Cell phone accessories blog

(Credit: GeekAlerts)

I've seen some hair-brained (hey-ooooo) ideas in my time, but this just might take the cake. For those of you who find Bluetooth headsets or the wired headsets that come with your cell phone too pedestrian, here's something that will certainly turn heads: a wired headset that looks like a hair dryer. Trust me, I wish I were making this up.

Yes, for just $7.59, you can talk to your family and friends through a hair dryer and be the object of various onlookers' ridicule envy. The cell phone hair dryer headset comes with various adapters that should work with most Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson cell phones. But all I have to say is: really? Really?!

Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and nominate this for Brian "Flash" Tong's "Do Not Crave" segment on the weekly Crave vodcast. Do not want.

(DealExtreme via GeekAlerts)

AT&T Navigator

(Credit: AT&T)

Today, AT&T announced that it's expanding its AT&T Navigator location-based service overseas, making it the first U.S. carrier to offer international navigation capabilities. Dubbed AT&T Navigator Global Edition, the service is available now and works in 20 countries, including North America, the U.S. Caribbean, and most countries in Western Europe. It will also work in six cities in China--Beijing, Shanghai, Qingdao, Shenyang, Tianjin, and Qinhuangdao--all of which will host Beijing Summer Olympics events. (AT&T is an official sponsor of the U.S. Olympic Team.)

Like the domestic version, AT&T Navigator Global Edition provides color maps, local search, and text- and voice-guided turn-by-turn driving directions. In addition, the audible prompts are available in English, Spanish, German, or Italian. AT&T Navigator Global Edition costs $19.98 per month, which includes domestic service, and works on a number of devices, including the AT&T Tilt, RIM BlackBerry 8800, RIM BlackBerry Curve 8310, RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8110, Samsung BlackJack II, and the Motorola Q9h. You can check out AT&T's Web site for more information.

One final note: Does anyone think this is another sign that GPS-equipped cell phones and smartphones will take over dedicated portable navigation devices?

Samsung SCH-i760

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

In the famous words of Beyonce, "I can (up)/ Can I (up)/Let me upgrade you." Perhaps that will be the tune Samsung SCH-i760 owners will be singing today as Samsung released an official Windows Mobile 6.1 software upgrade for the Verizon Wireless smartphone. The software update is available for download through Samsung's Web site and has installers for both Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista users.

If you've got family and friends sprinkled about the globe, you know that the richness of these contacts loses luster if you can't regularly keep in touch. Though there are excellent solutions out there--local-access calling cards, VoIP on the PC, VoIP phones from Vonage or Skype, and local-number services like Talkster (review)--they require your presence at home, new hardware, or wasting precious seconds with mile-long pin numbers or droning ads.

Challenging the herd is EQO (pronounced "echo"), a communication service that offers a simple, fast, and affordable solution for international outreach on your cell phone. Talk time and texting are free between EQO members, and calls are as cheap as 2 cents per minute for everyone else, about the same rate as VoIP-to-phone calling and competitive calling cards. EQO's international texting costs for 10- or 15 cents, depending on the countries of destination and departure.

User experience

The graphically-appealing application is divided into three sections, each delineated by a small icon along a top strip. Scrolling horizontally among them calls up the phone book, message inbox, or instant message interface. EQO imports phone contacts into the phone book, but be careful of your management--deleting an entry from EQO also deletes it from the phone's database.... Read more

Samsung BlackJack

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Attention Samsung BlackJack owners, starting today at 2 p.m., PST, you'll finally be able to get upgrade your current device to Windows Mobile 6. The update will be available as a free desktop download from Samsung's Web site and brings such enhancements as the full Microsoft Office Mobile Suite for viewing and editing documents, more robust calendaring, and support for HTML e-mail. You'll also get added capability for AT&T Video Share, the carrier's video-calling service.

You can download the Windows Mobile 6 upgrade here but again, please remember that it won't be available till 2 p.m. PST/5 p.m. EST, so just hold on for a few more hours. Also, don't forget to backup all your data since performing this update will wipe your smartphone, and you'll have to reinstall any applications you've downloaded to your device. Pain in the butt, I know, but look at it this way, it's cheaper than upgrading to the Samsung BlackJack II.

(Credit: Samsung)

It's been awhile since we've seen a phone with a particularly garish design, though maybe that's just because we were trying to preserve the one eye we haven't poked out after viewing the others. But all good things must come to an end, as evidenced by the release of Samsung's new phone for Orange Spain designed by Vittorio & & Lucchino, a maroon number that bears a distinct resemblance to Grandma's kitchen drawer liners.

The people at Samsung should really be booked for an episode of What Not to Wear because things have a way of going horribly awry whenever it tries to create a new look for its products. At least this time they resisted the temptation to add Swarovski crystals for once. There goes the other eye.

(Credit: Samsung)

Some of us at Crave are really looking forward to next year's Beijing Olympics--not because we're huge fans of the pommel horse, but because we're so tired of Samsung trying to figure out what phones it wants to dedicate to the event.

First the company announced its plans this summer for not one but three commemorative handsets, setting the stage for inevitable confusion. Then it sprang a gold version on us. Now, according to Ubergizmo, the company has issued yet another set of photos for the 18k Gold Edition of its AnyCall E848 handset. The quad-band GSM phone is appropriately international, though the $359 list price won't be friendly to all economies.

We just hope Samsung will make up its mind on these phones. You'd think the company would have things nailed down by now, given that it issued a special edition at the 2004 Olympics as well. But maybe that's the point--to string us along for as long as possible.

(Credit: Samsung)

A burning mystery has finally been solved. It's been seven long months since we first learned of Beyonce's Samsung marketing deal after paparrazi caught her filming a commercial in New York. We knew that she was featuring a mobile phone but couldn't tell which one it was.

But relief came our way this morning when the company announced Beyonce's limited-edition handset (PDF) and released photos of said phone, which intrepid Craver Kent German immediately identified as Samsung's UpStage SPH-M620. The burgendy and gold "B'Phone," as it's been christened, has many standard phone features but, most important for obvious reasons, is a dual-sided device that looks like an MP3 player on the other side.

The phone, which is under exclusive contract with Sprint, has only 70MB of internal memory but does support up to 2GB more on optional MicroSD cards. And given how prolific its namesake is, you'd probably need every bit of that space. Just one suggestion for the marketing folks: It might have been wise to come up with a name that doesn't sound so much like "buffoon."

In a development that could be anywhere interesting, sleep-inducing or potentially even fictitious, Sun Microsystems Chairman Scott McNealy said Samsung is building a Java phone that will have better features and lower cost than Apple's iPhone.

Sun software chief Rich Green holds a Java FX Mobile-powered phone from FIC at the JavaOne conference in May.

(Credit: Sun Microsystems)

At least, that's what the Associated Press story about a report in the Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo.

Java is open-source software that at least in principle lets the same program run without having to be modified for different hardware. It's already widely used on mobile phones, including models from Samsung. What could make this story more interesting is if Samsung is embracing Sun's Java FX Mobile software, which Sun obtained through its acquisition of start-up SavaJe.

Typical phones today use the lightweight Java ME, stripped down for phones' anemic processing abilities, but Java FX Mobile is a variant of the desktop Java SE version. Adapting desktop software for increasingly powerful mobile devices is the strategy that Apple embraced with the iPhone and that Intel and Ubuntu sponsor Canonical are adopting with mobile Linux.

Of course, it all could amount to nothing, too, and given that whatever McNealy said likely was translated at least twice, that possibility shouldn't be ruled out. The AP quoted a Samsung spokeswoman Lee Soo-jeong as saying the two companies have talked but that "no decision has been made regarding co-development of the Java phone."

For its part, Sun wouldn't comment in detail on the situation. "Sun has a longstanding relationship with Samsung, working for years on Java-enabled phones and devices. Beyond that we have no comment about future plans and products," spokesman Russ Castronovo said.