We just got a look at the myTouch 3G, and while it's great to see T-Mobile's next Android phone all official and everything, there are certainly few surprises for those of us already familiar with the HTC Magic / Google Ion. We found ourselves, despite the best knowledge otherwise, still looking fruitlessly for a 3.5mm headphone jack -- it was silly that the G1 didn't ship with it, but this year it's downright shameful. At least the included adapter is nice. Please, HTC Hero, come and save us from this madness. Fresh off our play time with the Hero, we found the stock Android 1.5 keyboard to be quite a bit of a step back. It's certainly usable, but we found ourselves missing the spacebar quite a lot, and the responsiveness just wasn't at HTC's level, though prediction was pretty good. The included zippered case is nice, though we don't know what we'd use it for, and the unboxing experience is generally pleasant and uneventful.

In a lot of ways, the phone seems like a last generation product, but it's obviously the only one of its kind available in the States at the moment, so we suppose T-Mobile would beg to differ. Every single cover we've seen so far looks completely horrible, and while it's nice to have "options" (T-Mobile's big marketing play with this phone) we'd think twice before putting a pic of our dog on the back of one of these. Perhaps the best news making the rounds is that T-Mobile is thinking about putting a visual voicemail app in the forthcoming app pack, though it wasn't pre-loaded on any of the handset we checked out, and apparently the app pack is more of a curated Market than a single app combo download. Peep an enthralling video of the hardware after the break.

We're used to seeing nettops from the likes of Asus and Acer, but EMTEC's the newcomer in this field and let's see what we're working with. At about one inch thick by TechDigest's estimates, the G Box (working title) certainly compact, and we definitely give points to it running NVIDIA's Ion platform, Windows XP, at least six USB ports, and a 160GB hard drive. Unfortunately, there's no HDMI port -- that's coming in a later model -- and at £179 ($293 US), we'd be hard pressed to pick this over the HDMI-equipped AspireRevo, but we'll await judgment until we can try this thing out for ourselves. In the meantime, hit up the read link for a brief video hands-on.

NVIDIA obviously isn't doing much talking about it itself just yet, but Fudzilla apparently has it on good authority that the company is indeed already hard at work on Ion 2, which promises to bring with it plenty of improvements over the already impressive Ion chipset. Chief among those is a decreased die size, "much faster graphics," and more than twice the shaders of the original Geforce 9400M /MCP79 chipset that the current Ion is based on (which uses 16 shaders). Not many more details than that, unfortunately, but NVIDIA is supposedly looking to launch Ion 2 by the end of this year -- although not before it sells plenty more Ion 1s, of course.

[Via SlashGear]

ASRock isn't exactly the very first company we think of when it comes to innovation, but the ASUS spinoff actually has a pretty good track record of going out on a limb. The new Multibook G22, for instance, combines the dual core Atom 330 processor, NVIDIA Ion, 2GB of RAM, a feature-rich multitouch trackpad, and a widescreen 12.1-inch 1366 x 768 display. It still feels "netbook-ey" for our money, but in a good way. Other perks include a 10-in-1 card reader, big people hard drive capacities (320GB instead of the 160GB netbook max), VGA and HDMI, 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and a DVD burner. It all weighs in at over 3.3 pounds without battery, and measures more than an inch thick. Yeah, those last few bullet points might throw this out of the realm of netbook contention, but at least there's an Atom processor in here keeping things slow enough for the most basic of tasks. No word on price or availability.

Update: According to Liliputing, ASRock has made contact and states that the G22 is actually running an Intel CULV processor and chipset, instead of Atom and Ion -- bad news for Ion junkies, good news for CULV lovers. A bit of a mixed bag, if you ask us.

[Thanks, Shawn]

Looks like our hopeless optimism might win again. Android lovers who didn't get their hands on the Google Ion (a.k.a. HTC Magic) already can look forward to a summer launch of T-Mobile's version, myTouch 3G. According to the Wall Street Journal citing, the ever-resourceful "people familiar with the matter" group, all the details will be announced next week. Of course, the definition of "summer" can be stretched pretty far, we dare say even into September, but regardless of that technically, it seems promising the G1 successor is just over the horizon. Excited? We are.

OCZ Technology's Ion-infused Neutrino may not look all that different than the existing model, but we all know it's the secret sauce within that makes it so magical. Our BFFs over at Engadget Chinese managed to spend a few quality seconds (some might say they "had a moment") with this very machine as well as the all new desktop-bound Colossus SSD. Sadly, the booth workers couldn't provide a definitive ship date or price for either, but the read link's still the place to go for a few hands-on shots as well as a video of the Ion Neutrino showing 3DMark 06 who's boss.

Stating that NVIDIA's Ion platform has already snagged wide industry support would be a gross understatement, but for whatever reason, Maingear decided to skip out on all the Computex revelry and blaze a trail of its own. Hailed as the planet's greenest gaming PC (which is certainly up for debate), the Pulse is an energy efficient small form factor PC that offers up Ion graphics. Said configuration is available with Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs and an 80+ certified 300-watt power supply; those who care more about frame rates than Ma Earth can opt for a GeForce 9800 GT ECO, which -- despite being a discrete, power-hungry GPU -- still swallows some 40 percent less power than a standard 9800 GT. You'll also find WiFi support, room for an optional Blu-ray drive and TV tuner, upwards of 8GB of RAM and room for a single 2.5-inch HDD or SSD. The whole box checks in at just 7.6- x 8.3- x 11.4-inches, and it's available for order right now starting at $799. Full release is after the break.

By our calendars, "early summer" is pretty much now -- so we're excited to hear that T-Mobile USA has officially announced its plans to release its next Android-powered device in that timeframe. The carrier isn't saying what that phone is, but if we were the betting type, our money would be on a carrier-branded version of the HTC Magic / Google Ion -- possibly to be called the myTouch 3G -- especially since it's been rumored for eons and we now have unlocked AWS versions of the phone out and about. Stay tuned as we find out more.

This is really more of what we'd expect out of some slightly deranged basement hacker, not a company like ECS at a major tradeshow, but we'll take any entrants in the burgeoning "nettop in a vase" space we can get. To be serious for a moment, this is actually a pretty interesting illustration of the future afforded by small, low-power components: ECS has stuffed a full Intel Atom 230 system, including NVIDA ION graphics, 1GB of RAM, a 2.5-inch HDD and a Blu-ray drive into what looks like a family heirloom. There's even room for a couple USB ports, Ethernet and HDMI plugs on the bottom, which keeps the main body uninterrupted other than the tray-loading drive. Basically, we're floored.

We had a hunch that Computex would be a massive show for NVIDIA, and while we already caught a glimpse of what the GPU manufacturer had in store, we had no idea it'd come out with guns this big a-blazin'. Showing absolutely no mercy for those other integrated graphics sets of the world, NV's today unveiled 21 new Ion-based products in Taiwan, with all but a handful being completely unheard of. Of course, there's the AspireRevo, Ion 330 and IdeaPad S12, but outside of that select few, everything else is all new. Asus is introducing its C2N7A-I motherboard and all-in-one Eee Top ET2002, Colorful is busting out its iHTPC, ECS is pushing out a new desktop and MSI is showcasing its Windtop AE201. And that's just to name a few. Hop on past the break for the full spill, and don't stray too far -- we'll be out and about grabbing hands-on time with as many of these as we can track down.

We more or less knew that Computex would be a coming-out party for NVIDIA's Ion platform, and it looks like the company can't wait to get started: it juiced up an otherwise boring server press event by also displaying a small selection of Ion machines. Out to play were the now-familiar Acer Aspire Revo and the just-announced Lenovo IdeaPad S12, but MSI's new Wind Box D200 and a handful of other nettops and netbooks from various other Asian ODMs were also present, including a hot-looking nettop from ECS called the Morph. We're expecting to hear more official information about all these soon enough, but hit the read link for the full set of pics from Engadget Chinese in the meantime.

In a brief snippet of a rumor, DigiTimes is reporting that ASUS is planning an Ion-based Eee Box B1006 for Q3 of 2009. Ion's a good start, but if they shackle it to an Intel Atom 230 processor and once again bludgeon our dreams of a low-cost home theater PC capable of handling full-screen Flash video, well, somebody's going to get hurt. Ion-based Eee PC netbooks are coming too, but those don't have a production schedule yet according to the Taiwanese tattle-rag.

Oh look, it's nearly time for Computex, which means it's finally time for ECS to come out to play again. For whatever reason, it seems the aforesaid PC maker only pulls out the stakes for Taiwan's biggest consumer electronics show, and with the doors opening early next week, we're getting a sneak peek at what it'll be bringing to the mix. Not surprisingly, three of the five new machines are said to be of the netbook variety, with the other two being all-in-one desktops. 'Course, the whole lot will be humming along on Intel's all-too-modest Atom, though we are led to believe that at least one rig will get equipped with NVIDIA's promising Ion technology. The T10IL (shown left) is apt to steal most of the attention, boasting a thin-and-light frame that'll look awfully similar to ASUS' Eee PC 1008HA. The V10IL (shown right) is expected to be more of a vanilla type machine in terms of both design and specification, and the other guys are slated to be revealed at the show. You're tense with anticipation, aren't you?

Call it a sign of the times, call it a Google I/O attendee who just didn't really like the Ion, call it an overabundance of Western-style capitalism, call it man's almost instinctive need to generate profit -- whatever the case, one of the 4,000 specially-branded Ions given away at the conference this week is now available to the highest bidder. Never mind the fact that it's an I/O special edition, though -- outside of this particular device, we're not sure where you can find a 1700MHz 3G HTC Magic at any price, so we're sure this is going to be worth plenty of cold, hard cash to plenty of people who aren't in San Francisco at the moment. Oh, and don't worry if you miss out on this one; we'd be shocked if there weren't others in the pipeline.

[Via TmoToday]