2. Flash Lite 3 preinstalled when it ships later this year. It will probably be one of the first devices to market with the latest Flash Lite 3 player. Sweet. Plus OTA wifi delivery of updates on chumby means that even newer players can be “slid down the pipe”!

3. Accordingly to Steve: a Much better “fit and finish” …

Speaking of which, I had recently come across some Chumby session photos from FITC 2007 (I had to miss the Chumby session since I was doing my own concurrent Flash Lite session there) …

Anyways, not sure if these represent the final production model chumby, but they are probably close.

Pretty sleek design for the target audience of this device.

4. “dramatically enhanced user interface and functionality as Steve puts it.

Here is one preview shot:

Looks nice for what it is and what it does. Simple is better on the Chumby. Steve has more info here.

NOTE: One thing I can say is that the new chumby UI is a lot more intuitive than the OLPC XO I had the chance to see firsthand a few weeks back!

5. great new audio and video capabilities.

I think you can probably guess what this probably means in terms of audio.

Right now if you take a look at the alpha wiki, it doesn’t currently support external MP3 playback for one thing.

Secondly, Flash Lite 3 does support native Flash video. Whether this means just embedded, or with streaming capabilities remains to be seen.

6. Customization/Personalization. Check out the charms in the new photo above. I bet we’ll see a lot more on this front! Hope to see more soon, as it is one it’s major selling points IMHO. Some people (mostly younger gen) got nutz over this stuff!

Just look to Japan and mobile charms for a simple example.

Here in the US, I would say it’s definitely becoming a much more popular consumer trend (mobile personalization and customization, that is) now a days.