Man, I can’t remember any phone in recent history for which details and pics have leaked as frequently as they have for the myTouch Slide. This thing’s not even official yet, but we know more about it than a celebrity stalker knows about their stalkee’s underwear drawer.

The latest bit of knowledge, added just today: color variations.

The lads over at CellPhoneSignal dug up the shots above, claiming that they’ll be some of T-Mobile’s own official product shots. Unless there’s some sort of Photoshop trickery going on here (and we’ve got no reason to believe there is), it looks like the myTouch slide will be offered up in hues of Red/Black, All Black, and White.

While not the first to do it (that title goes to Acer), Intel has now ported Android to the x86 architecture. While the obvious application for this is tablets and netbooks, Intel has said that they have it running on smartphones based on their Atom line of processors. Most smartphone processors are based on the ARM architecture, while Intel’s processors on the other hand are typically x86 based. By porting Android to the x86 architecture, Intel are clearly trying to make a name for themselves in the smartphone market.

The original article at Yahoo! News says that “certain customers” are interested in using the port, but also, interestingly, Android isn’t the only phone OS that Intel has an interest in, quoting the general manager of Intel’s software and services group, Renee James, as saying “Intel is enabling all OSes for Atom phones”.

As the functionality of computers and smartphones continues to converge, it seems your next smartphone could be even more like a PC than previously thought.

Rumours abound that the AT&T Network is down in the Seattle area. The outage seems to be affecting voice calls. Service has been trickling back to some users over the last half hour, and rebooting has fixed it for some people, but others are still out.

How’s it going for you?

If you lost service service today, let us know in the comments what area you are in and if it’s been restored yet.

Update: AT&T just reached out to let us know that the issue should be all patched up in Seattle. Let us know if things are still shaky, won’t you?

[via TechFlash]

Jonesing for a bit more info on the hotter-than-hot HTC Incredible before its April 29 release?
Well, you lucky devil, the full spec sheet has been leaked ahead of the Verizon launch, and it looks, well, you know… incredible.

On top of the already-known Android 2.1 with HTC’s Sense UI, the Snapdragon processor, the 8MP camera with autofocus + flash, and the 3.7″ WVGA (800×480) AMOLED screen, there are a few nice surprises.

• 8GB internal storage (although the spec sheet goes on to say 512MB ROM later on. Bundled MicroSD, maybe?)
• There is nary a mention of the processor being underclocked to 768Mhz, so here’s hoping it’s running at the full 1Ghz.
• 802.11b/g/n compatible WiFi. Nice, especially if you’re into moving files back and forth wirelessly between your LAN and handset.

Of course, all the usual Android goodies are crammed in there, including Flash Lite 4.0 support, Google Maps with navigation, as well as the usual Google services including Voice Commands/Search, YouTube, Gmail, Calendar etc. There is no mention of an FM Transmitter in the spec sheet, so we’ll wait and see if it’s included or not.
Boy Genius Report have the full sheet for your enjoyment and perusal, so head on over and get your excitement on.

Word on the German street (or Straße) is that both the Palm Pre Plus and the Pixi Plus are coming to O2 and Vodafone on April 28.

These are the same phones that Americans have come to know and love, but with GSM radios and a European-friendly QWERTZ keyboard.

You know the drill: the Pre Plus is their flagship device with 16GB storage, while the Pixi Plus is for those just dipping their toes in with only 8GB storage and a little less oomph. Both feature Web OS, which includes multitasking, Palm’s Synergy contact system, system-wide notifications, the ability to act as a WiFi access point, and access to the Palm App Catalog.

Keep your eyes on www.palm.com/de for availability and accessories.
Auf Wiederhören!

I just popped into a local pub and ran smack into into a variant of the just-announced (but long-rumored) Kin 2 being tested by a Microsoft associate of mine. It’s not really major news, but I have to say that I think it looks a lot better with this red-and-white keyboard — it helps set it apart from all the other sliders out there. I don’t know, maybe it attracts dirt or something, so they went all-black.

Although I grilled the man, he had nothing to add RE secret specs and unannounced features. Curse you, Microsoft, and your corporate compartmentalization!

Today was the day that pigs flew. Seemingly out of no where (or, arguably, perfectly timed to downplay all the recent rabble rousing surrounding some new terms added to the SDK), Opera Mini has been approved for the iPhone.

It’s not going to be available in the US for a few more hours, but we were able to dig it up by tinkering around with some settings and, well, pretending we were somewhere else. I’m checking it out right this second, but I wanted to give you guys a really quick hands on demonstration, along with a few early impressions and speed tests, to tide you over until it’s available everywhere.

We’ll update this post with any impressions we’ve got, and basic Safari vs. Opera Mini load time test results.

Update – First Impressions:

• Just in general use so far, the page loads seem pretty snappy. I’m not going to play psychic and try to guess how much faster/slower it is than Safari, but I’ll have some test results on that in a few.
• Scrolling is a bit more sensitive than it is in Safari. This takes a minute or two to get used to, but I’m liking it so far; I feel like I’m getting around the page faster.
• It’s by all means first release software. The page renderer shows things in a weird way (an artifact of it rearanging text to fit in one zoomed viewing window, removing the need to scroll around) sometimes.
• The tabbing system seems really, really great. I prefer it over Safari’s, even. Unlike Safari, you can view all your open tabs without blocking the entire page. New tabs open instantly to your home page (which is a 3×3 grid of your favorite sites), and you can punch in your destination URL from there. I’m sitting here jumping back and forth between 3 different tabbed windows, and there’s next to zero delay. It’s absolutely fantastic, and how I wish tabbing was done in Safari.
• Opera Mini compresses everything on the server side before sending it to your device, which is why it (theoretically) speeds things up and allows you to use less data. Alas, this means that if Opera’s servers go down, so does Opera Mini. I’ve seen the servers go down once already for about a minute during my testing, but this was presumably due to some last minute change that required a restart. When it goes down, all pages return a “Internal Server Error”.
• There are definitely bugs. It’s not terribly broken by any means, but bug spottings are common.
• The multitouch pinch to zoom here is …weird. It’s not like Safari’s, where you’re really controlling the zoom level; you’re really just switching between zoomed and not zoomed.

Update – Speed Tests:

Our first speed tests are in.

• 3G Speed Test:

On a 3G connection, Opera Mini is consistently and considerably faster than Safari. We only saw one site (Facebook) where Opera Mini wasn’t the clear victor, and the load times there were within about a second of each other. Both browsers had clear caches and histories, and all pages loaded were their standard PC versions (rather than their mobile-optimized counterparts).

• WiFi Speed Test:

WiFi results were strikingly similar to the 3G results, with all pages loading faster on Opera Mini than on Safari outside of Facebook, where Safari wins by a hair. The difference in page load times were considerably less vast on WiFi.

Reader James writes,

I’m looking at getting a gaming notebook and am ready to drop some good cash on one, but don’t know which one to buy. High-end gaming notebooks seems to be something of a niche product now as they are only available from a few companies.

I think I’ve narrowed it down to either the Alienware M17x, Asus G72JH, or the Origin EON18. You guys play with any of these? I think I just need someone to tell me which one I should buy.

Funny you should ask, James. We’re arranging a round-up of all three of those, plus a few others right now. Stay tuned, but our commentors will no doubt lead you in the right path, too.

Have a question you would like answered by the masses? Send it to us at tips@crunchgear.com.

Good news for Opera (and its legions of fans around the world): the company has just announced that its mobile browser Opera Mini has been approved for iPhone and iPod touch on the App Store.

The app will be available as a free download within 24 hours, depending on which market you are located in.

The iPhone app was shown off by the Norwegian software company to a small circle of reporters at the most recent Mobile World Congress (us included). Opera then officially submitted Opera Mini for iPhone to the Apple App Store on March 23.

Here’s a little smidgen of info that escaped the announcements and hands-on today. The specs page at kin.com is a bit… non-literal, so there’s not a lot of information on what model of CPU it’s running, what amount of RAM, and so on. But we do now know that they’re Tegra-based and likely share a fair amount of hardware DNA with the Zune HD. That doesn’t mean you can expect Zune apps and games on there — but it does mean decent graphics acceleration. And it also means they know the hardware and can tune it however they like — to enhance battery life, for instance.