Cell Phone Cases

Sure, the BlackBerry Curve 8900 we snagged was branded AT&T, but TmoNews says that T-Mobile will still be firstest in line in the US, graced by its presence on Feb. 18. [TmoNews]

There are loads of games in the App Store for the iPhone/iPod Touch, but if you want to save money and space, which are the true essentials? Here are our 10 must-haves.

While there are enough good games in the App Store to fill up multiple pages on your iPhone or iPod Touch, you don't need that many, nor do you need to spend that much money. If you focus on filling certain genres with single games and not doubling up on multiples, you can make yourself the ultimate "games page" of apps. Here's the list.

Touchgrind: This skateboarding game was designed from the ground up for the multi-touch iPhone platform, and it shows. The completely unique control method of using your fingers as legs on a skateboard immediately makes sense and is totally addicting. As you get better, the new skateboards that are unlocked with high scores continually feel just within your grasp. $4.99

Galcon: Galcon is a space-based strategy game that delivers super-short games, which is perfect for the iPhone. Rather than getting dragged into games you won't finish, Galcon lets you play a bunch of one or two minute games. You can refine your strategy with each game, and every time you lose it's just too easy to try again. Lite: Free; Pro: $4.99

Fieldrunners: Many call this the best game in the App Store, and it's tough to argue with them. A tower defense game with a super-high degree of polish, this is the definition of addicting. Basically, you want to set up weapons to stop soldiers for storming your towers. You earn more cash for more weapons for every guy you stop, and you lose health for every guy who gets through. And then you can't. Stop. Playing it. $4.99

Line Rider iRide: You've probably played Line Rider on the internet in some form or another: you draw a bunch of lines, then a little man on a sled gets tossed down your makeshift track. The controls are simple and work great on a touchscreen, and you can play in short bursts, saving your maps for later. It's intuitive enough that there's virtually no learning curve, but you can spend countless hours working on your masterpiece of sledding physics. $2.99

Uno: You know Uno, you love Uno. But here's a version that involves no pesky shuffling. If you're more of a poker fan you probably went for Texas Hold 'Em, which is cool, but if you ask me, Uno is a much more fun card game. After all, what fun is poker when you're gambling with pretend money? $5.99

Rolando: This is a wonderful, cartoonish platformer that uses simple controls that are easy to learn but are used in increasingly complicated and challenging ways as the game progresses. You control a series of little balls—Rolandos—by tilting your iPhone and swiping up to jump. But you can control many of them at once, and there are also obstacles and switches you can manipulate. It's got a high degree of polish and will suck you in from the first level. $9.99

Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D: This is our favorite racing game, despite not being fully sold on the accelerometer controls of iPhone racing games. But because of that, you really only need one, and this should be it. Great graphics, good stability and plenty of variety add up to make this the essential iPhone racing game. $5.99

SimCity: This port of SimCity 3000 is stunning. This is no gimped version of SimCity, dumbed down for a touchscreen. It's the full game, complete with advisers and all the building types you can handle, with intuitive touchscreen controls. Finally, you can build the epic metropolis of your dreams whenever you sit down and have a few minutes to kill. $9.99

Touch Hockey: FS5: Air Hockey on the iPhone is just like regular air hockey, minus the high probability of getting one of your fingers smashed with the puck. Simply put your finger on the mallet and try to score some goals. It's also fun to play with two people, with each person holding an end of the iPhone. And hey, no quarters required. Lite: Free; Pro: $1.99

Trism: This is essentially a modified version of Bejeweled, and if you know that game then you know why you'd want it on your iPhone. It's a classic puzzle game, one that makes the transition to the touchscreen beautifully. You're trying to get three pieces of the same color together to make them disappear, and depending on how you're holding your iPhone, the resulting tumble of pieces will happen in a different direction. It adds a new level of strategy to the game while retaining what made the original so awesome. $2.99

[A Bonus 11th game, From Brian: I'd like to add Motion X Poker Quest to the list for its amazing use of the accelerometer and in game physics used to roll the dice, as well as beautiful graphics and sounds and addicting game play. ]

Details of a new LG watch phone, likely to be announced at CES, have trickled out through the company's Korean site. And surprise! It looks hard to use. But not—and this is important—unusable.

The first thing to notice is the specs: unlike last time around, they're actually pretty solid. The GD910, as it's called, will support 3G, HSDPA, Bluetooth, text-to-speech and speech-to-text, and finally, videoconferencing via a front-mounted camera.

These capabilities, far from being the useless feature bloat that we see on gimmicky hardware like this, seem to be geared toward making this wrist piece bearable. Don't want to fiddle with little watch buttons to make a call? Use the touchscreen. Don't want to type on a tiny on-screen keypad? Talk to your phone. Don't want to walk around with a watch to your face like some kind of portly, neckbearded, wolfshirted FBI agent? Hook up a Bluetooth headset and you'll just look like a nerdy soccer dad. And videoconferencing, mercifully built in, is probably the most important feature to have on a quasi-spy gadget like this.

That said, there are still a few problems that will be unavoidable in this form-factor, the largest of which LG has implicitly acknowledged with their product photos: unless you are a young child with young child fingers, don't plan on having an easy go of it. [UnwiredView]

Sony Ericsson's upcoming C510 (Kate) Cybershot phone has been floating around for a while now, but these images from Daily Mobile represent the first decent look at it.

In case you missed it, here is a rundown of the features:

•3.2 MP AF camera and LED
•Face detection
•Smile shutter
•Auto rotation when viewing
•Cyber-shot™ UI 2.0
•3.2 MP AF camera
•Active lens cover
•2.2” QVGA display
•QVGA video
•Picture light
•160 MB in-built memory
•Dedicated shutter key
•Illuminated imaging shortcut keys
•Face detection, Photo fix
•Direct blog short cut key
•Smile shutter
•Illumination by different theme/mode
•Print service Snapfish
•Blue illuminated imaging short cuts
•Download and upload to YouTube

It doesn't appear to be a huge jump from the K770 series, apart from a bigger screen and a bump up in internal memory. Still, it should be a decent lower-end Cybershot handset when it is released in February. [Daily Mobile]

Hidden among a slew of bugfixes and refinements announced in a posting on the Android project site are a few serious feature upgrades, which could make their way to your G1 fairly soon.

The most practical update may be to the camera functions, which have finally expanded to include video recording. The browser gets a hefty refresh as well, with an inline find function and creatively implemented selective copy and paste, as well as quite a few under-the-hood speed enhancements.

Some of the other updates are a bit more forward-looking, and clearly not focused on the G1. There'll be a framework put in place to allow for simple system-wide on-screen input (read: touch keyboards) and as our tipster pointed out, the mysterious and tantalizing inclusion of "Basic x86 support."

Being that this development isn't coming from a hardware manufacturer, x86 support doesn't indicate that a particular new gadget will be adopting the OS, but it does imply that seeing Android on a rich variety of gadgets, including some in unexpected form factors, isn't out of the question. Check the full feature list at the source link. [Android—Thanks, Ben]

As part of Verizon Wireless's open device initiative, Verizon exec Tony Lewis said that the company will support wireless downloads of content such as electronic books to devices similar to Amazon's Kindle. Competitors to the Kindle have not been ...
(follow link to read)

I don't care how big of a Dick Tracey you look like using the Phenom SpecialOPS cellphone watch; its adolescent awesomeness goes unspoken.

Having absolutely nothing to do with AMD Phenom processors, this Phenom watch is a completely unlocked GSM phone (ready to take any SIM card you've got) while simultaneously functioning as an MP3/MP4 player through a MicroSD port. Other features include a 1.3" touchscreen display, Bluetooth, speakerphone, numeric keypad and a videocamera.

Yes, this cellphone watch handles video when the iPhone still doesn't.

If the SpecialOps' $300 asking price is a little high for your tastes, Phenom has other models available, including the $235 Mi5. None of the models are necessarily inside of impulse buy territory, but hey, no contracts needed! [Phenom via unwired view]

Just days after preliminary data gathered in the largest cellphone cancer study thoroughly depressed us, a new study claims that exposure causes red blood cells to leak hemoglobin—leading to kidney stones and heart disease.

During the study, scientists exposed samples of blood to varying degrees of microwave radiation (including levels well below those emitted by cellphones) for periods between ten to 60 hours. No matter how you cut it, the result was hemoglobin leakage (which just sounds nasty). Obviously, heart disease is the most serious condition of the two, but I can tell you from experience that you don't want any part of a kidney stone either. Those things could make even Chuck Norris cry like a little girl.

I wouldn't say that this test was the most thorough ever conducted, but I think deep down we all know that when all is said and done, the final verdict about cellphone use is going to be grim. [MINA via textually]

Interphone researchers are conducting the largest-ever study investigating if cellphones cause cancer, examining studies from 6,400 tumors in patients from 13 countries. Final results are expected in early 2009, but the preliminary ones are badbadbad.

Israeli researchers in the study found that regular cellphones users are a whopping 50 percent more likely than non-users to get brain tumors. Another Interphone study looking at the UK and Scandinavia found a 40 percent greater tumor risk in people who've used cellphones for over 10 years, though on the bright side, nothing scary for people who've used them for less than a decade.

The final results of Interphone's study are highly anticipated as the first study to provide close to a definitive answer on the cellphone cancer question, since as PopSci notes, most of the other studies "have been statistically useless," since they didn't survey enough people and looked at too many that had less than 10 years of cellphone use under the belt, which is how long it takes brain cancer to develop "in most cases."

PopSci's assessment of the gravity of the situation is close to spot-on—definitive proof that cellphones cause cancer would probably be the along the same lines as discovering that tobacco causes cancer, but you know, huger, since almost everyone uses a cellphone, from pre-schoolers to grandmas. I guess it's a good thing I rarely use my iPhone for talking. How would you react if cellphones definitely caused cancer? [Pop Sci]

At least that's what the CrackBerry folks who got their hands on the latest Storm OS seem to think anyway. Install at your own risk (unofficial update), but the changes appear to be pretty solid.

Just to be clear again: Update OS 4.7.0.85 is unofficial at this point, so proceed with caution. That said, sources at CrackBerry indicate this evening that this release might have the chops to get official approval by Verizon. Eventually.

I haven't played with the OS too much just yet, but it definitely feels much improved, even over 4.7.0.83 which leaked on the 19th. Some bugs have been fixed, the accelerometer action is definitely quicker and typing feels a bit more responsive.

Says Crackberry poster Kevin Michaluk, "This is what the Storm should have launched with. Definitely worth an install if you're a 9530 Storm owner."

Not necessarily a ringing endorsement of what the phone came equipped with thus far, but it sounds like RIM is on top of things after the fact. Very Apple iPhone 3G of them, don't you think? [CrackBerry via CrunchGear]