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We know from a brief spat of iPhone 3GS controversy that OpenGL ES 2.0 brings a new level of immersive realism to 3D gaming on mobile devices, so Android developers (and users, for that matter) should be delighted to hear that a new release of the official Native Development Kit exposes its capabilities to anyone targeting Android 2.0 or higher. As a refresher, the so-called NDK is a bolt-on to the standard Android SDK that gives folks the ability to write and compile critical pieces of functionality in native code, closer to the processor without that pesky Java virtual machine standing in the way — in other words, it’s exactly what gamers and game devs need to make Android a serious gaming platform, and better access to badass 3D capabilities are a fun little piece of the puzzle.

It kinda got buried beneath the X10 mini and mini pro , but Sony Ericsson went ahead and threw us a Symbian-flavored bone this evening with the Vivaz pro . The phone’s nearly a dead ringer for its non-pro doppelganger — the original Vivaz — but it adds a claimed 2 millimeters of thickness, which we found to be nearly imperceptible when you’re holding it or gazing in its direction. We’ll admit this is a better looking phone (along with the Vivaz) in person than we’d figured from the press shots, but we’re still not sure we’d buy in — the UI feels a little bit like a warmed-over S60 5th Edition , unlike the X10’s thorough reworking of Android.

A gaggle of higher-ups from Sony Ericsson stuck around after the conclusion of today’s event to show off the X10 mini , X10 mini pro , and Vivaz pro in person, and we seriously can’t stress this enough: the mini twins are small . Well, either that, or the men holding them were gigantic — but we’re pretty sure it’s the former since we got around to spending some quality time with the mini pro and continued to be blown away by its diminutive stature. Rikko Sakaguchi (pictured left) had two colors of the mini plus a Vivaz pro, while Lennard Hoornik was rockin’ the original X10 plus a mini pro

We just heard about Garmin-Asus’ WinMo 6.5.3-packin’ M10 yesterday, and already the handset has been broken out for a photo shoot and hands-on review in Russia. The design itself isn’t anything otherworldly, but we have to say — we’re kind of digging the user interface

Eager to get in on the whole “ using your iPhone to pay for stuff ” revolution? Too bad your wallet is vehemently disagreeing right now. At any rate, the folks behind the Square iPhone payment system have finally seen fit to open up their solution to the public, but only in the form of a pilot.

Well aware that 140-character-loving BlackBerry owners don’t have the largest selection of Twitter applications, RIM’s given up on leaving the task to third party developers and created its own. Released today in a private beta, the app aims to take advantage of the platform’s push technology and better integrate Twitter into your message lists. Sure, we’d assume if anyone is going to be able to design a killer Twitter app for Berrys, it’s got to be the Waterloo bunch — but has it managed to create something that can replace paid apps like TweetGenius , or free, feature-packed ones like SocialScope or UberTwitter

Sure, this next item might be a little bit of a stretch, but why the hell not: according to MobileCrunch , there’s a build file from an-as-yet unknown device called the HTC Scorpion making the rounds. If the tea leaves are being read correctly (and, more to the point, if they’re real tea leaves and not some sort of bogus tea leaf substitute) we’re looking at a 1.5GHz Snapdragon device with WiMAX support, which means it could potentially be HTC’s long-rumored Android smartbook , or at least a spiritual successor to the Shift . We’re also told that the mysterious device is codenamed Olympian, and that it could sport a new version of Android (build ID FRE65C — being billed as Android 2.2).

The NFL Hall of Fame 2010 announcement will be live today. The Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2010 will include Russ Grimm, Rickey Jackson, John Randle, Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith. They are joined by seniors committee finalists Dick LeBeau and Floyd Little.

A quick glance at that render we’d obtained of the rumored MOTOSPLIT had us thinking we were seeing a large, Sholes -style phone with a musclebound OMAP3 core, but hold up — maybe this is a lower-end (and stranger) phone than we’d originally thought. Android Community has gotten tipped with additional details and another supposed render of the handset, and the most notable tidbit here seems to be that the phone is said to use dynamic key labels ( a la Samsung Alias 2 ) to let the user pull out a single side as a numeric keypad or both sides (hence the “SPLIT” in the name) for full QWERTY action