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We've all been there: at the most inopportune time, your cell phone battery dies. And with your charger sitting at home, you're effectively severed from your virtual network. No calls, no texts, no tweets, emails or updates.

Stranded in that cold, dark place, your savior may well be the YoGen Mobile Charger, a mini generator. The small device charges your phone, camera, iPod, and more with a few tugs on a ripcord.  Check out Paul Eng's demonstration of the YoGen in the video at right.

For more Consumer Reports videos from CES 2010, check out our video hub.

Thin in profile, big in screen, business-oriented. Plastic Logic's new QUE proReader is all of these, much like the Skiff, a new reader also unveiled here at CES.

As the video at right demonstrates, at about a third of an inch thick, the QUE is at most only a hair—a business card, perhaps?—thicker than the Skiff, which claims to measure "a little more than a quarter-inch" in thickness. The QUE's 10.7-inch screen is a little smaller than the 11.5-incher on the Skiff. And like the Skiff, it unabashedly aims at the mobile business person rather than the leisurely consumer.

So while the device, scheduled to ship in mid-April, offers access to books, via the Barnes & Noble bookstore, Plastic Logic is more pitching its access to newspapers and magazines, including many business titles.

The QUE also supports a range of document formats, though for the moment it doesn't accept them natively or via the wireless connection offered on one QUE model. Instead, you use QUE software to convert documents and transfer them via USB to the reader. The QUE also has a calendar that will sync with Outlook—though professionals invariably have a smart phone that does that now, of course.

Navigation is entirely via touch; the only control of any kind on the elegant flat glass front of the device is a home button in the top right corner. Response seemed relatively fast, and the home page layout seemed logical and easy to navigate.

Like another new reader launched at CES, the Samsung E6, the proReader allows you to write notes on top of the content you're reading. You can do so either in handwriting, using a fingertip or fingernail, or switch to text mode and type your thoughts on a virtual keyboard. Unlike the Samsung, however, those notes can only be viewed with the original document itself; you can't export them as their own file. Also, there's no ability to use the proReader to make notes independent of any content—which seems like a curious omission, given that the QUE has notetaking capability.

The QUE will be sold at Barnes & Noble stores and online at both the Barnes & Noble website and on the QUE website, where pre-orders are now being taken for the device. A 4GB version—capable of holding some 35,000 documents, Plastic Logic says—will cost $649. That version will have only Wi-fi access. A 16GB, $799 version adds a 3G connection via the AT&T data network.

Given its size, price, and features, the QUE seems destined to travel mostly in briefcases, and to be used mostly to view business documents and perhaps the occasional periodical. For road warriors, it's a more comfortable, and more energy-frugal, reading device than a laptop. Yet one wonders about the future of the QUE given the imminent possibility of tablet computers that might offer everything a laptop now does plus a better e-reading experience.

—Paul Reynolds

HTC HD2
Photo: HTC

You’re going to need a bigger pocket to hold HTC’s HD2 smart phone, which boasts a gargantuan 4.3-inch display—the largest we’ve seen on any phone. The screen is multitouch (capacitive), so you can easily zoom in and out of displayed content by pinching or spreading your fingers. The phone, too, is big (4.75 inch x 2.64 inch), though surprisingly slim, at just 0.43 inch. The images on the 480 by 800 WVGA screen appeared quite sharp and bright in our in-booth demonstration.

The HD2 has a 5-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash and autofocus. It runs the Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional OS, so you’ll get desktop-level Office capabilities such as editing, file creation, and document management. To help with all that multitasking, the HD2 has the ultra-fast Snapdragon processor.

Windows Mobile phones typically rely on TouchFLO 3D interface to tame their crowded, and often confusing, screen. But the HD2 instead runs the HTC Sense interface, which we’ve only seen on Android phones. One nice Sense feature: It integrates a Facebook and Twitter app (called HTC Peep) to provide some social-network relief.

Other features include Wi-Fi, stereo Bluetooth support, and an FM radio.

The HD2 will be available on T-Mobile this spring for an undisclosed price. I’ll have more on the phone after it arrives in our labs.

—Mike Gikas