets. Want to know what our first impressions are? Good. Have a look at the gallery below and hit the jump to read on.

The first thing we noticed about the device is how crisp the screen is. With ruggedized anythings, function is oft sacrificed for the sake of form. But with the Commando’s screen this does not appear to be the case. The 3.6-inch window has a 480 x 800 pixel resolution and, from what we can tell so far, doesn’t disappoint. Blacks are very black and the touch sensitivity seems to be on-par with most other Android devices — we fired off several emails and text messages without issue.

The exterior of the Commando is well accented with red composite inlays that compliment the phone’s drop-me-I-dare-you physique quite nicely. The phone has no fewer than five physical buttons on its left and right sides and we’re not sure how we feel about that — we seem to always hit a button when picking up the phone. We’ll wait to levy judgement on this design choice in our full review.

The Commando is running a slightly modded version of Android 2.2.1, but we don’t think even the most devout Android purists will mind. The modifications, for the most part, add a more ruggedized look to things — like the dialer and homescreen — and, thus far, have stayed out of the way.

We’ve ripped off a few test pictures with the device’s 5 megapixel shooter and so far the results have been favorable. The handful of close range and landscape shots we’ve taken appear to be very clean and there doesn’t seem to be anything glaringly wrong with the Commando’s camera.

The handset also support Wi-Fi hotspot creation, which, again, provides those needing a phone that can survive the elements with a nice blend or form and function.

Those are most of our initial musings.  We plan to take this handset out on the mean streets of Boston and drive it like it’s stolen — it is a rental after all — and we’ll be sure to bring you are full writeup ASAP.

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 cellular radio anywhere. Hopefully, with wireless carriers out of the picture, Moto can get a little more agressive with the pricing.

[Via Wireless Goodness]

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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 implementing an approved software/firmware update; no additional hardware is needed for the protocol. Now, in regards to when Sammy will actually roll-out this approved code to GT-I9000 handsets… that’s anyone’s guess.

[Via Engadget]

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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, so we would expect this trend to continue with the Epic 4G. Additionally, Samsung updated its Twitter status on Friday with the tantalizing tidbit that “the Sprint Epic 4G is arriving in a few weeks. It’s the 4G #GalaxyS”. Though it is not as solid as an official confirmation, these two pieces seem to point to an August launch for this highly anticipated 4G handset.

[Via Android Police]

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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 interested in helping Danger (a subsidiary of Microsoft) ship the next generation of Danger’s Sidekick platform.” Mailing list posts from Danger employees dating as far back as September 2007 suggest that NetBSD may have been the chosen OS long before the Microsoft acquisition. Rather than scrap the pre-acquisition progress made by the Danger team, Microsoft apparently has decided to push forward with this open source OS. Does the leaked spec sheet from a few days ago and this new NetBSD information make you a little bit more excited for this much anticipated refresh of the Sidekick line?

Thanks, Ed!

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