CES 2007

Many people spend the entire week at CES trolling the three main halls occupied by such companies as Samsung, LG and Sony. They all have huge booths--Samsung took the cake with 2,500 square feet--and tons of products to fill them.

But the international hall in the Hilton is far more interesting. It's populated by hundreds of small companies grouped by nationality. Most are from Asia, but there are also sections for Denmark and Australia.

First, there is the sheer variety of names: Best Rainbow Technology (appliances), Billionton Systems (LCD panels), Nice Fountain Industrial (cables), Millionway International Industrial (GPS … Read more

As fellow Webwarer Josh Lowensohn reported a couple of days ago, Nokia and Vox have teamed up to bring mobile blogging to a new level. The N93i comes preloaded with the blogging service, so you can use the phone's 3.2-megapixel camera to capture photos and video and instantly upload them to Vox to share with all your friends and family. It's a wonderful idea, but if you're anything like me, you're not going to bother if the process is too labor intensive or kludgey. Well, good news, folks: Nokia gave me a working demo of … Read more

An increasing trend in cell phones is the addition of location-based services, such as TeleNav and Verizon's VZ Navigator, so you can get maps and driving directions right on your handset. Now, Motorola has announced that it's teaming up with Destinator Technologies and Jentro Technologies to bring such services to its mobiles, as well as new navigation products in 2007. Jentro specializes in satellite phone navigation, while Destinator develops nav software for mobile devices. Though the companies didn't outline any specific products, they did say the products will give consumers access to local point-of-interest searches, community tools, … Read more

We've mentioned the LG Shine before on Crave, but since we spotted it at CES, we have to mention it again. As a reminder, the LG Shine is a supersleek slider phone that looks like a mirror on the front when it's inactive. It looks a lot like a stainless-steel successor to the Chocolate, and it comes with a 2-megapixel camera, an MP3 player, and a slim scroll wheel underneath its stunning 2.2-inch QVGA display. It's currently available only in Asia and Europe. Our LG representative said that it probably won't be coming our way … Read more

Cingular Wireless announced a new video sharing service that lets people send videos in real time over their phones. Video Share (quite the original name) isn't exactly video conferencing--the service works only one way--but you can use it to show off yourself, or whatever you're looking at, to your friends. To get it going, you just need a cell phone signal and, of course, a compatible phone. On that end, Cingular has announced two handsets that will work with the service: an updated LG CU500 and the new Samsung SGH-a717. It's in trials now; widespread availability is … Read more

Razr fans (yes, there are still a lot of them) can rejoice again as Cingular picks up the Motorola Razr V3xx. Though it resembles Cingular's original Razr V3 (except for the darker color), the V3xx is compatible with Cingular's growing 3.5G HSDPA network. Cingular Video support is also included, and the phone sports a dedicated Cingular TV button in the navigation array. Other features are standard for the Razr series. You'll find Bluetooth, a speakerphone, and a digital music player. Though the phone has been shipped to Cingular, Motorola said it's still not available in … Read more

Samsung grabs a piece of the donut, so to speak, with its sponsorship of the Simpsons movie that's set to debut later this year. The company has taken three of its phones and styled them in Simpsons yellow while adding the movie's logo to the front flap.

The Samsung Sync (SGH-a707), the SPH-c417, and the SPH-m610 were chosen as Simpsons special edition phones, and we can only hope that "D'oh!" is available as a ring tone. Stay tuned for availability.

In addition to the I-mate Jaq3 announcement today, I-mate also introduced the I-mate PDAL. Sans QWERTY keyboard and sporting a trimmer package (4.4x2.2x0.6 inches; 4.1 ounces) than the Jaq3, it's a quad-band smart phone running Windows Mobile 5, and it doesn't include anything revolutionary, but it has all the necessities for a mobile professional. It features a 2.4-inch, 65,000-color touch screen; integrated Wi-Fi (802.11b/g); Bluetooth; and a 2-megapixel camera. Like the Jaq3, it'll be available unlocked at the end of January, but no pricing information has been set.

At CES Samsung showed off a quirky cell phone that takes "thin" to a whole level. It's not thin from the side like the Motorola Razr, but rather it's exceptionally slim when measured across its front face. The GSM Samsung SGH-X830 measures about an inch wide and sports a swivel form factor in a gallery of colors, including black, green, red and blue. Features are impressive for such a small phone. Inside is a 2-megapixel camera, a digital music player, multiformat video support, 1GB of flash memory, stereo Bluetooth, a 65,536-color display and USB 2.… Read more