What's sharper than a razor? A scalpel. Motorola mobile devices overlord Ron Garriques unveiled the first of the company's new SCPL (that's "scalpel") line of phones today, the successors to the RAZR platform. The MOTOFONE is targeted at "high-growth markets," which is Motospeak for the third world where many people don't already have cell phones.

SCPL changes the cell-phone game in even basic phone performance, Garriques says. The MOTOFONE is super-thin, features two antennas for superior reception, "enhanced audio" that's super-loud and super-clear (think Nextel), and a screen which you can see "in unbelievably bright sunlight as well as no sunlight as all," according to Garriques. It'll have 450 minutes of talk time and 400 hours of standby -- you'll be able to go weeks without a charge. And it'll be really cheap.

The MOTOFONE is just the first in a long line of SCPLs which will hit every price level and every form factor, including clamshells, QWERTYs, and sliders, Garriques said. And the higher-end "SCPL Broadband" platform, to be unveiled early next year, will come to "all of our HSDPA and EVDO Rev A customers across the world" -- which means, at the very least, Sprint and Verizon.

Read my full story on PCMag.com for the SCPL's release date, the future of Linux on Motorola handsets, and more.

It's so funny to witness the lengths that companies will go to in order to present their products in a unique way.

VakaDoo, maker of accessories for entertainment devices, sent us the iVak iPod case. Just look at their press kit! 

The iVak Domino Series come with an iVak key to open the case (BTW, the key looks like a credit card) and the VakWrap to manage your headphone wires.

The iVak iPod case is made of a durable white plastic, allowing you to throw, drop, or slingshot your 20/30GB iPod with video without fear of it breaking. It features a locking mechanism on each side, kind of like puzzle pieces, to keep the case in place. And I have to say, a puzzle it was. It took me a good fifteen minutes to get the damn thing back together! If you're having trouble opening the case, follow these instructions.

The 40/60GB iVak case is available in black.

Get the iVak for $19.95.

iPod nano users aren't left out. The iVak nano is coming soon with a range of fancy colors, including turquoise, cloudy black tint, and orange. This lets you mix and match colors with your friends by removing one part of the case. With the iVank nano, you'll receive the VakWrap, lanyard key ring, and a protective sticker for the clickwheel.

Have you got a movie in you, but you don't have the means? The newly launched LiveMansion.com takes social networking in a new direction, enabling its members to create a feature film from scratch. According to Variety, the film, titled "Live Mansion" will be a thriller set in the world of rave parties. Oh so LA. . . The budget for the film is estimated in the $1 to $2.5 million range. Members will be in charge of casting as well as choosing a director based on online submissions.

The powers that be behind this online venture is Ckrush, an independent film company behind many a testosterone-fueled flick including Beer League, due out this summer, starring Artie Lange, a regular on the Howard Stern Show. (Shocking!) The company has two other films in production filled with stars such as Wee-Man (a person of small stature, but also, hilariously, a toilet training device for kids) from Jackass, and Paris Hilton.

Sign-up is free, but it's not clear whether there are or will be any premium features. Blogging Molly will update this post once she snoops around a bit.

Lost amongst all the RAZR announcements, Motorola showed off some impressive new Nextel phones at the company's analyst event here in Chicago. Yes, Nextel.

You may have heard of the ic502 and ic902, the first cross-platform phones which will make calls using Sprint's CDMA network, but do push-to-talk "chirp" on Nextel's iDEN network. The ic502 is a pretty basic rugged phone, but the ic902 has the big new features for Nextel -- a 2-megapixel camera and a music player with external music buttons.

But you might not have heard of the i880 (at left) and i885, the new "fashion phones" for Nextel and Boost. Both have external music buttons and 2-megapixel cameras, and both snap open when you press a button on the hinge. The i885 has a faux-leather finish and the i880 is an odd but attractive fake snakeskin.

The ic502, i880 and i885 will appear by the end of this year; the ic902 will be released in early 2007.

Check out my in-depth slideshow on PCMag.com.

We had a fascinating meeting yesterday here at the PC Magazine office, with Taras Wankewycz of Horizon Fuel Cells. The company showed us its first product, the H-Racer: a toy car about 6.5 inches long that runs on hydrogen. Even better, you get to produce the fuel yourself, and the mini fueling station is powered by a fuel-cell battery, which in turn derives power from a solar panel; so much alternative fuel technology in one little package. (I know, I just used variations of the word "fuel" way too many times in one sentence.)

The H-Racer runs for around 3 minutes before it needs refueling. It will come in a kit (bundled with the refueling station and the solar panel), and is easily put together; parents and kids can do it together for a mutual learning experience. You can buy the H-Racer and fuel station now at Horizon's site, for a combined $80, and the bundle should be available in some stores and at sites like ThinkGeek in August.

Wankewycz told us that this is the first fuel-cell product that will be widely available to the mainstream commercial market. The company will be developing more hydrogen-powered toys, either on its own or together with actual toy manufacturers, many of whom have shown a strong interest already in the H-Racer. "Next year we'll have a bigger product," he said. Eventually, he hopes to design an actual, driveable hydrogen-powered car; but he decided to start small.

Take a look at our writeup on the H-Racer at TechnoRide, where we also posted a slideshow showing all the car's components.

Although what appeared to be a perfectly functional Sony Reader was on display at CES six months ago, the actual product won't ship until late September. I am a big fan of ebook readers, as a concept, and I convinced Sony to let me try out a production sample for a few weeks.  You can read my hands-on Sony Reader Preview on PCmag.com, but don't expect a verdict on the product or a complete answer to the question posed in the headline of this post. The reason? Most of the product most interesting and promising features were disabled.

There was no way to connect it to a PC, no way to load ebooks, and of course no way to connect to Sony Connect to get content. Even the Memory Stick and SD slots were deactivated. I also really wanted to check out how RSS feeds look on the Reader, which I think is a killer app of this device.

As frustrating as this was, I am cautiously optimistic about the device. It is slim, super-portable, and the electronic ink display looks great. The reported $250-$300 price seems a little steep, but if the company makes it as format-agnostic as they have said (supporting PDFs, Word doc, and most other text files) they could have a winner.  I can't wait to test a model that I can actually load content onto.

Sony better hurry it to market, because Apple seems to have ebook plans for the iPod as well. More power to them! The more ebook reading devices there are out there, the more ebook readers there will be. And I am sick of trying to read ebooks on my Treo 650.

Here in Chicago at Motorola's analyst week, during breaks between presentations on supply-chain strategy I've gotten to play with Motorola's new phones. Some somewhat disordered thoughts on the KRAZR, RAZR XX and RAZR MAXX:

The RAZR XX feels just like a standard RAZR in the hand -- same grooved-metal finish - but when you put it side by side with an old RAZR, you realize it's slightly larger.

The MAXX is a boat. It's huge. It also feels like furniture because of that silky soft-touch PEBL-like finish.

If the MAXX is furniture, the KRAZR is jewelry. It's very shiny, all over, and has an almost glassy finish. The touch-sensitive music buttons that appear out of nowhere on the front are very cool, though they didn't quite work on the prototype models here. The CDMA KRAZR I was using had US Cellular's EasyEdge service on board. That's a BREW system, so clearly Verizon is looking at this one as well.

The KRAZR feels noticeably thicker than the RAZR, too.

You like embossed metal keys? Everybody's got embossed metal keys. But the KRAZR's keypad is notably smaller than the RAZR's. The screen looks sharper than the RAZR's, too, not because it's higher-res but because it's smaller. The XX/MAXX screen actually is higher-res, and looks very bright and just gorgeous.

The menus on the KRAZR feel just about as slow as the standard RAZR. The MAXX and XX feel much faster.

Both the XX and the MAXX have a real Web browser, Opera 8.0. The KRAZR and the RIZR are stuck with WAP. Boo.

Nobody seems to know if the XX and MAXX will be sold in the USA. I've so far heard three answers from three different Moto folks.

For a full rundown of Motorola's new phones and lots of photos, see PCMag.com.

I'm at Motorola's annual analysts' meeting this week, getting the scoop on the new KRAZRs and RIZRs and MAXXes and other hot new handsets. Check out my stories on PCMag.com later today for more information.

If you've never been to a Motorola throw-down, though, you'd be surprised by the level of in-jokes and trash talking going on. For instance, at one point when discussing "tattoos" for Motorola phones, mobile device head Ron Garriques said that phone tattoos can be erased or replaced "if you and Mary broke up, for instance." On the screen, he showed a RAZR with a giant tattoo of a heart containing the name "Monica" – a reference to longtime Moto PR rep Monica Rohleder, who recently jumped ship and now represents Helio.

Other hits with the analyst crowd included a YouTube video about "Samesung" and Garriques quipping that "my wife really likes chocolates, but she likes shiny things more," a reference to LG's upcoming Chocolate phone.