The 60+ inch screen standing on Herald Square in Manhattan sports 1088×666 pixels of resolution, and one of the Tiles turns around to load up with live performers, which people can watch for free a few times during the day.

Redmond is not sitting still regarding the long-awaited Nokia Windows Phones, too. In France, which will be one of the first markets to get the new Lumia 800 and 710 handsets, Microsoft pulled down a gigantic banner depicting the ad for these that wraps up its whole French headquarters.

It’s stunts like these, together with events like the one we went last night in NYC, that will be drumming up excitement about Windows Phone, but ultimately work with carriers and retail salesmen that will determine its success in the stores, and Microsoft seems to be working on both ends, training 200 000 mobile sales people worldwide into the wonders of its mobile OS.

Here’s everything you need to know about the iPhone 4S!

• Two colors: Black and white
• Three capacities: 16GB, 32GB and a new 64GB flavor
• Pre-orders start October 7, shipping October 14
• Weight up 3 g to 140 g!
• Each handset is combined GSM and CDMA. Also, 14.4Mbps HSPA (up from the 7.2Mbps of the iPhone 4)
• Dual-core A5 processor
• Improved antenna
• Updated 8 megapixel (3264×2448 resolution) rear camera (up from 5 megapixels on the iPhone 4) featuring improved light sensitivity and featuring 5 lens elements and 33% faster capture (faster than the HTC Sensation, Galaxy S and Droid Bionic)
• Video recording up to 1080p (from 720p and 30fps) with image stabilization
• Bluetooth 4.0
• Talk-time battery life up to 8 hours (up from 7 hours for the iPhone 4) BUT standby tine down to 200 hours (from 300 hours for the iPhone 4)
• Siri voice control … (seems cool but only time will tell how good this actually is) supports – English (U.S., UK, and Australian), French, German

• iOS 5 out October 12 … free to all (iPhone 4, 3GS, iPad 2, iPad, iPod touch 3rd/4th gen)
• Revamped iPod nano (multitouch screen, new clock faces …)

What do you think of the new iPhone 4S. Will anyone be rushing to buy this one when it’s out?

So far the top rumors mention the iPhone 5 – a completely re-designed phone with a larger screen, better camera, an additional internal antenna for improved reception and improved CPU (dual core). There is also a rumor going around that there will be no iPhone 5, and there is simply going to be an iPhone 4s, which would simply be an upgrade to the existing iPhone. The rumors say that this will be exactly the same as the iPhone 4 with just a better camera (which is already below standard) and an improved CPU.

The latest rumor however came up a few days ago from Al Gore saying that both these devices will be launched – at once! This isn’t particularly unusual for Apple: the company has released a modified version of a previous model of the iPhone along with a new one in the past.

What do you make of Al Gore’s statement? Did the former Vice President misspeak, or did he know exactly what he was saying? October is just a week and a half away. Apple fans, salivate!

The N9 is an entirely button-less handset (with the exception of a volume rocker and camera shutter button), and is a 3.9-inch sheet of 854 x 480 AMOLED screen. On the back, that polycarbonate shell is colored all the way through so you don’t have to worry so much about those ugly scratches.

Nokia’s new MeeGo-powered handset runs an OMAP 3630 1GHz processor and comes with 16GB or 64GB of internal memory and 1GB of RAM. The phone’s 8-megapixel autofocus camera is capable of wide-angle shots, and aperture of F2.2 for high-quality low-light performance, along with the ability to capture video in 720p. The N9 also comes with a quad-band GSM radio, a penta-band WCDMA radio, along with NFC, GPS, and Bluetooth 2.1.

As far as hardware is concerned, the Nokia N9 measures in at 116.45mm x 61.2mm x 7.6-12.1mm and weighs in at 135g. Battery life is said to last 50 hours listening to music, 4.5 hours watching 720p video, or between seven and 11 hours of chit chat. The phone comes in three color flavors, including black, cyan and magenta, and will come with an ambient light sensor, compass, orientation sensor, a micro SIM slot, and tethering support.

Along with Angry Birds Magic, Galaxy on Fire 2, Real Golf 2011, and OpenGL ES 2.0, the Nokia N9 also comes loaded with a Maps app, which will offer free turn-by-turn drive and walk navigation along with voice guidance if you happen to be driving. Other software specs include a Webkit2-based browser which features pinch-to-zoom support, and a unified center for Facebook notifications. Status updates and other profiles will show up in phone contacts, and the Events view will bring up Twitter and RSS feeds.

Pricing and availability are not yet available but you can be sure we’ll be keeping a close watch on this one.

Google announced that Honeycomb will feature an easy to access multitasking toolbar, showing your recently opened and running applications, all from the home screen. Honeycomb will improve the way widgets can be displayed, allowing for developers to create widgets that are based on collections of data, which will allow for the user to run apps in ‘little windows’ on your home screen.

Android 3.0 will also come with a new notification system, with popups in the lower right-hand corner. The notifications can now contain images of friends when they send you a message. The notification system will even allow for apps, like a media player, to appear on screen, for quick access.

Honeycomb will come with hardware acceleration, and with just a single line of code, existing applications can take advantage of the 2D hardware acceleration. Honeycomb will come with a new engine for powering 3D graphics on your devices. Lastly, Android 3.0 ‘Honeycomb’ will allow support video chat, with a supported handset or tablet with a front-facing camera, using Google Talk.

The negative side of this news, is that existing Android phones will not be able to run this new operating system, since the minimum requirements to run this platform are considerably higher. This new Android 3.0 is primarily developed for tablet use.

Ballmer also confirmed, that the first Windows Phone 7 update, codenamed “NoDo,” will be out in early March 2011.

The following updates will be added to WP7 in calendar 2011:

• Twitter integration directly into the People Hub
• Support for Office documents in the cloud (Skydrive Docs), going beyond the current OneNote integration
• Dramatically enhanced Web browser experience based on IE9 (IE Mobile 9)
• A “new wave of multitasking applications” (i.e., third-party applications get multitasking support)

Joe Belfiore, the Corporate Vice President of Windows Phone Program Management, emphasized during his demonstrations of an early version of “the significant update” of the Windows Phone 7 code that the IE 9 code on the phone includes the same core IE 9 code that runs on the PC. That means apps and sites designed for IE 9 will run automatically on WP7, he said.

Belfiore also showed off the ability for Windows Phones to integrate with Kinect, allowing phone users to participate in games using their avatars.

On the platform side, Windows Phone 7 has yet to really prove itself to a large audience due to a the bad reputation that the previous Windows operating system managed to get. Some of the software we shown during the launch event was very promising, but it was also noticed that some had considerable load times. Lack of integration with social media features and copy paste features were also noticed. The company announced a near-future update which will address these issues.

All in all, however, Microsoft is most assuredly back in the smartphone game. Windows Phone 7 is a smart, easy to use, and legitimately original OS, and the folks in Redmond seem to have the partnerships and marketing in place to make an impact in a crowded field. It will be interesting to see the company reemerge in this race, and you can be sure we’ll be there every step of the way.

QPC – Articulated Naturality Web from Justin Montgomery on Vimeo.

Right now, full support is limited to the Desire HD and Desire Z, though we’re hoping HTC extends that to at least some of their more recent models. Users will also get free wallpapers and other downloads, but you’ll need a fully supported handset in order to use the tracking and remote access functionality.