The regular cell phone is getting, well, smarter. That is, more models allow you to open attached documents in Office apps such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—a capability that was once exclusive to smart phones. A new batch of models from Samsung embodies the trend, as does one new model from LG.

Here’s a rundown of these new arrivals, including some distinctions they showed in our labs. In a few days, we’ll post full test results to our Ratings of cell phones, available to subscribers. Prices are after rebates and with a two-year contract from the cited carrier.

Samsung Rant, $50
A very popular phone (Click on image at right for a closer look), in spite of its association with Sprint, which hasn’t fared well in our Ratings of cell-phone carriers. The attractive Rant (image above) complements its front keypad with a full QWERTY keyboard that slides out for easier texting. But, at 4.8 ounces, it’s heavier than most cell phones.

Samsung Highnote, $100
Sliding the Highnote’s faceplate down reveals a speaker for listening to music, while pushing it the other way uncovers a keypad for telephony and texting. Also from Sprint.

LG Lotus, $100
Folded closed, the wide, square-shape Lotus looks more like a cosmetics compact than a phone. But flip it open and you’ll find a full QWERTY keyboard for typing text messages and dialing phone numbers. But you’ll need big hands to handle this whopper, which is wider than most phones. Despite its bulk, however, the Lotus has a cramped keypad that makes dialing a challenge. We expect LG will soon to introduce other conventional cell phones with document-handling capabilities.

Samsung Behold, $150
The Behold, from T-Mobile, has a relatively large 3-in. touch-screen display with user-selectable widgets and virtual keyboard. Its full-featured camera has among the highest resolutions (at 4.9-megapixels) an impressive array of features, including ISO settings, anti-shake control, face and smile detection. Its images were very good overall, even in low-light conditions, comparing favorably to those from many 5-megapixel point-and-shoot cameras we’ve tested. However, the camera phone was slower to respond than many cameras when its shutter was pressed. And its handwriting-recognition feature lets you jot down numbers, letters, symbols, and punctuation, which are then converted to typed text.

Samsung Eternity, $150
Only 0.5 in. thick, the Eternity, offered by AT&T, is thinner than most cell phones, yet has a relatively large 3.2-inch touch screen display with a widget tool bar and virtual keyboard. Like its cousin, the Behold, it has a handwriting-recognition feature and better-than-average photographic prowess for a phone. Its 3.1-megapixel camera produced images comparable to those from a 3-megapixel point-and-shoot camera, though it was slower to respond than many cameras when its shutter was pressed. It also records video.

Samsung Rugby, $130
With its rugged, water-resistant case, the Rugby will keep you connected on tough terrain or in foul weather. But it’s bulkier than most cell phones and it lacks some features you’d expect from much cheaper ones—like standard voice-activated dialing, voice command, and a standard headset connector and adapter.

—Mike Gikas

At PMA'09, the biggest camera and photography industry trade show of the year, many manufacturers will be introducing new camera models. But two of the top camera brands, Sony and Canon, are already set to unveil some really interesting new digital cameras.

Sony has previously introduced some intriguing digital camera features, such as "smile shutter modes." This year, many new cameras will also feature blink detection, intelligent scene modes and other built-in "smart" tools. And Sony claims these technologies will work together to simplify even the toughest picture-taking scenarios—capturing multiple, back-lit faces without using the camera’s built-in flash, for example.

Sony has also enhanced its face detection feature. You can now select which face in a crowd—say your son’s face among his Little League team—is the "priority." The camera will then automatically set the focus and exposure for the entire group shot based on your darling’s mug.

Among the new 12-megapixel Sony Cyber-shot digital cameras being introduced this year:

• Cyber-shot DSC-S980, $150
• Cyber-shot DSC-W230, $200
• Cyber-shot DSC-W290, $250
• Cyber-shot DSC-T90, $300
• Cyber-shot DSC-T900, $380
• Cyber-shot DSC-H20, $280 (A 10-megapixel camera)

Canon has also announced several new point-and-shoot cameras, ranging in price from $130 to $600. Some models also include ease-of-use features such as active display technology, which allows you to scroll through photos just by shaking the camera.

At the low end of Canon's PowerShot camera line, the 10-megapixel PowerShot A480 ($130) replaces the reputable 7-megapixel PowerShot A470.

At the high end, Canon's new 10-megapixel PowerShot SX1 IS ($600) is its priciest superzoom camera. The company says it can capture RAW files, shoot HD video in 1080i, has a swiveling LCD and an HDMI output.

Canon has also introduced its first waterproof, freeze proof and crush proof camera (shown above), the 12-megapixel PowerShot D10 ($330).

In addition, Canon's new point-and-shoot PowerShot camera models for this year include:

• PowerShot A1100 IS, $200
• PowerShot SD1200 IS ELPH, $230
• PowerShot A2100 IS, $250
• PowerShot SD780 IS ELPH, $280
• PowerShot SD960 IS ELPH, $330
• PowerShot SX200 IS, $350
• PowerShot SD970 IS ELPH, $380

I'll have new digital camera news as PMA'09 draws closer and the announcements roll out. And we'll be adding many of these new models to our digital camera Ratings (available to subscribers) as they hit the market. In the meantime, check out our online Guide to digital cameras and watch our online video, "How to buy a digital camera," for more free help on finding the right digital camera for your needs.

—Terry Sullivan

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Last week, more than 400 stations nationwide turned off their analog signals and went all digital as part of the DTV transition—and many consumers suddenly lost TV channels. That’s because digital signals can be harder to pick up by antenna than their analog counterparts. The Federal Communications Commission has launched a Web site http://www.fcc.gov/
mb/engineering/maps/ that might indicate whether you’re likely to have trouble.

Enter your ZIP code or address, and you’ll see a page listing your local television stations. (Click on image at right for a sample.) Click on a station and a box will pop up showing basic information about the station, including its direction and distance from your house—information you’ll need to choose and use the best type of antenna. It takes a little time for the stations in your area to load, so be patient.

At the bottom of the pop-up box, clicking on "Gain/Loss Map" will take you to a color-coded map (bottom image) showing where the station's signal is strong and weak. Green indicates good signal strength, yellow is moderate, orange is weak, and red means no signal. The maps are small, but you can enlarge them by clicking anywhere on the map.

The map also shows the outer limits of a station's broadcast signal, a dashed-line for analog coverage and a solid line for digital. This demonstrates very clearly that digital signals do not travel as far or cover exactly the same "footprint" as analog signals. That's why some households need a more powerful antenna to pick up the stations they got before, or find that they can’t pull in the digital version of a station at all.

Many more consumers will undoubtedly discover these inconvenient truths of physics as the rest of the country's television stations switch off their analog signals over the next few months. All full-powered stations are supposed to discontinue analog broadcasts by June 12th.

A site called AntennaWeb.org (sponsored by the Consumer Electronics Association and National Association of Broadcasters) offers a similar analysis of signal strength for specific addresses. Interestingly, it suggested signals for the address we provided would be weaker than the FCC site indicated.

In the end, the only way to be sure is to try it yourself. Start with an inexpensive indoor UFH/VHF antenna and tinker with placement and position before you even think about buying anything more expensive.

—Bob Williams

As we used Amazon’s Kindle 2 today at our Testing Center, the new electronic book reader sustained the promise shown in demos when the device was announced on Feb.9.

As our online video review of the Kindle 2 (at right) demonstrates, this second-generation version offers a number of subtle improvements over its predecessor. Those include faster page turns; the more prolonged period required to refresh the screen of the first Kindle was among my criticisms of that older version. Amazon has also improved the controls and the rendition of artwork, and the new Kindle is slimmer than the old one.

The most groundbreaking addition, though, is text-to-voice capability that allows the Kindle 2 to read to you; see my earlier blog for more on that feature, including controversy over whether it violates the intellectual-property rights of authors.

I do have quibbles with the new device, mostly to do with small touches it lacks but which seem feasible. At 6 inches in size, the screen is no bigger than that of the original Kindle. (Click on images at right for closer looks.) That likely helps the device conserve energy—extended battery life being another enhancement over the mark-one Kindle. However, a screen that runs to the edge of the controls, and so displays more text than the old Kindle, might have been worth some sacrifice in battery life—especially since that now runs to a more-than-ample 4 or 5 days, according to Amazon.

There's still a charge—of a dime, charged to your Amazon account—for every document you e-mail to the Kindle and want to receive wirelessly.

I wish the Kindle 2 came with some sort of carrying case. You can buy aftermarket ones, but the neoprene Belkin case I bought from Amazon fits loosely. Apparently also designed to accommodate the fatter Kindle 1, the case makes the gadget bulkier to transport than it needs to be. And it costs $24.99. Given the Kindle 2's $359 purchase price, couldn't Amazon have thrown in a slim-fitting sleeve to protect the cherished device?

That price tag of course may be the biggest downside to the Kindle, and one that ensures the device will remain a niche product for now. In fairness, avid readers may recoup some of that cost if they curtail buying books in hard-cover editions—often the only way to buy them—and instead buy new titles as Kindle e-books. Most new releases, including most New York Times best-sellers, cost $9.99 for the Kindle. That's typically at least $10 less than the price of buying them in hard-cover. And most older titles for the Kindle cost between $3 and $9.

—Paul Reynolds

The most dramatic enhancement to the Kindle 2, Amazon's second-generation e-book reader, is one that allows you to have the device read to you any book you've purchased—or any other content you load onto the device. Amazon bills the capability as "experimental," presumably to limit expectations.

Indeed, in our initial tests today of what Amazon calls the “Read-To-Me” feature, the voices sound somewhat stilted, as one might expect from software that converts printed text to audible words on the fly. Sentences lack the cadence of real speech and the feature occasionally outright flubs words. In one book I played, it pronounced the word "philosopher" as "phil-LO-sopher." In reading a memo written in block capitals that I had e-mailed to the Kindle, the device mispronounced the pronoun "IT" as "I.T.," as in the corporate department that takes care of computers. (To hear what text-to-voice technology sounds like, listen to this example, which isn't necessarily the exact programming used by the Kindle 2. The video review we're now preparing will have recordings of the Read-To-Me feature in action.)

[UPDATE: You'll find our video review of the Amazon Kindle 2 in our next post, The Kindle 2: A review of a fine device. —Ed.]

You can even run the feature on Spanish-language text, and to somewhat-amusing effect. It reads Spanish by using English phonetic pronunciation, and so sounds like a bit like Spanish read by a politically incorrect comedian, or by me, a non-Spanish-speaker with no natural gift for speaking foreign languages.

Spanish performance aside, most people I played the feature to this morning found it to be flawed but acceptable and potentially useful. To my ears, it's a bit like listening to English spoken fairly fluently by a non-native speaker; an accent is evident and the odd word is pronounced incorrectly, but I can clearly understand what's being said. The Amazon rep I spoke to about the device said the company finds people grow accustomed to the voices—you choose either male or female.

Yet no one who heard the feature told me it was even close in quality to the soaring cadences of true audiobooks, which are read by professional actors. Stephen King, who has written a novella exclusively for the Kindle 2, quips that the voices are "GPS-like." But Roy Blount Jr. the president of the Authors Guild, describing the Kindle voices as "quite listenable," has weighed in with concern that writers will be "assailed" by the new feature, because "Kindle 2 is not paying anyone for audio rights."

In some ways, this objection echoes similar concerns from creators with past new technologies. For example, the advent of videotape raised fears that overall income would drop as home videos killed the movie theater, and hefty ticket sales were increasingly supplanted by less-lucrative rental fees.

Blount argues that audio rights to Kindle books should be paid as a separate fee, in part because people could forego buying an audiobook version of a title because they can now have the Kindle read it to them.

Perhaps some audiobook sales might be displaced. However, if past history serves, the opposite is just as likely. That is, more people may come to crave professional audio recordings, having discovered the appeal (and limitations) of having books read aloud to them by a software program, and having subsequently discovered the option of having them read aloud to them by a human being—and a professional actor, to boot.

—Paul Reynolds

[Photo: Sudarshan Vijayaraghavan]