Smartphones have integrated many helpful features: video, camera, calculator, clock, e-mail, texting, and more.  There have always been a GPS function on smartphones that you could trial for 30 days or buy.  But, the GPS function has been more of a way to navigate around town, and at best has been a glorified pedestrian GPS.

Now, AT&T and Garmin have teamed up to create the Nuvifone that is part phone, part auto and pedestrian GPS.  If you’re driving, and want turn-by-turn directions, just use the suction cup to mount it on the windshield.  When you want it as a phone, just pop it out of the suction cup and talk.  With some GPS units, you get “turn in 200 feet” instructions.  This GPS is specific by having you turn at specific street names to avoid wrong turns.  The speech is natural and the tech support is easy to follow and set up. 

Other notable features the Nuvifone has are:

• White Pages & Yellow Pages info to find people and businesses
• Gas-station app to show which stations are near you and at what cost
• Movie app for nearby show times
• Windows sync program to keep your contacts and calendar up to date on your PC
• Real-time traffic info

The bummer is that for all of these features you have to pay $6/month.  It would have been nice if these options were thrown in for free - after all, this is a new phone that consumers have to be driven to over the iPhone and Blackberry.

Another cool feature, that is actually free, is that it utilized the GPS functionality nicely.  When you call someone from your address book, you can also quickly get a map of where they live and easily get to their place.  Also, you can easily get on the Internet and send e-mails.

Should you buy it?  At $300 and a 2-year AT&T term, this device is better suited for a GPS and not a phone.  It is bulkier than an iPhone and its navigation is not fluid on the phone and e-mail end.  If you are a big traveler, and need your phone occasionally, than this is perfect for you.  However, if you talk and e-mail consistently throughout the day, you should wait until AT&T and Garmin reduces the size and simplifies the navigation.

Steve Jobs finally gave a keynote speech at his Apple event.  And the Nano has finally evolved into an all-around gadget that anyone would love to toy with. 

Here are the notable specs of the new iPod Nano:

• 8GB or 16GB of storage
• built-in FM tuner
• video camera - 640 x 480 pixels
• camera with 15 special effects
• built-in pedometer

At $149 for the 8GB model and $179 for the 16GB model, this Nano is a fierce competitor to all mp3 players as well as the Flip camera.  It combines listening to music, recorded or live, and video recording and camera shots all in one small device.  The tech support is easy to setup and the look of the device, although the same exterior as the old one, showcases a bigger display for easier viewing.

Nowadays, it’s impressive to carry around a 64GB thumbdrive.  Remember the days of when a 1GB or 2GB thumbdrive was available and everyone was excited to get their hands on them.  Thumbdrives are great ways to store storage easily.  All you have to do is plug it into a PC or Mac and you have instant storage.  You can easily swap files from one computer to another with a thumbdrive and it makes an excellent file backup.

The 128GB Kingston memory stick is now the new kid on the block.  128GB of storage is larger than most hard drives out there.  When storage increases with thumbdrives, usually the copy or read speed is slower.  With this Kingston device, the speed is above average, but nothing to write home about.  It is 20MB read throughput and 10MB write throughput which is decent. 

The nice aspect is that you may secure your thumbdrive with a password-protected software.  The downfall is the $500 price tag will most likely scare people away.  If you need heavy security and storage space and just care about carrying one device around for everything, this is your baby.  But, we’d rather recommend getting several 32GB storage drives that will be cheaper and at least add redundancy to prevent data recovery issues.

With all of the talk of Mac and PCs coming out with a touch screen, Toshiba says look at me now baby!  The JournE touch offers a slick multi-media tablet that can play nice in the kitchen or media room. 

Here are the specs:

• 7-inch screen
• wireless b/g
• Windows CE 6.0 Pro operating system
• 1080p video via HDMI plug
• Under 1 pound!
• 1GB built-in storage but expandable by SD slot or external hard drive

At 250 Euro, this spunky device is a good deal for a quick way to access the Internet, email, music, and videos in your house.  The only drawback is the small 1GB internal storage.  But, you can plug in an external hard drive and get up to 1TB of storage if needed.  The Windows CE operating system is comparable to Windows Mobile operating systems used on handhelds.  So, the system is not robust, but it’s peppy which is needs to be due to the lesser power specs. 

The tech support end is easy since it works right out of the box.  And it is expected to find a wireless network as any laptop would.  Not bad for a touch screen computer.

Snow Leopard is the latest operating system for Apple coming out.  It won’t be a full re-vamp of Leopard, but it will provide more stability, faster loading, and some nice complementary features. 

The real question is: When is it really available?  The operating system DVD will be available in stores starting tomorrow, August 28th, but according to the Apple Store on 5th Avenue in New York City, new macbooks with Snow Leopard preinstalled will not be available for another 2-3 weeks.  Well, that’s at least what they’re saying.  For now, you are able to purchase a new macbook with Snow Leopard only online.  But, if you are a Mac enthusiast like we are, we’ll be checking out the Mac store anyway to confirm for sure if there are any macs with Snow Leopard installed. 

The mac support end to upgrade to Snow Leopard is supposed to be easy, but it is recommended to just purchase a new mac with it already installed to avoid any possible computer issues.

Twitter is the new phenomenon like AOL was the cool new email solution of the 90s.  Okay, AOL is passe as of now, but Twitter might have been a fad also if it didn’t keep up with the new iPhones as a way to communicate.  Now, you can set up Twitterrific 2.1 on your iPhone so you can stay in the loop of your Followers and those Following you. 

Here’s the coolness factor.  Not only can you stay current with Twitterrific, but you can record and post video if you have the new 3GS.  You can utilize a “new account picker tool” for rapidly finding friends’ usernames and direct messages.  Also add in some new tapping tricks including copying and pasting and this iPhone app is a full-featured software.  There are also a bunch of other tricks and fixes from the previous version.  You can download the free software or get Twitterrific Premium for $4 which protects against spam and ads.

Finally, Dell has gotten into the smartphone war.  It is looking to take a piece of the pie from the iPhone and Blackberry.  Its brand is worthy enough, but will Dell’s first generation phone be up to the task. 

Let’s take a look at the notable specs:

• 3 Megapixel camera with auto-focus, flash, 8x digital zoom, and video
• Virtual keyboard with handwriting recognition and multi-touch capabilities
• 3.5″ High-Def screen
• Microsoft Exchange support
• Google, AIM, Yahoo and MSN IM support

Let’s review.  The 3MP camera is the highest megapixel of today’s class especially coming with a 8x zoom.  Typically, smartphones are lucky enough to zoom in at 3x.  The High-Def screen provides 3 dimensional views that you only see in video games.  The Exchange support is something that has been needed for a while as a staple on smartphone.  You won’t have to worthy whether to use imap or exchange or any other e-mail tech hack with this phone.  Finally, the IM support is built in so you don’t have to worry about installing a third-party software to do the same job. 

No price or release date has been announced yet as this information is still fresh.  The tech support end of these phones are yet to be known since we haven’t been able to beta test them yet.  However, the initial look of the specs look solid.  We look forward to seeing how fast the processing speed is to determine and test if the Dell Smartphone can keep up with all of the cool specs.

The Logitech Harmony One is the best TV remote control available.  You can throw out your 3 or 4 remote controls for your TV, DVD, VCR, and other components and streamline them all into sleek remote control.  The Logitech remote control offers a sharp LCD for the current status; touchscreen buttons for navigation, and is all programmable via Windows or Mac.  And no tech support experience is required. 

It is priced at $196 and has all of the options.  It is easy to hold and doesn’t take up a lot of room with its ergonomic style.  It is fully rechargeable with its remote controller charger dock and will last a good week without a charge.

Want to do more with your Blackberry?  Now, you can with Google Mobile Apps.  You can do the following with this cool suite of software:

• GPS Maps - see where you are on a map and directions for where you need to go
• Gmail - check your gmail fast
• Google Search - go right to the best search engine out there
• Sync - sync your contacts, calendar, and email with your computer
• Gtalk - chat with your buddies

This Google Mobile Apps is a must-have for blackberry users.  And it doesn’t require a tech support expert to download and install the software.

You might have heard of Google Chrome as an alternate web browser.  It will soon be an operating system to compete against Microsoft and Apple.  The heart of Chrome’s vision is to run programs separate and apart from the operating system.

In essence, Google’s operating system will not need its operating system to run programs, such as Microsoft Word, Quickbooks, and other software.  All you’ll need is an Internet browser and then you’ll be able to run programs through it.  Obviously, you’ll need to make sure your Internet connection is fast.  By doing so, you’ll experience fast processing speeds and quick start and shutdown times.  This Linux-based operating system is touted as being slimmer and faster than Windows’ new Windows 7 operating system.  We feel that some special or exclusive programs will need to be thrown into Google Chrome to allow it to thrive.

The market for this operating system will most likely be successful on netbooks, computers that don’t have a lot of power to run full-blown Windows or Mac systems.  This new Google system is due out during the end of 2010.