If you recall, the adorably simple, no-nonsense John’s Phone only makes phone calls. There’s no texting, no music, and no color LCD. It’s address book is a pen and paper attached to the back. Here’s a video of it being unboxed.

Is it wrong for me to want something so delightfully useless?

[via gizmodo]

True nerdlingers probably use the time display on their TI graphics calculators, but one level up from those people would have this microSD card-reading watch strapped on at all times. Even bedtimes. Especially bedtimes. $16. Buy it here

[via gizmodo]

Cramming 500GB of storage into that molten silver casing, LaCie’s design partnership withPhilippe Starck has gone USB 3.0 for faster data transfers—though of course it also works with USB 2.0 ports, too.

While the internal hard drive looks ever so fragile, it’s actually encased in a 2mm aluminum outer shell, so with any luck users shouldn’t have any horrible mishaps. LaCie is also giving purchases of the external hard drive a 10GB one-year allowance for their Wuala online back-up service.

LONDON, UK (9TH November, 2010) – LaCie announced today the latest addition to itsUSB 3.0 portfolio, bringing the fastest interface on the market to the award-winning design of Philippe Starck – LaCie Starck Mobile USB 3.0.

USB 3.0 Technology
Reaching speeds up to 10 times faster than USB 2.0*, the Starck Mobile USB 3.0 is an ideal gift for technology enthusiasts who demand stylish aesthetics with leading technology.

Ensuring connectivity is never an issue, the LaCie Starck Mobile USB 3.0 is backward compatible with USB 2.0 – simply connect it into any PC or Mac for a seamless plug-and-play experience.

Strength of Metal
Encased in 2mm of sturdy aluminium, the LaCie Starck Mobile USB 3.0 is one the most resistant choices for consumer hard drives on the market. The aluminium offers resilience from blunders, improved heat dissipation, and is fully recyclable.

User-Friendly Software Suite
The LaCie Starck Mobile USB 3.0 comes with LaCie Setup Assistant software to easily install your drive on PC and Mac. It also includes LaCie Backup Assistant, which helps make automatic backup a snap. In addition, you get 10GB of Wuala Online Storage included for one year to securely store, share and sync your data online.

Availability
The LaCie Starck Mobile USB 3.0 will be available in a 500GB capacity through LaCie Online Store, LaCie Corner, LaCie Reseller+ and LaCie Storage Partner starting at the suggested retail price of £89.90 (Incl.VAT). For more information, visit www.lacie.com/uk.

*Based on theoretical rate given by USB-IF. More information visit www.usb.org.

About Philippe Starck
For more than 30 years, Philippe Starck has been creating objects that have had an impact on the world. Designs such as the revolutionary lemon juicer or the transparent Louis Ghost chair have become cult items. He is also credited with setting the standard for creating classic hotels all over the world. His recent projects have included the artistic direction of a spaceport in the USA, a 120-meter yacht, and a personal windmill. Philippe Starck is a tireless and rebellious citizen of the world, who considers it his duty to share his ethical and subversive vision of a fairer world. He stays tuned in to our dreams, desires and needs- sometimes before we get there ourselves-by making his work a political and civic act, which he accomplishes with love, poetry and humour. For more information visit www.starck.com.

About LaCie
With operations in the Americas, Europe and Asia, LaCie is the leading manufacturer of storage devices for PC, Apple, and Linux. LaCie has differentiated itself through sleek design and remarkable technical performance. Find out more about our products at www.lacie.com/uk.

Put simply, the Galaxy Tab is the first post-iPad tablet that matters, because it’s the first tablet that’s trying to be legitimate competition. It aims to break a lot of ground. Powered by iOS’s biggest rival, the Tab essentially kicks off the next generation of tablets. And, at the size of a paperback, it’s one of the first to seriously test how well aseven-inch tablet really works. There’s a lot riding on this thing.

Samsung Galaxy Tab (Sprint)
Price: $399 w/ contract, ($599 w/out)
Display: 7 inches @ 1024×600
Processor: 1GHz ARM Cortex A8
Memory and Storage: 512MB RAM, 2GB built-in + 16GB microSD
Cameras: 3.2MP (rear); 1.2MP (front)
Monthly Data Plans: 2GB for $30; 5GB for $60

Here’s the thing about tablets: Size is everything. Size is the whole point. It’s what makes browsing, reading, creating and sharing better on a tablet than on a phone, even if they’re both running the same software.

If you take iPhone apps and simply scale them up for the iPad, most of them don’t feel right. If you take Android apps and scale them up for the Tab, the majority of them—Twitter, Facebook, Angry Birds—work perfectly. (Except for when they don’t, like The Weather Channel.) That’s because the Galaxy Tab is small enough that apps simply blown up a little bit still fundamentally work. Which means, conversely, that there’s almost no added benefit to using the Tab over a phone. It’s not big enough. Web browsing doesn’t have greater fidelity. I don’t get more out of Twitter. A magazine app would be cramped.

Videos do look better than they do on a phone, but a bigger tablet would be even better.

There is no way to not feel like a total dorkface while typing on this thing. In portrait, it’s like tapping on a massive, nerdy phone. In landscape, it’s just dumb. You still have to thumb type, only you’re stretching out further, and text entry swallows up the entire screen. Swype might be dandy on a phone, but on a seven-inch screen it doesn’t work so well—you have to travel a lot further to sketch out words. In other words, you get the worst of a phone’s input problems—amplified.

In the places where Samsung tries to make the Tab feel more like a tablet than a big phone, it’s not afraid to borrow liberally from what Apple’s done on the iPad. The music app (a huge improvement over the standard Android player) bears an uncanny resemblance to the iPad’s iPod app, while the faux-realness of the Calendar, Contacts and Memo apps feel like Chinatown knockoffs of Cupertino software.

The Tab feels like a grab bag of neglect, good intentions and poor execution. Example: Samsung’s built-in task manager, with one-touch kill switches to free up gobs of RAM, is plenty effective at dealing with apps running in the background. But why does it have to be there in the first place. Should you really be actively managing background apps?