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Car Phones Get Sillier By The Day

One of the few things I am really passionate about in life is sports cars. While I want to drive a Porsche or Ferrari as much as the next guy, my interest doesn't extend to phones that are branded with auto manufacturing logos. Instead of re-badging a Motorola Z8 with the Ferrari crest, this phone is actually shaped like an F1 Ferrari. I have to wonder if the ringtone is the sound of that massive engine revving, or the horn beeping.

Seriously. Who is going to use this? I mean, it does actually offer some decent phone features. Those include a 2.2-inch LCD touch screen, MP3 and MP4 support, as well as a 3G radio. It will support a memory card so you can store music. But who wants to walk around all day with a Ferrari in your pocket! OK, maybe a 10-year-old. Any normal person would simply look like an idiot if they pulled this out and took a call in public.

You also have to consider the build quality. Ferrari's are known to be finicky. Will the phone version -- which isn't officially licensed, by the way -- be similarly sensitive?

The Motorola Z8 Ferrari Edition is at least a more functional phone, and somewhat classier in design, and won't make you feel too foolish about using it.

Then there's the recently released HT-2 Hummer phone. Yep, the same folks that brought us the Hummer phone last summer have revisited their design and -- just like the GM vehicle -- have scaled back the HT-2 just as the H2 was by GM. The original HT-1 was huge, and not rugged at all. The HT-2 is somewhat more svelte, and has been slightly ruggedized to make it tougher like its namesake. The one decent thing about the HT-2 is that it has a dual-SIM configuration, so you can use two different phone numbers with the same phone.

Even though the Hummer is very much an American icon, the HT-2 phone will be launching in Russia later this quarter.

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