So it seems like the Zune HD 64 is real after all! Last time we mentioned it, it was briefly seen on the main Zune website but then it disappeared. It was obviously an untimely mention thanks to a slip up made by someone who was in-charge of updating the site. Now that we are officially in April, Microsoft has made the device official and has released details.

The Zune HD 64 is absolutely real. It was way too tame to be an April Fool’s day joke anyway. It will be coming later this month on the 12th and will be available on the Zune online store. It will be available on Zuneoriginals.com for $349.99 at first and the other retailers will come on a later date.

The 64 of course stands for 64GB and it will hence store a lot more content. This seems to be the only upgrade to the device and there’s nothing else to look forward to at the moment. Once this is released, the existing models will go through a price cut for $20. So they will become $180 and $280 respectively,

While ordering their fat new Zune HD 64 from the online store, users will be able to customize it. The colors available are platinum, black, blue, red, green, magenta and purple.

The actual wait is for the new firmware, which will likely have newer goodies that will be more worth talking about. Besides, Microsoft will surely try to pre-empt the things that Apple is thought to be coming up with when the iPhone OS 4.0 update is released. But those are still a few months away probably, so enjoy the larger capacity Zune HD on its own for now.

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Well, well, well. What do we have here? If it isn’t a mention of a Zune HD 64 on the official website. This has to be a mistake of some kind but since it is on the official page (or was, at least), this has to be have some kind of truth behind. It is not impossible that Microsoft is planning to launch a new 64GB of the Zune HD. It has already been a while since the Zune HD was launched and now, before it gets an upgrade, it is the perfect time to add a little bit extra to the line up to keep the interest going.

While the Zune HD is a completely different beast from the iPod Touch, the comparison and the ultimate competition between the two is inevitable. So with regard to that, this new addition to the ZUNE HD line up will give the brand a boost up.

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That seems to be the question on Microsoft’s marketing department’s mind right now. The previous Zune HD prices were already fairly low. At $220 for the 16GB model and $290 for the 32GB model, things weren’t all that bad. Now, the 16GB mode is lower by $30 at $190 and the 32Gb model is lowerd by $40 at $250. So now, will you buy one or just go for an iPod Touch?

A lot of critics will say that the Zune HD is not a direct competitor of the iPod Touch mainly because of their differences in purpose. Zune HD is more about playing media and doing it bloody well. The iPod Touch is basically a great pocket computer, something that Apple so precisely pointed out when the last version was launched.

But no matter how you toast you bread, it is still called toast. I mean the iPod Touch is still the biggest competitor that Zune HD has because that’s how the consumer sees it. To them, the iPod Touch represents a higher price tag but also a really high stack of features. Higher than the Zune HD. Now try and explain to them that the Zune HD’s hardware is superior to that of the iPod Touch, in terms of display quality and SoC (NVIDIA Tegra). If you do, you will find out that the average consumer rates the integrated experience of the iTunes Store and the availability of Games and apps as something that is worth paying the higher price tag.

This is not just a hypthesis. The marketshare data clearly shows that the Zune HD is not even a small threat to Apple’s PMP business. It just doesn’t show up on the graph.

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We have two pretty big things going on in the tech world at the moment. Arrington has just penned a kind of obituary to the CrunchPad – the ideal crowdsourced tablet that everyone would like. And then there are the fresh new rumors about the Google Phone, which apparently is progressing rapidly.

The juicy bits are on the other side, click away.

The Google Phone Mystery Thickens

Gizmodo apparently has it from a very reliable source that the Google phone is very real. This source has apparently see the phone and says that the device will soon be all over the Google Campus. It will probably be in an early prototype/alpha/beta phase if and when this happens.

The source also says that he has seen the phones running a new, hitherto unreleased version of the Android. It is either Flan or something more advanced. There’s something else that the source was told casually – the current Android is apparently not the real Android! Now that’s something to talk about.

OF course, none of this comes with even a shred of proof. So do take things with a pinch of salt. Whilst the whole rumor does sound nice, it helps to tone down expectations a bit. After all, this is technology and not magic. [read]

The CrunchPad Is Dead. Or Is It?

Michael Arrington has penned a heart-rending tale of greed, betrayal and sheer corporate weirdness. Apparently the company that was making the CrunchPad has now decided to take the device and sell it themselves. Arrington puts it well – it is like Foxconn telling Apple that Apple will have nothing to do with the iPhone. As you can already guess, Crunch is about to start a lot of legal cases as a result of this. No one wants to see their baby taken away from them.

Arrington lists off everything that was going for the tablet device – the hackability of it, how great the design was, how many were ready to invest in it, how a multi-million retail chain was to use its own resources to ship the tablet and sell it at little or no margin, etc.

Yes, it seems like a stupid thing to happen to me too. With so much going for the tablet, it would’ve been a no brainer to have gone on ahead with it. You get into legal battles after something becomes big, not before. If the product never reaches consumers, what’s the use of sitting on it?

So the suspicion is this – would someone be really that thick? Isn’t it obvious that the creators are not going to take this lying down? Are we looking at one last spectacle and an ad to investors and other people as to how much support this device has? Well, as a techie and gadget lover, I would really like to see this thing hit the market. So whatever the real situation is like, I hope it does not stop the product from reaching us.

Apple’s New Trademark Take Over Reeks Tablet All Over

Well, it has to when a company buys up a Trademark like TabletMac. Now we are pretty sure that they are not going to call their precious tablet something as unimaginative as that but we do know that Apple likes to control their brandings and Trademarks very, very tightly. So this might simply be a measure to keep confusion away when they do release a tablet. But this at least lets us know that the Tablet is on its way and soon probably.

The Trademark previously belonged to a company who modifies MacBooks into tablets. [read]

Nook Pre-Ordered To Crazy-ness

If you badly want a Nook this Christmas, you better hope that someone has already pre-ordered one for you a long time back. That’s because the Nook is so very much in demand that it has sold out completely on pre-order and now there are no units left to even demo at the physical stores.

Barnes And Noble has been pretty messy with this entire thing. First they said that it was being delayed, they said it was sold out and now they are saying that it will at least be December 7 before the stores get some of the units. Talk about a botched up system! [read]

Zune HD To Paint The Town On December 1^st

The Zune HD is about to get all multi-color on us. The official Zune Store seems to be have been updated with the announcement of 3 new colors in the Zune HD that are set to arrive tomorrow. Well, they had to do something to catch the buyers’ attention and three new colors is pretty good. If you want a great non-ipod PMP to gift to someone, you can now just go ahead and pick one of these colored Zunes HDs. Just make sure you do not end up buying any other Zunes. They are old stock and they are butt-ugly! [read]

Nokia Not Making More Maemo Phones [?]

It seems like Nokia is not all that interested in making Maemo phones. Or that they are not planning to make that many high-end phones, which also makes sense. Reuters has it from a Nokia insider that Nokia will be offering only one Maemo phone next year. I say that is a good thing because that would allow them to focus on one good thing instead of making several useless ones. Besides, Symbian still too big to take down that easily. [read]

Spotify Coming To The US In 2010

Shakil Khan Spoke at the NOAH09 conference recently and there he revealed that Spotify was indeed headed for US shores next year. And by next year he means real early – by Q1 2010. Germany and China do not have it that good though because their turn can come in either Q1 or Q2, it is not quite sure yet.

Spotify is also going to diversify from the handset deals into things like TVs. Looks like the service is all set to try and change the music business all over again. [read]