Remember the Dell Thunder and the other weather-themed droids that leaked in April? The Thunder even starred in a video. No, it's not official yet but it already has its first preview!

Engadget got their hands on a couple of Dell Thunder prototypes and managed to confirm some specs while raising questions about others. The units were far from production ready – one ran Android 1.6 Cupcake, the other 2.1 Eclair and the software had support for hardware that wasn’t present (e.g. an HDMI port).

And both Thunders had LCD screens rather than the AMOLEDs we were expecting. This could be just for the prototype (or is Dell feeling the AMOLED shortage too?). Anyway, one of the screens had the usual 480×800 WVGA resolution, though Engadget claim the other screen had a resolution possibly as high as 1280×768.

Video Below!

Apparently if you drag audio and video files over to your iDisk, you can now stream those selfsame files from the cloud. It's not quite a Celestial Jukebox it's only 20GB max but it could be useful for those who are into listening to a new album on the go without sideloading in iTunes.

Everyone is talking about iTunes in the cloud and this ain't it. However, it's an interesting addition to a seemingly dead service in the iTunes universe.

The 3D craze continues to find its way into the cell phone market. Sharp has today announced plans to launch a smartphone that features both the 3D screen (pictured) and the3D camera the company unveiled earlier this year. While this doesn't come as much of a surprise, a Sharp representative today stressed the phone will be available by year end – globally.

Commanding a market share of about 25%, Sharp leads the cell phone industry in its home market of Japan but has been rather cautious in selling phones internationally in the past years. In the smartphone segment, the company has (even in Japan) not much to offer (provided you don’t see those Japanese “super feature phones” as smartphones).

There are no details yet regarding  pricing, specs, exact launch dates and target markets.

But to recap, the 3D parallax barrier display Sharp showed in April doesn’t require glasses to view 3D images and is actually a touchscreen (3.4 inches) made for the Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo’s next portable console.

Amazing Essentially on a pair of glasses that's equipped with a battery, LEDs, a microcomputer, and a magnetic direction sensor even though the system (unfortunately) needs more hardware to make it actually work.

All that users need to do is to input the destination on a portable mini computer (the user's current location is detected via GPS). The main bullet point is the magnetic detection sensor that can detect which way the user is facing. If the user starts walking in a certain direction, the LEDs attached to the glasses light up in green or red, indicating whether it's the right or wrong direction.

That way, users are guided to their destination without having to look at a display the whole time, which makes this PNS more convenient and less dangerous to use, according to the makers of the navigation system, the Nakajima Lab at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo.

Here is the Video:

You loved Visa and Device Fidelity's attempts at turning your iPhone into a credit card. You were dazzled by the possibility of leaving behind that 1mm of inconvenience next time you go out for burritos. However, you lamented the possibility that such a dream may never come true.

Lament no more, friends, for today, Bloomberg reported that AT&T, Verizon, and T-mobile are plotting together to bring near-field communication payment systems to their phones in a big way.

So big, in fact, that reports are saying that they willcompete against credit giants Visa and Mastercard, partnering instead with Discover Financial Services to process the payments, and Barclays Plc to handle the accounts.

This will, of course, require not only new payment equipment in retail outlets, but also a new piece of technology integrated with a phone that people actually use (cue Visa’s iPhone case), but with the three biggest phone carriers in the US getting behind the project, expect a solution to this problem to come soon.

A pilot program is about to start in Atlanta and three other cities, where people will be able to pay with a wave of their “smartphone”, but I have no idea if this will involve a whole new phone, a case for their existing (and compatible) phone, or a sticker for the back of any phone/thing (which Mastercard have already started trialling).

Who knows which company or solution will win out in this war, but there’s one thing you should expect: your phone will eventually replace your wallet.