Color us cynical, but when we first heard of the cell phone made out of corn-based materials we figured that the product would be little more than a green gimmick. (Perhaps we are still haunted by memories of drinking cheap corn-made beer—”beer” that literally cost less than bottled water—while in college in Iowa. But ANYWAY . . .)

. . . then we tried out the Samsung Reclaim. Turns out, the phone much cooler and less, well, corny, than we had imagined.

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A few months ago we pondered the question Is the Ooma worth your moola? Our answer, in short, was:

Yes.

The Ooma Core VoIP Phone System is a product that allows users to make virtually unlimited telephone calls to, or within, the United States for free. Ooma’s call quality rivaled that of competitors Skype and Vonage, and surpassed that of MagicJack. Since the Ooma operates independently of your computer, allows for 911 emergency dialing and works with any standard telephone, the system is perfect for people seeking a cheaper alternative to a landline. You can even transfer a current landline number to the Ooma.

Not content to rest on its laurels, Ooma has announced that it will soon launch an updated version of its VoIP product: the Ooma Telo.

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Sleek-looking smartphones are multiplying like Tribbles these days. Yet, even through all the noise created by the likes of the iPhone 3GS and upcoming Palm Pre, the HTC Hero caught our attention. And not only because this phone journeyed from drawing board concept to availability on Amazon.co.uk in a remarkable short period of time. In terms of form and function, the HTC Hero is one of the best phones out there.

It’s features include:

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In our recent review of MagicJack, Vonage and Skype one commenter asked why we excluded ooma from our comparison. Like those three VoIP services, ooma (yes, the company uses a lower case “o”) allows users ditch their telephone landline and make calls over the internet.

Our reason for the excluding ooma in the previous review? We didn’t have enough first hand experience of the product. Now we do. Here’s our review . . .

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There’s been a clear design trend towards cell phones with screens that occupy an increasingly large percentage of a device’s surface area. (Just compare the screen size of the BlackBerry Storm, for example, with the similarly sized BlackBerry models from a few years ago).

Might this trend towards having more glass on the front of a cell phone lead to more glass on the back and sides too?

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Make phone calls via Skype from an iPhone as you would from a computer

A few weeks ago we reviewed the best Skype phones. There’s now a new phone to add to that list: Apple’s iPhone.

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Typically, smartphones are first designed by engineers, then marketed by electronics companies and then reviewed by magazines and by tech websites such as Spot Cool Stuff. The gadget blog T3 is striving to shuffle those steps around.

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The Samsung Memoir T929 might be the first device that is equal parts camera and cell phone.

The phone is due to be sold by T-Mobile USA, already the service provider to many of the best camera phones on the market. We especially like the excellent 5-megapixel camera on the Motorola Zine ZN5. Now T-Mobile is topping that, at least insofar as megapixels are concerned, with the 8 megapixel camera on the Memoir.

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