Well, well, it looks like Camangi’s WebStation is finally making good on its shipments. The first of Gear Diary’s two pre-orders arrived and the gang has been more than happy to put together quick unboxing video for us to enjoy. It’s a pretty standard box with equally customary assortment of packaged accessories, suction cup stand (pictured) notwithstanding. The 7-inch Android tablet looks pretty matched with the Nook in terms of overall size, but by design that lends itself to having a larger overall screen. Not much in the way of impressions at this point, but if you’re the type of person who can be satisfied with a video and a handful of product / comparison shots, hit up Gear Diary for the still frames and stay tuned after the break for the “moving pictures” version.

Camangi went live with the launch of Camangi-WebStation.com this morning. In addition to links to their Android apps marketplace page, CamangiMarket.com, they released full details on their 7-inch Android running WebStation tablet PC.

If you missed the Camangi WebStation announcement that we posted over the weekend, catch up here. Aside from the base specs mentioned in the previous post, we now know that the WebStation features a resistive touch screen encased in glass, measures 4.72″ high by 7.87″ wide by .57″ deep and weighs a fairly light 13.75 ounces. It will be available in three colors: pearl white, piano black and light pink (although black and pink versions won’t be available at launch).

Here’s some other news that may excite some people. In addition to the video, audio and image viewing capability, the WebStation has an integrated eBook viewer that can read ePub and TXT files. This is an Android device so all that really means is it saves you from having to download an eReader app, but it’s still nice for it to be included. The WebStation comes preloaded with English, Japanese, French, Spanish, German and simplified language support.

Unfortunately it looks like the webcam and 2MP camera didn’t make the final product cut. We’re disappointed because we were hoping that the integrated WiFi b/g and optional 3G capability could be coupled with the camera to make Skype conferencing possible on the go. Still, aside from the screen resolution (800×480), minimal memory (128MB of RAM) and stripped down internal storage (256MB flash but with Micro SD slot upgradable to 16GB) we’re looking at a very nice tablet netbook replacement. Those who were/are anticipating the delayed release of the CrunchPad may want to take a closer look at the WebStation. It could fulfill all the needs of the CrunchPad (the “dead simple” part) and, on the plus side, it’s actually coming out.

Camangi seems to have their game plan nailed down and it’s a pretty good one. Offering an Android app marketplace for the WebStation (also the Archos 5 Internet Tablet and Dell Streak mobile tablet) is a huge step in the right direction and a major reason first devices in a marketplace survive and thrive (like the Kindle).

I should have been in bed but I got hooked into an excellent Gilmore Gang videocast (below) this evening. Robert Scoble, Mike Arrington, P Rangaswami, Kevin Marks, and Saul Hansell talk a lot about the iPhone and Driod war, discuss the differences and then, all of a sudden, at about 39 minutes in, the conversation switches to the Crunchpad.

As I watched, I sent three important tweets out:

• “crunchpad is steamrolling” , “costs keep coming down”. “big news on that shortly” says @arrington
• Crunchpad is going to sell “for something between three and four hundred dollars” , web-only says @arrington
• “soft revenue”, “sponsorships” on Crunchpad. Sounds like ad-supported “without impacting the user experience”

There’s more in the video below.

$300-$400 dollars PLUS advertising (sponsorship) is what everyone will be talking about. For mass-market couch-surfing, that’s too expensive. The Archos Android tablet and iPod Touch have already set the pricing bar (and possibly the sizing) for home-based sofa-surfing devices.

To be fair, I don’t think Mike Arrington expects the Crunchpad to be selling millions and he understands that the home ‘pad’ market is just taking off so this, like many other 1st attempt projects, could be more of a learning and branding exercise than anything else. If you think about how Nokia are playing with their Maemo devices it’s much the same. They are nurturing awareness and developer support for a time when the market is ripe. That could be 2010, 2011 or beyond but you have to be ready to strike when the conditions are ready.

Clearly the Crunchpad is alive, it’s going to cost between 300 and 400 dollars, it’s Atom-based, it’s going to be sponsorship-supported, web-only and we should expect ‘big news’ shortly.

The ViewSonic VCP08 and possibly even the unnamed VIA MID phone may beat it to market, but ITG continues to forge ahead with plans to release the xpPhone we’ve been following since its debut in June.

I’ve been in touch with the company’s export sales manager for a few months now and received an email early this morning about the MID phone’s latest and greatest feature: customization. While the slider unit’s specs have always included a 4.8″ WVGA touchscreen, unspecified AMD Super Mobile CPU, and of course Windows XP (original specs here), a new customized order option (see below) broadens the device’s offering with choices of 4.3″ and 7″ screens, WSVGA resolution, CPU clock speeds of lower or higher than 1GHz, a 5-megapixel camera, and Windows 7.

Pricing for the original model hasn’t been released (there’s talk of it starting at $500 to $700, depending on configuration), so it’s unclear how much higher each of the upgrades would raise the price.

The ITG xpPhone, in whatever form, still doesn’t have a confirmed release date, though discussion in the company’s forum indicates that the product will hit the market in December. This seems rather unlikely, as preorders are still unpriced and these new customizations would obviously delay production, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Room in your heart (and on your end-table) for another Android tablet?  Non-Japanese geeks need not apply, but sometime between April and September next year NTT will push out this 7-inch touchscreen Android slate.  The Hikari iFrame is being positioned as one part digital photo frame and one part web tablet, with WiFi for internet access along with various widgets for weather, calendar, news and even recipes.

There’s also an SD card slot, speaker, USB port and a battery for wireless use, though NTT haven’t said how long that actually lasts.  It’s expected to be popular with Japanese women in their 20s, and be priced at between $220 and $330; NTT claim using Android rather than another OS helped bring prices down by around 20-30 percent per unit.