DigiTimes is now reporting that Asus is planning to launch an Android-based handset, which confirms some rumors we’ve heard. They were invited to join the Open Handset Alliance after all. The phone will apparently be available sometime in the first half of 2009, and might land in Taiwan first under ASUS’ own brand before coming our way in the form of different customized models. As you might expect, no other details at this point, but sources say that ASUS will be phasing out its use of the Ericsson Mobile Platform for handset platforms from Qualcomm and Marvell.

ASUS’s new Eee PC S101 will be landing in the States on November 1st. Landing with a thud thanks to it’s hefty $699 price tag, not due to it’s weight. You’ll get a new super-slim enclosure that’s just 0.75-inches thick, but the specs are pretty standard.

It sports an Atom N270 processor, 1GB of RAM, matte 10.2-inch 1024 x 600 LED-backlit display, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, multi-card reader, multi-touch touchpad, VGA webcam, 5.4 hours of quoted battery life that you can believe when you see it and Windows XP. No Linux option in the States. It all weighs only 2.3 pounds. This expensive laptop comes in copper brown and graphite varieties. Are you impressed?

Asus ups it’s LCD inventory with four new high-end displays arriving this month. The VK266H and VW266H are 25.5 inches, making them the largest Asus has offered. The VK246H and VW246H are the new 24 inch models. All feature the company’s new Splendid Video Intelligence Technology, 1,920 x 1,200, Full HD 1080p video playback via an HDMI input, with a 20,000:1 contrast ratio, a nice improvement over the current 3,000:1 of Asus’ flagship. Specs are identical on all four, with the VK266H and the VK246H having built-in webcams. No word on pricing just yet.

ASUS just announced a dedicated videophone. The AiGuru SV1 lets you get in on virtually unlimited video calls without using a computer. Oh my. It sports a “simple-to-use, icon-based interface” too. Oh dear. I hope my grandson can explain this to me.

The SV1 features an 800 x 600 pixel 7-inch LCD, integrated speaker and mic (or jacks for your own), a VGA-quality webcam, and connects to the Internet over 802.11b/g WiFi or Ethernet. If you need to, it can even run off battery for a whopping 20-minutes should you absolutely need to. It’s available for pre-order in Europe and North America today for $300 and ships in October. Basically, it all adds up to a very grandma friendly phone…That she may still be scared of. It all sounds so difficult dear. Forget the phone, I’m just going to play Bingo.

While everyone else is trying to get your dollars by offering various colored laptops or laptops with art prints on them, Asus is taking it one step further by offering a dimension not of sight or sound, but smell. ASUS has a new line of fragrant laptops.

It gets better.(Or worse depending on your perspective) The fragrance will match the graphics, so that as you work the day away, you can trick your nose into thinking you are at the beach or something. It’s aimed more toward female users though, with four special edition laptops. Floral Blossom is pink and flowery, Musky Black sports graffiti art emits a…earthy musk; Morning Dew comes in pastel green and probably doesn’t emit Mountain Dew odor, while Aqua Ocean smells like the sea. Pretty strange. No price yet, but you’ll smell it coming.

For most computer users who want more than one display adding a second isn’t that hard if you have a video card that supports dual monitors. Going above a pair of displays requires an additional video card. This can be in the form of a USB adapter or actually installing a second video card into your PC, which can be a hassle.

Thankfully DisplayLink promises to make that difficulty a thing of the past by allowing you to simply connect a second, third, or even more displays via a simple USB connection. ASUS has announced that its new VW223B 23-inch LCD and its VW202B LCD are both DisplayLink Certified.

Today marks the launch of the new NVIDIA GTX 280 video cards. These cards are replacing the dual GPU 9800 GX2 as the king of the performance from NVIDIA. The new video card uses only one GPU and is NVIDIA’s first all new video card class in a while.

ASUS has announced details of its GTX 280 called the ENGTX280/HTDP/1G. The card ships with ASUS’ SmartDoctor utility to adjust the shader clock to provide more performance. The GTX 280 has 1GB of GDDR3 memory. Pricing for the card is $649.99.

Looks like Asus has been working on an official handwriting recognition add-on for the Eee PC. Which is good news if you’ve been trying to mod your DS to do the job, but failing miserably. It was demoed at last weeks Computex show, and it accepts English and simplified Chinese characters via the Eee’s USB port.

The touch pad is just over 2-inches across, with the whole thing measuring 4.3 x 4.4 x 0.7 inches. If you’re big on handwriting, you’ll have to wait. How long we’re not sure. No launch date or price info yet.

Asus ditched their plans for all-bamboo laptops, much to the delight of bamboo chewing Pandas everywhere. Instead they’ve revealed the U6, which is only bamboo trimmed for that we’re still green statement. I have to say, the look works.

If laptops evolved from the old wood-grain atari console, this is what they would look like. You’ll pay for all that elegance, as it will cost you around $2000. Apparently, plans for the all-bamboo Asus EcoBook were scrapped when heat management became an issue. Good thing too, because otherwise we wouldn’t have this looker.

Are you as weirded out as I am? I’m not sure if it’s the strange tomato color or the fact that two nunchuks appear to be mating. They were seen recently at a trade show in Taipei. We think they must be connected through a wireless usb transmitter and it would make sense if they were compatible with the company’s new desktop.

It would not only be good for most types of games, but could obviously be used as a wireless mouse as well. I’m guessing there must be a few extra buttons we aren’t seeing judging by the 10 and 11 buttons. Word on the street is that the price will be $70 whenever it comes out into the open. Check out a video below to see these in action.

Some of us just can’t get enough TV shows no matter where we are. For those people, the Asus My Cinema U3100 Mini is an awesome device. Your computer just needs a free USB slot. It’s bus powered, so there’s no need for an external power adapter, and with Asus’ Pop-Up TV technology, you will get instant display TV channels on your monitor without having to manually launch programs.

It’s compatible with the Asus Eee PC, so you can watch your favorites anywhere, never missing an episode again. It also works with all Windows XP and Vista platforms. Show recordings are also easy, just make sure you have enough storage space.

When two devices collide into one new hybrid device, the results can often be “What the hell were they thinking?”. This hybrid from Asus is one such cross-breeding experiment. It’s a flash drive from Asus that is also a wireless mouse. While it’s not the worst I’ve ever seen, I don’t see myself using this anytime soon.

Being a flash drive, it must be as bulky as it looks, so you wouldn’t want this in your pocket. As far as the mouse goes, who can use something that small? This isn’t for me, but if it pleases your tiny hands, you’ll have to wait for pricing and availability info, as we simply don’t know yet.

These days everyone is going green. It’s not just for peace loving hippies anymore. That’s why Asus has their eye on a greener line of products. The idea is to make computers and notebooks out of environmentally friendly materials like bamboo. It makes sense, and not just from a Panda luring standpoint. Bamboo is not only environmentally friendly, but also very tough.

Asus products that will be made with bamboo include notebooks, LCDs and Mini PCs. They claim that they’ve figured out a special manufacturing process to make it even more durable. While the idea will not singlehandedly save Mother Earth, it will help a tad, while giving everything a nice retro look. My one concern is that when they harvest all the bamboo, the Pandas will be coming for our laptops.

ASUS has a new, very cool looking GPS they are bringing to market with among the many nice features has actual textured, realistic 3D landmarks in major areas which display along the route to help make navigating tricky intersections a little easier. The ASUS R700 also rotates the display as you drive to give the driver a perspective from the direction they are going. The device comes with the recently popular wide 4.3″ LCD touchscreen display and measures a mere half-inch thick.

The R700 also houses Bluetooth features to handle hands free calling, answer calls and even read out SMS messages. As many GPS devices it also will handle playing MP3 music files, videos and displays pictures. Sound from the device for the multimedia, driving directions and phone conversations can be pumped through the cars FM stereo with the built-in FM transmitter. If that’s not enough ASUS has another model – the R700t – that features TMC (Traffic Message Channel) built-in to inform you of traffic delays or weather conditions along your route and suggest an alternative.

Today Asus announced the launch of its award-winning GPS smart phone in the U.S. early this year and will be showing the P527 at CES 2008. The Asus P527 already won one of the CES Innovation Design and Engineering awards for 2008.

It’s a pretty nice looking device and has several versatile functions, but the most unique ones have to be Travelog and Location Courier. Travelog lets users record travel routes and export data to Google Earth, while Location Courier acts like an S.O.S. beacon and is at the ready to send a user’s GPS position to up to five preset numbers. Basically, the Asus P527 has the features of a cell phone, navigator and PDA.