Phones

Click here to plan your social life

GetMobio is a mobile lifestyle application that's trying to put your social life at your fingertips, literally.

The downloadable app helps you find places to go, get reservations, buy tickets, browse movie reviews and get directions--and it can all be done in very few clicks and with minimum data entry, according to Mobio, the company that created it.

The product is launching this week at Demo 07 in Palm Desert, CA, but the executive team dropped by the CNET offices last week to do a quick demo.

GetMobio is organized as a series of "collections," which is … Read more

Red cell phones for your Valentine

Valentine's Day is almost upon us, and there may be a few red cell phones out there for you to give your loved one on that special day (or that commercialized, overhyped holiday, depending on your point of view).

Cingular/AT&T launched the Samsung Sync in red earlier this month, and we've heard that Verizon will launch not one but two red phones soon. According to the My:Tech News Blog, a red Motorola Krzr K1m (dubbed the Krzr Fire) and a red LG Chocolate (dubbed the Strawberry Chocolate) have appeared on Verizon's "testman" Web site, … Read more

Hello Kitty may have met its match

There may be hope after all. After years of suffering under Hello Kitty ubiquity, we may have found someone to enlist for help in a counter-insurgency: "Mashimaro." The M808 phone pays homage to the animated rabbit with a package of goodies that includes the character's trademark toilet (don't ask) as a charger. It has various features, including games, that also continue the Mashimaro theme. We may be looking at a new day in Japan's kawaii wars.

Fingerprinting by radio waves

Some of us at Crave are known for our obsessions (we like to call them "quirks"), among them gadget security and, specifically phone safety. So we're compelled to mention a new mobile phone from Willcom, even though it will be available only in Japan for the time being. This model, brilliantly named the "WX321J," has a fingerprint scanner that doesn't require direct contact: Its authentication system uses radio waves instead, to avoid moisture and other possible interference. Other than that, Slashphone says the features are pretty standard. But we can't get past the … Read more

Gucci does BlackBerry

Karl Lagerfeld isn't the only fashion designer in the world, despite what he might think. And the iPod isn't the only gadget worthy of Seventh Avenue's attention.

Gucci proved both points with its BlackBerry case in oh-so-precious "Guccisima" leather--which, according to Shiny Shiny, may translate roughly to "by giving it a pretentious name we're able to charge more for it."

The Razr V3xx launched on Cingular today

We mentioned earlier this month that Cingular/AT&T was going to update its 3.5G HSDPA phone lineup with the much-awaited Motorola Razr V3xx. Well the time has come because the carrier just launched the Razr V3xx today, and even more details of the phone have been released. The most notable of which is that the Razr V3xx will be Cingular's first 3.6 Mbps HSDPA handset. Previous HSDPA phones from Cingular (like the LG CU500) were capped out at 1.8 Mbps due to network limitations, but the company is planning to increase the network's … Read more

An EV-DO Razr Maxx

We know the HSDPA Motorola Razr V3xx is coming to AT&T/Cingular but we still haven't heard anything regarding U.S. carrier availability on the equally powerful Motorola Razr Maxx. And that's too bad as the Razr Maxx promises to be the most appealing Razr to date.

But now it appears we may get our wish, just in a different form. Howard Forums has published marketing photos of a promised EV-DO variant of the phone, the Maxx Ve for Verizon Wireless. Details are sketchy at this point but it's rumored the Maxx Ve will offer … Read more

Charge up your cell phone while you ride a bike

If you ride your bike to and from work every day anyway, why not charge your phone at the same time? That's the premise behind this cell phone docking station from Motorola that mounts on top of a bicycle. Let your pedals power up your phone battery phone as you swerve around dodging cars and pedestrians. Not only will you save time, you'll help the environment too. Too bad we can't figure out if this will be available here and at what price, but it's a neat concept all the same. Just don't take any … Read more

Tech solutions for the self-esteem deficient

Sometimes we have our issues with, well, fitting in. No, this is not a statement about the confidence levels of gadget freaks, gamers, or nerds--everyone has their junior-high moments. Artist Alice Wang has a new project entitled "Peer Pressure," which consists of a set of gadgets that have been modified to make make cute, humorous, and even provocative statements about how we're all overly concerned about what others think of us (some of us more than others).

Wang's project, which I read about on design blog Notcot, consists of a set of tweaked tech tools that … Read more

Some phones should never be made

There's really not much to say about these phones. Just look at the picture--it's too depressing to spend much time discussing them. What we will say is that, according to Gearfuse, these are Samsung 707SC handsets slathered rather disgustingly with colored stones made by Swarovski. (What a surprise!) They were just released in Asia, made for Softbank Japan. As far as we're concerned, Samsung had a better idea with its Simpsons models.