Now that we know the iPhone 3G S and the Palm Pre share extremely similar 65nm ARM Cortex A8-based internals, it’s time to break out the stopwatches and see how these blood brothers stack up. Anandtech has the first head-to-head tests we’ve seen, and it seems like the 3G S has the slight edge, loading a series of web pages 11 percent faster and a whopping 54 percent faster than the iPhone 3G. Not too shabby, but not exactly a thorough drubbing either — especially when you consider webOS is still 1.0 and there’s likely some optimizations to come. Full results at the read link.

Update: Anandtech had some uncharacteristically bad math going on — the 3G S is actually 21 percent faster than the Pre, which is quite notable considering the similar hardware and WebKit-based browsers.

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T-Mobile’s Sidekick LX 2009 represented a huge leap forward in the hiptop sector. Not only was the swiveling motion as smooth as ever here, but this was the first Sidekick that seemed to really take its user interface seriously. To that end, we’re interested in knowing how you — the opinionated consumer — feel about Danger’s latest effort. Are you impressed by the grown-up features? Does the form factor still have a place in your life? Is the UI snappy enough? Do you still get enough stares from potential mates when you whip it out on the subway? The floor’s yours, make it good.

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There’s been talk the last couple days about the fact that there really isn’t anywhere in the States to take advantage of the blazing 7.2Mbps downlink connection supported by the iPhone 3G S — except for one great hope, one diamond in the rough that could become a shining destination for 3G S owners the world over. That destination would be Chicago, where AT&T fired up 7.2Mbps trials late last year, and the hope was that they might be letting lay folk (like us) in on the action in time for the 3G S release. Well, we’ve been running side-by-side tests today, and the short answer is that we’re clearly not accessing 7.2 — granted, the 3G S is getting marginally faster speeds both up and down, but we figure this can easily be attributed to the new model’s faster processor because a doubling of the downlink pipe simply doesn’t account for a 100kbps bump in speed (latency was all over the map on both phones, for the record). If you’re holding out on upgrading from a 3G to a 3G S, go ahead and crack a smile — because for now, anyway, this is one spec bump that means precisely zilch in the real world.

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Seagate’s giving its FreeAgent Go drives a fresh new 640GB capacity ceiling, and while it’s not the first external to cross that 500GB threshold, it’s certainly on the thinner end of the totem pole, physically. Nothing revolutionary here otherwise, it’s still the standard USB-connected with up to 480Mbps transfer with multiple color options. Also distinctly the norm? Not a bit of info on pricing or availability, but if Seagate’s posting promotional materials on its main site, we suspect it’s not too far off.

ASUS’ Eee PC 1005HA (the cooler, younger brother of the 1008HA) impressed us when we first caught a peep of it in the wild. Internally, the two netbooks are identical — but the 1005HA boasts a user-replaceable battery, and leaves out the recessed ports and port doors (which we found to be slightly annoying — though attractive — in our review of the 1008HA). Well, it’s up on Amazon for pre-order now, which means we might be seeing this one sooner rather than later. For now, it’s priced at $349.99, but we’ll see if that price holds when it’s actually available.

Inspired by John Park’s Florence Siphon Brewer article in MAKE, Volume 17, Boris Legradic of Switzerland made this “cruder” version, mostly out of scrounged parts. In email, he says: “…it adds a certain je ne sais quoi with the potential for burning your flat down.”

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RocketJohn rigged up his motorcycle and iPhone together to keep his phone charging while being able to listen to music (with a Bluetooth headset, I’m guessing),

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The new Xbox 360 Jasper motherboard with 512MB internal MU is soon going to hit the stores in US. It’s got a 4gbit(giga bits) Samsung NAND chip inside. This is twice the size of the old one that was of 256MB of internal storage and had a good efficient design.

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