High Technology Product Reviews | Trends and News

Think all those new touch screen smartphones look too much alike? Motorola has finally hit on a fun new formula with the Flipout, a nifty pivoting square with a highly usable keyboard and (given the phone's small size) a large LCD. You'll pay for the Flipout's originality, as it has one near-fatal flaw and several smaller ones. But it's much more compelling than the bizarre Motorola Backflip ($49.99, 2 stars). Specifications Service Provider AT&T Screen Size 2.8 inches Screen Details 320-by-240-pixel, 65K-color TFT LCD capactive touch screen Camera Yes Network GSM, UMTS Bands 850, 900, 1800, 1900 High-Speed Data GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA Processor Speed 720 MHz Design, Call Quality, and Hardware The Motorola Flipout is surprisingly small, if a bit thick. It measures 2.6 by 2.6 by 0.7 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.2 ounces. It's made of silver and black high-impact plastic. A thin metal plate sits behind the slide-up front panel. Holding the Flipout

The 12-megapixel, Nikon Coolpix S4000 is among the least-expensive cameras on the market to offer a touch screen interface. The touch experience on this camera isn't particularly glitzy, but it's perfectly functional and is complemented by a few, smartly selected physical buttons. Also, the 3-inch display is much sharper than most other under-$200 point-and-shoot cameras. The S4000 also performs somewhat better in low light than other shooters in this price range, but in all lighting conditions, this camera produces softer images than much of the competition. Another problem: there's no optical or mechanical stabilization—most budget cameras offer some kind of image stabilizer on the lens or image sensor to avoid blurry images. With the Nikon S4000, you need to decide whether a touch screen interface is worth sacrificing image stabilization for—and we don't think it is. Specifications Type Compact Megapixels 12 MP Media Format Secure Digital High Capacity 35-mm