LG Decoy a scene-stealer

Mobile phones
I'm growing as loyal to the LG brand these days as I was to Sony's for much of the past 20 years. All of LG's fridges, air conditioners, and other appliances bear the company's cool signature curves and finishes, and smart features.

My wife, Lisa, was tickled to discover a light inside our new LG gas dryer that flicked on when she opened the door. It's a simple, low-tech Easter egg, but one that might help solve the lost-sock mysteries around our house.

This is what I call the LG touch: Each of the Korean powerhouse's products has at least one great feature, which demonstrates that a designer was thinking about you when he crafted the device.

The LG Decoy (available through Verizon Wireless) is no exception. The music phone comes with its own delightful add-on: a slot on the phone that holds its own detachable Bluetooth headset. Now your phone and headset can be in the same place - saving you from scrambling for two gadgets in your pocketbook. This also reduces the need for you to walk around like a tool, with that headset permanently planted in your ear.

The Decoy is a meaty, four-ounce slider with a mirrored, metallic finish and 2.2-inch display. The face has a joystick surrounded by backlit arrows and four backlit control buttons. The phone has a black keypad with backlit keys.

You can manage much of your Verizon Wireless V Cast media without sliding the Decoy open: The joystick (which is a might too touchy) will get you to your libraries, and the V Cast streams quickly enough. The Decoy also has a 2-megapixel camera and a memory card slot.

The phone is available at Verizon Wireless stores and at verizonwireless.com for about $180, after a mail-in rebate and with a two-year contract.

Wristwatches

Timepieces for the Sci-Fi minded

I'm marking my midlife crisis (at 41, you might call it an early onset) with a gift to myself. I can't swing the cost of a convertible, so I am looking at wristwatches. The watch I really want is a replica of Snake Plissken's weighty, digital timepiece in "Escape from New York."

In the John Carpenter film, Snake's watch counts down the time he has left to rescue the president and himself. It seems like the perfect device to remind me, ruthlessly, that time is precious.

The closest I've come, however, may be the Nekura Scramble, one of the many gorgeous watches I found at Tokyoflash.com. Its LCD/LED hybrid display shows the time as a stack of simple blocks, arranged in bands, so you will have to learn how to tell time again.

The Scramble (about $123, including shipping) is just one watch that will tell people you live a life filled with action. The Biohazard and Radioactive watches at Tokyo Flash not only tell you the time, they bring a sense of imminent danger to each waking moment.

OutputA Polaroid light on ink, heavy on paper

The old Polaroid brand is kicking around again, this time on a hand-held printer that will remind you of the instant camera that once made the brand famous.

The PoGo Digital Instant Mobile Photo Printer, like Polaroid's One600 Classic instant camera (which you can still buy), pops out prints as if it were sticking its tongue out.

The PoGo's 2- by 3-inch sticky-back paper contains layers of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black dyes that are heat-activated. This eliminates the nuisance of replacing and recycling ink cartridges, but it adds the expense of the PoGo's special Zink (for zero-ink) Paper - about 33 cents per sheet.

The PoGo is solidly built of plastic and metal, making it truly roadworthy. It connects wirelessly, via Bluetooth, to your mobile phone and to digital cameras via USB. The PoGo can take about a minute to turn out a single print. The prints are passable as novelties, for spreading around memories before the party is even over, for example.

Although they come out dry, and with decent color, the PoGo's prints are ultimately rough, gimmicky semblances of their digital originals.

Innovative last week

For mighty Wind, a broken promise

MSI Computer upset cheap geeks everywhere last week when it delayed the release of its Wind Notebook PC. Its tiny size and price belie the Wind's grown-up features, such as its 80GB hard drive and 1.6GHz Intel Atom chip. The $500 Wind is a mighty thing: It includes WiFi, Bluetooth, and a built-in webcam. The Wind, which weighs less than three pounds, has a 10-inch display. A $400 Linux version is due out this summer.