Thirty years from now will every adult have cell phone shaped cancerous tumors around their ears?

Disturbingly, the answer to that question is: maybe.

Some government agencies, such as America’s Food and Drug Administration, say risk from cell phone radiation is minimal. Others, such as the UN’s World Health Organization, say that alarm bells would make for an appropriate ringtone. France has gone so far as to ban children from using cell phones specifically because kids are most susceptible to radiation.

The wisdom of French lawmakers aside, the truth is that no one really knows with certainty the effects years of cell phone radiation can have. Only after long term studies can there be conclusive answers. At which point it might be too late.

So what’s one to do?

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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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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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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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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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It didn’t take long for the latest BlackBerry (and iPhone competitor) to sell at a deep discount. If you sign up as a Verizon customer you can now get yourself a BlackBerry Storm 9530 from Amazon.com for $100! That’s an 80% discount over the regular $500 price.

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In addition to using your BlackBerry to make phone calls, write emails and play BrickBreaker, you can now use it to change the channels on your TV, pause your Blu-Ray player and program your TiVO. That thanks to a new app that gives your BlackBerry all the functionality of a universal remote control.

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