At the heart Android is, of course, Google. And that means gmail, which we love, as well as Google contacts, which we loathe. It's completely normal to end up with multiple contacts for a single person (I think I have five for Casey). Google has had the ability for a while now to merge contacts. But now things are even easier.

When you go to your contacts, you should see something like the above. Hit the "Find duplicates" button, and it does so, taking much of the work out of your hands. From there, it will merge duplicate contacts, leaving things slightly less messy. It's still not perfect, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. [via jkontherun]

Sure, the Barnes & Noble Nook is cool and all (and even cooler now that it's been rooted). But who wants one screen when you can have two? (Why, that's twice as many!)

Enter the Entourage Edge, which CNET's Ina Fried got her hands on recently.

Reminiscent of the non-announced, exists-only-in-leaks Microsoft Courier, the 3-pound Edge sports dual screens that let you flip information from one to the other. The screen on the left is e-ink, 9. inches at 1200x825 pixels. On the right is an LED screen, 10.1 inches at 1024x600.

WiFi b/g are on board, and it has an SD card slot and a pair of USB ports, in addition to a 3.5mm headphone jack. The Entourage Edge also supports Bluetooth and USB keyboards.

As the device is Android in nature, you can run Market apps on the right-hand side. All in all, pretty cool for something that weighs just 2.5 pounds. Price, on the other hand, may be an issue, with the Edge, erm, edging toward $500. But, you get a lot more screen for the money.

Entourage says the Edge will be available in February 2010.

[Entourage via CNet]

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• Much has been said of the Moto Droid's camera and its suspect quality. Well, after the recent 2.0.1 update it has improved a bit, and the pictures are halfway decent. Check out the following thread to see some shots taken with the Droid or feel free to post your own!
• With the marketplace hitting the 20,000-app mark, surely have a top 5 list? Chime in at the top 5 Android apps thread.
• With so many Android devices popping up on different carriers you are bound to have a favorite, feel free to voice your opinion and vote for your favorite.
• So you picked up an HTC Droid Eris on Verizon, but you feel a bit left out in the cold since you are currently stuck on Android 1.5? If you are hoping for an 2.0 update, be sure to check out this thread right here.

See you in the forums!

Our man Jeremy broke the bad news to us this morning: As you can see above, Beautiful Widgets is no more. It basically made your Android home screen look like HTC's Sense UI (which you get on the Droid Eris and Hero lines, as well as on newer Windows phones), but it seems developer LevelUp Studio got a nastygram from some HTC suits. Can't really say that surprises us, but it is disappointing given how much you (and us) loved it. Sorry, everybody. [Twitter]

Evernote -- the uber-popular note-taking application on Windows, Mac, BlackBerry, the Palm Pre and, of course, the iPhone and iPod Touch -- is now available on Android.

In a nutshell, for those of you not familiar, Evernote is a one-stop note-taking machine. You take notes, you tag them, put them in virtual notebooks. Your notes sync across the web, mobile apps and desktop apps. Evernote has optical character recognition (OCR) so you can take a picture of a wine label, upload it and it becomes searchable. (Pair that with Google Goggles and, well, wow ...)

Evernote is free, though there is a premium option that gives you up to 500MB a month in uploads, supports more file types, has increased security (though all accounts use SSL encryption) and includes PDF searching. The premium service is $5 a month or $45 for a year. Available now in the Android Market.

Here's a brief video of the Nexus One booting up. Not much to say about that, other than the boot animation is colorful and splashy, but we already knew that. Note that it's sitting on top of what could be the box. [via TheNexusOne]

It's not an unboxing. It's just ... a box. Bot a box with the words "Nexus One" (no, we're not going all lowercase with that anytime soon). Note the colors of the "X" in Nexus, which match up nicely with the boot screen animation we saw last night.

One more shot after the break, though it's not much to look at. We're just sayin'.

[Droiddog via TheNexusOne and TMoNews]

Here's another log to throw onto the fire of whether it's really the Google Nexus One or the HTC Nexus One, or what carrier involvement may be:

It's Google that applied for a trademark on "Nexus One" on Dec. 10, before all the hoopla began, pointing toward the Big G doing more on its own. Does it will be selling the Nexus One outright? Or that carriers won't be involved? Nope. Those questions are still very much unanswered, and we could still see an "HTC Passion" or some other similar device in the future. Stay tuned, folks.

AndroidOS.in via Electronista

Swype has been given the what-for on Windows Mobile for a while now, and it's gained a bit of a following, coming standard on the Samsung Omnia II. For the uninitiated, it's an on-screen keyboard on which you drag your finger across the screen instead of picking it up every time you type a letter.

MobileCrunch has gotten an early look at Swype on the Verizon Droid Eris, and it looks exactly the same as what I've used on Windows Mobile (as it should). If you've never used Swype, it's a very odd feeling. I'm not sold on it, but to each his own. (And it should be noted that you can still use it as a normal keyboard.)

What do you guys think? Anybody else used Swype?

Let's get a few things straight regarding the almighty Nexus One, shall we?

• There is no "Google Phone." As of this writing, the only semi-official name out there is the Nexus One.
• "Google Phone" is what it's been dubbed because Google reportedly may go it alone, bypassing carriers. But that's looking increasingly unlikely. That and it sounds good. And with Google's simple branding, coming up with something better would require, you know, thinking.
• HTC, not Google, is the manufacturer. Sure, Google likely has had a pretty big hand in the details. But that's hardly unusual in the developement of a smartphone. Usually a company such as HTC brings a basic design to the table, and then the carriers change (or break) options at will.
• Currently, no carriers have been announced. T-Mobile is the front-runner, given that the Nexus One sports a 1700MHz radio in it. And T-Mobile is the only U.S. carrier that uses 1700MHz. Dots connected.
• We don't know if it will be available for purchase by the general public. Currently, only Google employees have the Nexus One.
• We don't know when the Nexus One may be made available for sale. A Reuters story, citing (not quoting) an unnamed source, says it could be available "as early as January 5." That's not the same as "will be available Jan. 5." Remember that when your kids wake up disappointed.
• (Our favorite line from the Reuters piece: "The phone is similar to Apple Inc's iPhone but has, among other features, an exchangeable battery." OH.)
• We don't know what it will cost. Free is unlikely. And even my grandmother can speculate it will be somewhere between $99 and $299. Next.
• The Nexus One, for all intents and purposes, has the basic features of today's high-end smartphones. Large capacitive AMOLED touchscreen. Snapdragon processor. Accelerometer. All important things, but not one of them is new to smartphones. (Hell, the the Samsung Omnia II and HTC HD2 cover the spread for Windows Mobile.)

So, again, let's all take a deep breath. It's exciting anytime a new phone is discovered. And we're not even a week into the news of the Nexus One. If there's anything that really piques our interest here, it will be Google's relationship with the carriers regarding the Nexus One. Standing up to carriers is really something only Apple has been successful at so far. Microsoft has hinted at it regarding Windows Mobile 7, but that's yet to be announced, either.

We'll know more soon enough.

/rant