Phones

LG blew it. Weeks ago, we showed you some leaked photos of its Prada touch-screen phone, which appeared to have some groundbreaking features, but the company remained mum. Now, as the obsession with the iPhone continues to dwarf any other product in the entire communications industry, LG has decided to make it official with a relative whimper.

The Prada phone will also debut in Europe and Asia long before it hits U.S. shores--like so many of the fashion house's clothing lines. (At least it's being consistent.) Engadget says it has a 3-inch display and a 2-megapixel camera … Read more

It may not be one of the big four cell phone carriers, but Alltel continues to surprise us. Today the company launched a new product called Celltop that will allow Alltel customers a new way to organize content on their phone. Celltop puts interactive, changeable windows or "cells" on your phone's display that provide shortcuts to a variety of features, including your call log and message in-box. The idea is to let you scan such information without having to press several buttons. It looks sort of cool, as we tend to like anything that makes a gadget … Read more

The AT&T acquisition of BellSouth and Cingular is final, and even though we haven't seen signs of it on Cingular's front page yet, AT&T will slowly roll out an ad campaign to phase out the Cingular brand. It won't be an overnight change, but much like the AT&T Wireless change to Cingular a few years back, subscribers will definitely see a change on their wireless bills within the next few months.

All this changing of hands from AT&T to the various Baby Bells to BellSouth and SBC and all … Read more

And here you're worried about a little silly radiation. The San Francisco Chronicle reported yesterday that a man's cell phone burst into flame while he was carrying it in his pocket. Luis Picaso of Vallejo, California, received second- and third-degree burns to his body, back, right arm, and right leg after the fire spread to his clothes and ignited a nearby chair. Fire officials refused to disclose the phone's make and model but insisted the handset was the source of the blaze.

Though the story may sound too odd to be true, other instances of cell phones … Read more

Now that the iPhone is a reality, there's sure to be rampant speculation on what inspired the unique, all-display design. Since it looks like no other cell phone, it's not outrageous to suggest that, as is the case with most Apple products, Steve Jobs and company went beyond the existing gadget world for inspiration. But while attending CES in Las Vegas, we couldn't help notice an "ancient" Egyptian hieroglyphic on the wall of the Cleopatra-themed bar at Caesar's Palace. Perhaps the Apple design team spent an evening here and found their muse for the … Read more

Lamborghini and Ferrari aren't the only sports cars lending their names to electronics and computing gear. Vodafone, which is sponsoring the McLaren Formula One racing team, has debuted three mobile phones inspired by the McLaren Mercedes, according to Pocket-lint.

Sharp and Samsung are manufacturing different models for Vodafone but all three bear designs that reflect the McLaren theme, with chrome cases and "rocket red" accents of the team's colors. The menu and ring tones are also consistent with the sport, as well as as a racing game. The handsets, which include 1.3- and 3.1-megapixel … Read more

Add one more reason to doubt the iPhone hype: It appears that Apple's uberdevice utilizes a totally proprietary 1.5:1 aspect ratio. While that's wider than the standard square-ish 1.33:1 (4x3) aspect ratio found on older TVs, PC monitors, and iPods, it's 15 percent narrower than the 1.78:1 (16x9) screen dimensions found on most HDTV and DVD programming.

The specs of the iPhone list a pixel count of 480x320. In and of itself, that doesn't prove anything: some displays utilize rectangular pixels, which allows them to deliver a true 16:9 … Read more

This phone might work fine, but even the most ardent Star Wars aficionado might balk at using it on a regular basis. Just answering Nikko Japan's "Lightsaber" VoIP phone could cause major damage in close quarters.

The handset, if it can be called that, connects to the computer by USB (doesn't everything?) and is cradled in a base that bears the Star Wars logo in blue LED. The phones, part of an ensemble seen by fellow Craver Will Greenwald at CES last week, can even make the familiar Lightsaber swooshing sound. We were thinking of pre-ordering … Read more

As Apple made clear with the iPhone last week, touch screens are the next evolutionary step in the development of mobile handsets. But Sony Ericsson is going after another one of the human senses: smell.

The company is making a line of aroma phones for Japan's NTT DoCoMo, according to Reuters, "to relax the users while making calls." (So Japanese in so many ways.) The handsets come with your choice of nine "scented sheets" accompanied by different designs.

Why, one might ask, would anyone want a scented phone? Perhaps it has something to do with … Read more