Come now, you didn't think we'd let something like IFA pass by without shipping a few editors off to Berlin did you? We're on the ground and taking names in the best ninja gear we could sew with $5 worth of felt and tin foil. But hey, it's not the costume that keeps you coming back, it's the content. So stay tuned.

First off, the chance of this Japanese super-phone coming to the US or anywhere else outside of Nippon is slim. FCC approval or not, it's likely only being tested for global roaming. However, as slim is its chances are, they've improved dramatically now that Japan's government is behind a push to promote its twisty, folding phones abroad. This Exilim-branded Casio / Hitachi mashup sports an 8 megapixel camera and with any luck, it's using that new Omnivision sensor meant to revolutionize cameraphones. As followup to the W53CA, this 3G W63CA flip will no doubt feature the same high-resolution, 800 x 480 pixel swiveling display of its cousin. With autumn nearing, we expect to see the W63A announced any day in a typical shotgun blast of seasonal phones from KDDI.

We're not going to re-hash the details of Nokia's N79 and N85 yet again. After all, we just went through it less than 24-hours ago. We will tell you that both the N79 (tri-band GSM, 900/2100 UMTS/HSDPA) and N85 (quad-band GSM/EDGE with either 900/1900/2100 or 850/1900/2100 UMTS/HSDPA) will hit Europe in October for €350 and €450, respectively, pre-tax and pre-carrier subsidies. The N85 could also be Stateside sometime soon given those frequencies and prior FCC approval. Oh, and pictures, lots of pretty pictures.

Read -- N79
Read -- N85

Like the 1st generation Kindle unearthed by Engadget snoops way back in September of 2006, Amazon's having a tough time keeping the lid on its 2nd generation e-book reader. Seems everyone and his analyst brother is confirming a new, larger screened collegiate reader and at least one other variation, presumably the Kindle 2.0. Now BusinessWeek steps up and "confirms" the collegiate reader while claiming knowledge of a new 2.0 base model that, "is significantly thinner, has a better screen, is more stylish and includes fixes to some of the user interface annoyances," such as the placement of those massive page forward / back buttons which can trigger inadvertent page changes. In fact, their source claims that the new version is much more than an iterative evolution, "They've jumped from Generation One to Generation Four or Five. It just looks better, and feels better." BW also claims that the new model's price (currently, $359) will hit $299, "or maybe $249," and could be announced as early as September.

Interestingly, Kindle 2.0's design is being lead by a designer hired from the powerhouse shop, Frog Design. A group which just happened to give the Kindle a very public and very critical tongue lashing at its November 2007 launch. We guess this squeaky wheel received its oil in the form of a giant cash payment.

Read -- Frog's take on Kindle 1.0
Read -- BusinessWeek rumor

You've seen the review, now get ready as Nokia just announced a Q4, North American release for its high-end, N96. That means localized 850/1900 HSDPA radios to go along with its GSM quad-band set, 2.8-inch QVGA display, 16GB of storage, a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with Carl Zeiss optics, WiFi, and assisted GPS. Interestingly, there's no mention of mobile TV which makes it seem that they've scrapped DVB-H entirely without a mediaFLO replacement. How much? $895, that's how much -- sorry you asked?

Yesterday we got the height and width, today it's the full wireframe model with scale measurements. While we can't confirm the authenticity, several details including that arcing base certainly dovetail nicely with the images found in the original FCC filing. It's also a near-perfect match to that early reference design seen kicking around the Googleplex courtesy of Andy Rubin. While not obvious before, we can clearly see that the arc belongs to the handset's rigid, non-sliding "chin" with lots of logos from HTC, T-Mobile, and Google fighting for visibility.

Notably, the right-most image contains measurements which can be applied to the rest of scale model as well. This confirms the 115 x 55-mm height and width shown by the FCC yesterday as well as a new, approximate, 16.35-mm depth after applying the calipers. That would make it fatter (as expected) than the 12.3-mm iPhone but skinnier (and a hair wider) than the 18.1-mm HTC Touch Pro and 17-mm Xperia X1. Not bad. Now let's get to it boys, else there won't be much left to announce in September.

[Via Android Community]

• $300 SX110 IS: 9 megapixels, 10x zoom, 3-inch LCD
• $250 A2000 IS: 10 megapixels, 6x zoom, 3-inch LCD
• $200 A1000 IS: 10 megapixels, 4x zoom, 2.5-inch LCD

All three break loose at the end of this month and ship with a pair of AAs and 32MB SD card.

Update: Ah ha, we just found the missing Powershot E1 from yesterday's quartet. The cutesy, OIS cam targeting teens and tweens features the same DIGIC 3 processing with a 10 megapixel sensor, 4x zoom, and 2.5-inch LCD.

There's been a lot of discussion lately about iPhone 3G reception issues. Whether they exist or not is largely irrelevant in a world dominated by sound-bite driven perceptions. Nevertheless, some industrious Swedes decided to apply a little scientific method to the argument and found something interesting: the iPhone 3G performed just as well (or just as poorly, depending upon your mood) as a Nokia N73 and Sony Ericsson P1 when compared head-to-head in a mobile communications test chamber. The test was conducted by real-life antenna engineers just like those camera-fumbling souls contracted by the FCC. Of course, who's going to let a few facts stand in the way of contrary opinion and litigation, eh?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

When we're thinking NAS, we're thinking Terabytes of network attached storage. Fortunately, while LG's N4B1 might be the world's first NAS with integrated Blu-ray recorder, it also supports up to 4TB of disk... with room to grow thanks to 3x USB and 1x e-SATA jacks. LG puts that 50GB of dual-layer, Blu-ray storage to good use by automatically archiving your old data for off-site storage. You do store your data off-site, right?

Here's how the smartphones compare:

• HTC Dream: 115 x 55-mm
• iPhone 3G: 115.2-mm x 62.1-mm
• Xperia X1: 110.5 x 52.6-mm
• HTC Touch Pro: 102 x 51-mm

Image of HTC's label exchange request after the break.

[Thanks, OC]