Phones

Does LG ever take a break? We could practically devote this entire blog to tracking its latest mobile phones alone.

Like the much-hyped Chocolate, its newest model is another slider handset, but we're not sure what this one has to offer over its popular cousins. Akihabara News calls the SB190 a "small phone," but its photos indicate a thicker handset with such fairly standard features as a 1.3-megapixel camera and an MP3 player.

Maybe it's designed for a particular submarket of South Korea, where SK Telecom is introducing it. Or maybe LG just had some … Read more

Trying to keep up with new cell phone releases is like counting raindrops in a thunderstorm. And for some people, the constant flood of new handsets is just too tempting to resist.

So if you're one of those junkies who must get a new phone or five every few months (you know who you are), then the "USB Phonebook Flash Drive" from Brando might be just what you need--or not, depending on whether you're seeking help with your addiction. This key stores your address book information and, with the adapters that are included, transfers it to … Read more

If you think you need one of Novomax's "Bluetooth Soundstations," you're spending far too much time on the phone while behind the wheel. According to the product description on its Web site, the car kit "displays caller ID, battery status, phone book downloading, etc." (We can only speculate what the "etc." stands for. Doing laundry?)

It's frightening that some people would find the need to have all this information constantly within their line of sight while they're supposed to have their eyes on the road. And as if that's … Read more

Thin isn't all it's cracked up to be, despite what Kirstie Alley might say, especially when it comes to phones. Nevertheless, Samsung claims to have come up with the slimmest slider phone of its kind, the "Ultra Edition SGH-Z720," which measures a wispy 0.54 inches thick and weighs just 2.8 ounces.

The phone's design is still wide enough to include a 2.1-inch screen, a 3-megapixel auto-focus camera and a second camera for video telephony, according to Fareastgizmos. Notable software features include preinstalled Google mobile search and Gmail, as well as support for … Read more

Home telephones are like TV sets of the '70s and '80s--except for the cordless breakthrough, technology has seen scant change compared with other consumer products. VTech wants to change that with its new "infoPhone" (not to be confused with the iPhone, thank you very much).

The landline handset is designed to handle many functions that most people reserve for the computer. As Gadgetell says, "The new ip8300 infoPhone uses the Internet to access information directly on the cordless handset's color LCD screen, including news headlines, weather reports, horoscopes, local directory searches and more"--all according … Read more

Boring holiday meals spent with relatives provide plenty of time for idle thoughts like this: Where do earphones end and headsets begin? The answer to such pseudo-existential questions may lie in Argard's M10 Bluetooth headset, which is kind of the missing link of headgear.

Although the tiny device looks more like a shiny earbud, Argard says it provides three hours of talk time and 100 hours on standby, according to Gizmodo. Yet, while we're all for wireless technology wherever we can get it, we might be worried about this thing getting lost in our aural canal.

The nano-ization of gadgetry has often left printers behind--a frustration for those of us who can't seem to shake the pulp fix no matter how hard we try. Brother Japan tries to address that addiction with a super-thin "MPrint" MW-260, a hanheld printer that's less than three-quarters of an inch thick and weighs about 1.2 pounds.

Aside from its size, the printer is even more portable because it can work wirelessly via Bluetooth more than 30 feet away from laptops, smart phones, PDAs and other devices, according to Fareastgizmos. And you won't need to … Read more

It's only a matter of time before phones join the alternative-energy trend in earnest, and some companies are already trying to get out front with designs before the onslaught begins. ModeLabs, for one, has released three concept designs for mobile phones that use renewable and kinetic energy, according to Electronista: The wearable "YoYo" (kinetic energy from bouncing around the neck); the "U-Turn" (energy from opening and closing the keyboard, and the "Runaway" (to be worn on the wrist and recharge itself like a self-winding watch). We have only one question: Why wait for … Read more

Making retro-style phones seems to be an obsession with some companies, for reasons that continue to baffle us. We've seen updated phones from the 1930s to the 1960s, sometimes with just parts of them available.

But UncommonGoods has taken the concept to its truest form, restoring actual phones with modern wiring, cords and microphones. If you're interested in getting one of them, be aware that availability is limited: Like so many other things, there isn't an abundance of phones that survived the '60s.