We knew AMD planned to upstage Intel in San Francisco this week, but we didn't realize just how far Chipzilla's rival would go -- the company's demonstrating the power of its new Zacate APU by having it trounce an Intel Core i5-520M in a graphical superhero showdown. Though we've never really thought much of Intel's integrated graphics anyhow (though we're giving Sandy Bridge's technique the benefit of the doubt), watching a netbook part beat a 2.4GHz Core i5 at anything is truly something else. While AMD won't speak to the clockspeed or price of its new dual-core chips, it says the 18W Zacate and 9W Ontario should appear in devices with over 8 and 10 hours of battery life respectively when they likely ship to consumers early next year.

Now this, this is what we call exciting. Nokia has managed to scoop up Peter Skillman from the wreckage of the HP/Palm merger. One of the many senior VPs to leave Palm upon its assimilation into the HP empire, Peter spent 11 years with his previous employer and was in charge of the design team that produced the deliciously curvaceous Palm Pre. Now at Nokia, he'll be heading up the user experience and services division for MeeGo, which means that if you weren't excited for the platform already, you've now got a very good reason to be.

Update: We met with Marko Ahtisaari, Senior Vice President of Design at Nokia, to get comment on this story. His response? "Right, I just hired him." So why not announce it, we asked, this is pretty big news? According to Marko, "We have products today, products are more interesting. Peter is looking after the user experience design of MeeGo and services and is a great new addition to the team." Marko's team, to be specific. To us this seems like another component that could help Nokia break into the US market with MeeGo.

The drama, the excitement, the fanfare. No, those aren't new HTC model names, they're just what you can expect tomorrow. HTC is hosting a little shindig in London the day after today in order to announce the latest hardware it has "dreamt up" -- and since we're suckers for hot new smartphones, we'll be there to liveblog the hell out of it. The event kicks off at 12PM British Summer Time or 1PM Central European Time. In American parlance, that's 7AM for the East Coast and a frightful 4AM for West Coasters. Our intuition says to expect the Desire HD and Desire Z to make their debuts, but there's only one way to be certain: keep it locked to Engadget and we'll demystify everything as soon as superhumanly possible.

Two weeks ago you'd have to pay an Australian importer for a specialized USB key. Four days ago open-source software let you roll your own. Today, there's no need for any of that -- you can hack your PS3 with a tethered smartphone. Working closely with the PSGroove team, hacker Kakaroto adapted the same jailbreak to the Nokia N900, and the open-source community lost no time porting it to the Palm Pre as well. If the videos after the break are any indication, both versions work just as well as the original, and you too can get your game on with downloads and detailed instructions at the source links below.

Sadly, the aforementioned Australian importer OzModChips is a casualty of this little story, with all its shipments of the PS Jailbreak dongle seized (and the item subject to injunction) by an Australian court, but we suppose knowing its product has enabled the hardware hacking community thus might somewhat soften the blow.

Panasonic must be mighty annoyed right about now, because Toshiba's seemingly got it trumped -- when the first batch of lightning-quick UHS-I cards ship in November, Toshiba's chips will be faster and larger on day one. As you can no doubt see immediately above, the latter company's fielding full-size SDHC UHS-I cards at up to 32GB that promise maximum read and write times of 95MB/s and 80MB/s respectively, not to mention tiny microSDHC units that still manage a very respectable 40MB/s and 20MB/s. As usual, these numbers are fast and loose, so don't be surprised if you get a good bit less in practice, but you should be able to rely on well above the quoted minimum transfer rate of 10MB/s. No ludicrous early-adopter memory prices quite yet, but we imagine your ego will write the necessary checks as soon Toshiba takes care of that. PR after the break.

THREEE DEEE. Sorry, just had to get that out of our system. We just played with Panasonic's HDC-SDT750 THREEE DEEE, er, 3D camcorder, and it certainly works as billed. The lens is designed for close-up depth perception in the 3 to 15 foot range, and doesn't have any zoom capability. Luckily, it isn't too hard to pop the screw-on lens off, giving yourself a regular zoomtastic 2D camcorder. When you do pop the 3D lens back on there's a quick set of setup menus, which let you adjust the dual lenses within the 3D add-on with a few knobs hidden under a door on top of the assembly.

We didn't get to do any free roaming with the camera, but that's none too thrilling anyway: your preview image is a slightly fuzzy 2D on the built-in LCD. What we did do was watch the camera feed its 3D capture live to a Panny 3D TV (in one of the hilarious outfits provide for us by Panasonic, as pictured above), and while the 3D effect is certainly for-reals and non-janky, the actual image quality takes an obvious hit from the fact that a 1080p sensor is being cut in half to capture the dual images. It almost took us back to the early days of HD cameras, or your friendly neighborhood "HD" webcam, where the output resolution is clearly higher than the sensor is physically capturing. Similarly, we doubt the early adoption of cameras like this is going to be dramatic at first, and even after the tech is perfect we're unsure how big of a consumer need there is for something like this, but with easy options like Panasonic's own Micro Four Thirds 3D lens, the barriers to adoption are quickly disappearing. Er, we merely mean to say, THREEE DEEE.

Ah, ha! If you'll recall, we happened upon a Lenovo-branded netbook of sorts back in June, but curiously enough, Freescale and Pegatron components were powering the thing. Now, it seems that yet another flavor has emerged as the Efika MX Smartbook. Frankly, we aren't too sure this thing fits into the 'smartbook' category (given the comparatively spacious 10-inch display), but we are sure that the $349 price point is borderline absurd considering the wealth of decent netbook options at or below that very MSRP. At any rate, those still interested should know that there's an 800MHz i.MX515 processor under the hood along with 16GB of NAND Flash, an MMC / SD card slot, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, a pair of USB 2.0 ports, integrated 1.3 megapixel camera, a 1,024 x 600 resolution panel and enough oomph to power through HD video, supposedly. Tap that source link if you're looking to take a risk, but we'd probably recommend against it.

So look -- RIM's BlackBerry Torch 9800 isn't exactly the barnburner-of-a-smartphone that we were hoping it'd be, but at least it looks snazzy, right? Right? Regardless of your answer to that, it's a bona fide fact that Colorware has outdone itself on this one. Usually, it's most fun to toy around with the company's endless array of hues in order to create the most hideous version of your favorite gadget before pretending to hit the order button, but for whatever reason, the first handset to ship with BlackBerry OS 6 actually looks dapper in red and white. Or maybe that's just the Wolfpack in us talking. Either way, it's available to customize now in the source link for $250 (send your own) or $1,050 (buy new sans a contract). Video's after the break, should you need one.

We're not quite sure when the Federal Communications Commission got into the habit of tearing devices limb from limb after testing their wireless radiation levels, but we have to say we're loving the trend -- and there's quite nothing like peering into the juicy innards of a new Apple device. Here, the FCC got its greasy paws on the new Retina Display-packing iPod touch, aka "Apple A1367," and in the gallery below you can see exactly where Cupertino keeps that A4 processor, 3.44 watt-hour battery, internal antenna, and 802.11 b/g/n 2.4GHz WiFi.

We had a chance to check out Philips' new GoGear Connect a few hours ago ahead of its IFA debut later this week, a brushed metal media player that pretty closely apes the Muse but adds a wee bit of girth, swaps in Android 2.1 for the proprietary OS, and adds a trackball down below. Interestingly, it's got both a 3.2-megapixel camera and edge-mounted microphone on board, meaning that it's basically just a GSM radio shy of being a full-on smartphone -- but we digress: the point is that the Connect will be going head-to-head with the likes of the Galaxy S-inspired Samsung Yepp YP-MB2 and the new iPod touch for the hearts and minds of the dedicated PMP crowd this autumn. Read on for our impressions!

It's that time of the year again! Yep, the time when most laptop makers start thinking about the holiday season and unleash a massive amount of systems. Samsung's kicking off its announcements at IFA with the SF and NF Series, both of which have a brand new wave or fin-like designs -- they were apparently codenamed "shark" within the company. Beginning with the netbooks, the NF series will hit in the coming weeks and will be available in two skus -- the ivory, single-core Atom NF210 will be $379 and the silver NF310 will have a dual-core Atom processor for $399. We got a chance to check them out a few days ago and found the overall build quality to be really solid -- we really loved the new chiclet keyboard as well as the swirly pattern on the metal touchpad. Sammy's also claiming over 10 hours of battery life on them, but we'll obviously want to test that for ourselves.

On the bigger and badder end is the SF Series. Similar to the netbooks, the mainstream laptops have glossy lids with the new wave like edges. According to Samsung's global press release, they'll be available with Core i3 / i5 processors and in three different sizes -- there's the 13.3-inch SF310, 14-inch SF410 and 15.6-inch SF510. The US team tells us the $749 Core i3-powered, 500GB hard drive-packing SF510 will hit the market soon and will be a Best Buy exclusive. We got a peek at that one as well, and similarly love the new chiclet keyboard, though we're hesitant on this one's single-button touchpad. Until we bring you some full reviews, there's additional details in the press release below and some hands-on shots in the gallery.

We've already heard some of the claims made about SHDC cards using the new UHS-I specification, and it looks like we'll now soon have our first actual cards based on the spec courtesy of Panasonic. The company has just announced some 8GB and 16GB UHS-I SDHC cards at IFA, which boast a Class 10 speed specification and promise to deliver a maximum data transfer speed of 60MB/s, or about twice that of Panasonic's current top-end cards. No word on pricing just yet, but Panasonic says they'll be out this November. Full press release is after the break.