Hot New Handsets For The Holidays

With the gift-buying season fast approaching, makers of handsets and smartphones outdid themselves this week, rolling out several new devices for the got-to-have-it-now crowd. First up is San Francisco-based Peek's TwitterPeek, a device built exclusively to read and post messages to the Twitter microblogging service. The TwitterPeek was released Tuesday and it's available exclusively from Amazon.com.

Billed as "the world's first Twitter mobile device," TwitterPeek includes a color screen, a full QWERTY keyboard and promises four to five days of battery life. In addition to sending and receiving Tweets and direct messages, users can also view links as plain text as well as pictures posted to Twitter via the Twitpic image service. Peek is touting the device for both Twitter die-hards and new users. "Even businesses that Twitter will dig TwitterPeek as a convenient way to stay connected with their customers," said Amol Sarva, founder and CEO of Peek, in a statement.

For end users, the TwitterPeek offers to keep them tied to Twitter while they're on the go without having to spend big bucks for a smartphone or data service plan. At the same time, TwitterPeek promises more functionality than users get from SMS messaging to Twitter via a basic cell phone. The catch, of course, is that TwitterPeek is not a smartphone: It does Twitter; that's it. But it still sports some nifty features. Pricing for the device starts at $99, which includes six months of unlimited nationwide service. After that, the service costs $7.95 per month. Or users can spend $199 for the device and lifetime unlimited service.

It seems everyone wants a Google Android-based smartphone these days, and now Sony Ericsson has its own offering. Sony Ericsson confirmed Tuesday it would launch the Xperia X10, the first in what the company said is a family of Android phones it plans to release in the coming year. The Xperia X10 -- known as "Rachel" in its development phase -- is 3G- and Wi-Fi-compatible, has a touch screen, has an 8-megapixel camera and can support apps from either the Google Android Market or Sony Ericsson's own Play Now Arena.

The Xperia X10 runs on Android version 1.6, according to Sony Ericsson, and sports a 1GHz Snapdragon processor by Qualcomm. Sony Ericsson is also touting the phone's social networking capabilities through such features as Sony Ericsson Timescape, which aggregates various communication feeds from sources like Facebook, Twitter and e-mail, and Sony Ericsson Mediascape, with which users access Web content like music and videos. Sony Ericsson didn't confirm pricing, launch date or in which countries the phone will be available.

Motorola has confirmed that it will release its Droid handheld -- the first smartphone based on Google's Android 2.0 platform -- in the U.S. this week, with a European version called the Motorola Milestone to follow. The Milestone will be released in Italy and Germany, with Vodafone and 02 on board as the carriers. In the U.S., Motorola is teaming up with Verizon for its Droid rollout. Milestone has almost all of the same features as Droid, including the 3.7-inch touch screen, 5-megapixel camera and slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Two differences are that Milestone supports High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) instead of the U.S. Droid's EV-DO Rev A, and its memory card sports only 8 GB instead of the Droid's 16 GB.