Pick your poison: Vodafone Netherlands? T-Mobile UK? A shop associated with Orange? Or heck, how about RIM itself? All of the above have started teasing the BlackBerry Bold 9780 recently, RIM's oft-leaked upcoming replacement for the Bold 9700 -- so it seems like this will be a pretty wide-scale deployment around the globe (as most of RIM's launches tend to be). We've yet to see any leaks via American carriers, but we'd say it's safe to argue that AT&T (and perhaps T-Mobile, too) will be signed up to take delivery of these things before too long. As a refresher, the 9780 is basically a 9700 with a better camera, more RAM, and BlackBerry 6 preloaded... so if you love your 9700, you're probably going to love the 9780 even more. Timing is unclear, but one carrier -- Vodafone Netherlands -- has proclaimed that it'll have 'em in early November.

Update: Video review with smooth dutch delivery (subtitled in english) posted after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent these in]

It was hinted at back in September, now the Chinese-language Economic Daily is reporting that the Garmin-ASUS joint venture will end in January after the two-year deal expires. We've heard this from our own sources as well. At that point, Asus will return to flooding the market with indistinguishable product iterations and Garmin will go back to watching GPS-enabled smartphones (and now tablets) eat away at the dedicated personal navigation device market. ASUS is expected to continue making GPS-enabled smartphones under the ASUS brand with Garmin providing navigation and mapping software.

Surprise of surprises! On the day that Europeans finally got to dig into the Windows Phone 7 cake in earnest, Twitter's official app for the hot new platform has also gone live. We've downloaded it to our own WP7 device and are having a play around with it now. If you need a refresher as to what it looks like, check out the video after the break.

Update: Okay, we can neither log in nor get signed up at present, though others have clearly achieved the feat already. Twitter.com itself keeps alternating between its new and old versions, so we suspect there's quite a bit of work going on behind the scenes at present. To answer your queries, loading time from the live tile menu to the top tweets page above is approximately three seconds, while scrolling is basically identical to the perfection available on WP7's own apps. Swiping laterally gets you into Trends, Suggested, and Nearby categories which take a couple of moments to load up their tweets, but otherwise match the performance.

Exiting to the live tile menu throws you out of whatever you were doing and re-entering the app -- as is par for the Windows Phone 7 course right now -- means starting from scratch. The only way you can save you state is by locking the phone, which takes a second or two to resume when unlocked and returns you to the exact point you were at. Great, now let us in, Twitter!

Hold up, reader David Gordon points out that you can hit the live tile menu via the Windows/Start key and then return to Twitter through the Back button, yay, that works too.

Update 2: There are still errors being thrown up, but we finally got ourselves logged in. Well, it looks just like the vid promised it would and the app itself is working flawlessly, there are no processing delays that we can see. Oh, and there's a landscape mode. Our only bugbear is that there's no differentiation between your own tweets and those of your friends. Ah well, check out the gallery below.

Yes, folks, it's true: Engadget's capable of scooping itself at its own reader meetup, as evidenced by the BlackBerry Style we just checked out at RIM's booth here. The phone is pretty much what you'd expect from what you've seen in the shots so far, essentially a clamshell riff on the Curve line; to that end, we'd argue that it feels a little cheaper than your average Bold, but it still seems to be a marked improvement from the Pearl flips of days gone by -- and at $99 on contract, we think that's exactly the market they were likely going for. Interestingly, the keyboard looks more like a Bold component than a Curve one... and depending on the faction of BlackBerry users you fall into, that's either a very good or a very bad thing. Like the old Pearl flips, the Style's definitely large and in charge, boasting dimensions barely smaller than the Bold -- when closed! Check out the gallery below.

For extended trips away from an outlet (or "mains," for the British among us), the iPhone instills far less confidence than some of its rivals for two simple reasons: one, you can't carry a second battery even if you want to; and two, the ubiquitous, dime-a-dozen micro-USB cables that you find everywhere simply aren't going to do you any good in the event you want to jack in to your laptop's USB for a quick charge. Sure, your local Apple Store is happy to rob you blind of $20 for an extra iPod cable... but we digress.

Naturally, the iPhone's ginormous accessory industry has come to the rescue in a pretty big way. Mophie's Juice Pack Air series (and products like it) are the most integrated solution: you trade in some of your phone's slimness and sexiness in exchange for a combination case and extended battery. Unless you're taking your phone to the backwoods and you don't plan to reemerge for a few days, it's theoretically going to have you covered -- you just need to be willing to carry around some extra girth. Another option, though, is to simply carry around an external battery pack. Doesn't sound very appealing at first, but consider the advantages: your iPhone still looks like an iPhone, you can use the designer case of your choosing, and if you're in a situation where you don't think you're going to need it, you just don't bring it with you. No muss, no fuss.

That, of course, is where the Juice Pack Boost comes into play. Does it deliver on the promise? Let's find out.

The last we heard about Acer's Liquid Metal smartphone, an Android 2.2 unit with a 3.6-inch display and a lovely aluminum exterior, it was getting ready for a UK launch at the end of October. There's just a little over a week left to meet that date, and all we have to show are some decidedly unofficial photos from Droid Sans. The first pic, above, shows off a very smudged up looking Liquid Metal (or what is said to be a Liquid Metal at least), but after that are photos of two mystery devices. The first of those (pictured below) has the same... distinctively lengthy form factor of the GW990, while the other device is a tablet that we've not laid eyes on before. It looks to be running Android 2.2 (or later) and is said to be "big enough to shift the iPad." We're not sure exactly how to parse that bit of auto-translation, but maybe it's a coded reference to JT Wang's prediction of doom for the iPad's market share.

Just as promised, Denmark-based Lumigon has finally lifted the curtains over its much hyped T1 Android handset. Specs include an 800MHz Freescale i.MX515 chipset with an optional Qualcomm HSDPA modem, along with a 3.5-inch 480 x 800 capacitive touchscreen LCD, 5 megapixel autofocus camera, A-GPS, Bluetooth and FM radio. What the Scandinavian company's really selling here, though, is the phone's multimedia features: not only does it have a FM transmitter, a HDMI dock and Bang & Olufsen's renowned ICEpower audio amplifiers, but it also doubles up as an "innovative" universal remote control for your various AV devices -- pretty unique for an Android device, we'll give you that. Interestingly, the press release omits any mention of Froyo, so here's a glimmer of hope that Lumigon will manage to skin whatever the latest version of Android will be in time for the launch -- a few lucky outlets will receive the phones "by the very end of this year," just in time for your Christmas refunds.

Oh, and remember the sister handset S1? We're now told that this T9 slider won't be out until Q3 2011. Sometimes it's better to take one step at a time, eh?

We like us a little intrigue in our handsets, and we'd say this definitely qualifies: Nokia has apparently quietly slipped NFC circuitry into its just-launched C7 without bothering to mention it in any of the phone's literature. What does that mean? Well, Nokia's not saying, curiously -- but the company has experimented with using NFC for a variety of things over the years, and cashless transactions and contact information exchange are obviously two of the biggies. This actually dovetails nicely with that teaser for the Swipe payment and receipt management system that Nokia put out not long ago, so we wouldn't be surprised if it ultimately had something to do with that; they're saying there'll be an announcement eventually, but for now, all we can do is let the theories run rampant.

Fleshing out what constitutes a 3G versus a 4G wireless technology is like trying to objectively quantify whether Coke or Pepsi is the superior beverage -- but for what it's worth, the UN's ITU is widely recognized as the closest thing we have to a final word (on the Gs, that is, not the colas). They've just issued a press release stating that of six technologies nominated for IMT-Advanced (the formal name for 4G) certification, just two have emerged victorious: 802.16m WiMAX 2 -- also known as WirelessMAN-Advanced -- and LTE-Advanced. That would leave Sprint, Verizon, and everyone else currently deploying WiMAX and LTE technically false in advertising their latest-generation services as "4G," though with so many technologies crowding the 3G space, we can't necessarily blame them; heck, even EDGE and CDMA2000 without EV-DO technically qualify as 3G in the eyes of the ITU, so yeah, the situation is really just as muddled as ever. For what it's worth, neither 802.16m nor LTE-Advanced are live anywhere in the world -- and they aren't expected to be for some time -- so whether you like it or not, the UN says you're still living a 3G existence no matter where you're located. So close! Follow the break for the ITU's release.

The Android 2.2 upgrade situation on the Galaxy S has been a veritable rollercoaster of emotions for owners recently, owing in no small part to the seemingly final firmwares that have been briefly posted and pulled from the company's servers in parts of the world over the past couple weeks. Nordic countries have already sample the goods, but Sammy says that a "new" firmware update will be available in early November in the UK and should hit "all operator versions" of the phone (presumably including the Vibrant, Captivate, Epic 4G, and Fascinate) by the end of November. YouMobile is reporting that existing regional updates have been pulled due to general not-awesomeness, so hopefully they'll have a chance to get it right over the next couple weeks before it starts hitting again. Follow the break for Samsung's press release.

AT&T's balance sheet just keeps looking happier and happier every quarter. In spite of the company's somewhat questionable hardware choices -- such as picking the ugly option from both Samsung's and LG's Windows Phone 7 platters -- it now proudly boasts a total of 92.8 million active wireless service lines. This comes off the back of a 2.6 million net subscriber gain over the third quarter of 2010, a record for this period of the year. Churn, or the rate at which people left AT&T, was also at at its best ever for the quarter, coming in at a lowly 1.32 percent, while postpaid integrated device (read: smartphone on a contract) activations reached above the eight million mark. Total net profit was $12.3 billion, thanks to the sale of Sterling Commerce and a one-off tax adjustment, but in cashflow terms the company made $4.0b in the quarter. That's a lot of dinero, no doubt aided by Q3 being the first full reporting period after the iPhone 4's launch, we just wish some of AT&T's other phones weren't quite so unappealing.

It doesn't seem to have been originally announced as a part of Verizon's initial 38-city deployment, but Big Red's just unveiled that Charleston, West Virginia will be getting blanketed with LTE this year -- and some ten cities in the state will get the 4G treatment between now and 2013. The state's so fired up about the news, in fact, that it'll be hosting a press conference with Verizon CTO Tony Melone and senator Jay Rockefeller next week to talk about the news... and hey, considering what we know about the theoretical download speeds LTE can offer, we can't say we blame 'em. Follow the break for the announcement.

No more wondering or speculation, Nokia's CEO just announced on the Q3 earnings call that its first MeeGo device won't be coming this year. In no uncertain terms, Stephen Elop said that Nokia's, "First MeeGo device will be a 2011 event." A device rumored to be the N9, pictured above. In general communications about new Nokia products will be made far closer to product availability. Elop added that his first impression of Nokia's MeeGo work "inspires both confidence and excitement." Let's hope so, in Q1 2011 Nokia's MeeGo smartphone OS will be battling resurgent webOS and Windows Phone 7 devices in addition to the Android, iOS, and BlackBerry incumbents at the high-end of the market.

Look out, Google Maps Navigation -- here comes a little friendly competition from across the pond. While we'd heard the term HTC Locations bandied about a bit during the company's London launch of the Desire HD, now it looks as if both HTC and TomTom are ready to make their newfound friendship official. TomTom will be partnering with HTC in order to provide maps for phones loaded with HTC Locations, which is hailed as a new mapping system that results in a "zero-wait navigation experience." Initially, at least, it'll only be available on the new HTC Desire HD and HTC Desire Z smartphones in Europe and Asia, but the outfit promises to extend that to a wide variety of future phones and geographies. It should be noted, however, that while map and location content come preloaded on HTC Locations, turn-by-turn by guidance has to be purchased separately.

T-Mobile USA's tweet pretty much says it all -- the Defy is nigh -- and you'll be able to pick Motorola's ruggedized handset come November 3rd for a penny under $100 on-contract. It's not the fastest handset on the block, saddled as it is with both Blur and Android 2.1, but there's nothing quite like a handset that you can stab with a pen or dunk in the drink while it's still turned on.

Things are turning upside down in Espoo today. Besides, earnings and reported job cuts of some 1,800 employees, Nokia also announced that it'll be streamlining its development strategy to unify environments for Symbian and MeeGo. Nokia's new approach calls for the adoption of Qt, and only Qt, as its application development framework from today onward. Here's what that means for new N8 owners:

You can buy a Nokia smartphone confident that any improvements introduced later to the Symbian platform, such as the user interface, can be made available to download on your device as well. No need to wait for Symbian^4 - the improvements we were planning for Symbian^4 will be introduced as and when they become available. In fact, we will no longer be talking about Symbian^3 or Symbian^4 at all – it will be one constantly evolving and constantly improving platform.

Sounds like a smart move to us. After all, it's Symbian's UI, and not the OS, that we have the most trouble with -- an issue that Nokia readily concedes. So the faster they can improve it -- even pieces of it in a continuous evolution of the experience -- the better. Nokia also announced support for HTML5 web content and applications for the Symbian and MeeGo platforms in both Qt and the browser. Click through for the press release and to hear Rich Green, Nokia CTO, discuss the new strategy.

Nokia's quarterly results have just been made public and the company's devices plus services sector has actually improved its income relative to last year: €7.2b of revenue was collected over the past three months versus €6.9b in the same period a year ago. Operating profit has also pepped up, going from the previous €785m to €807m. You'd think this would augur well for Stephen Elop's beginning at the helm, but the new man in charge is also presiding over a fundamental restructuring of operations at Nokia, which is expected to result in the redundancy of up to 1,800 employees globally. There are no specifics to tell us who'll be losing out, but the aims are the boilerplate tasks of increasing efficiency, simplifying operations, and reducing time to market. Anyway, we doubt the great people of Finland will be pleased.