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Daimler has been talking about electric Smart cars for about 10 years now, but the closest you’ve ever been able to come to a production model has been to go all KIRF-style and buy a knock-off CMEC City Smart. At the North American International Auto Show this past week the company again confirmed that a little Smart that runs on little batteries is still in the works, announcing plans to release 1,000 electric fortwos on lease here in the States by the end of the year. Now that the show is over, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is letting everyone know that his company will be producing those little batteries, a partnership the likes of which he must surely be hoping to develop with other manufacturers as they jump on the EV bandwagon. 1,000 cars is disappointingly few, but it’s better than the paltry 500 plug-in Prius models Toyota plans to pilot here.
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By Evan Ackerman

Back in September, we wrote about Chinavision’s projector phone. We stumbled across what appeared to be this exact phone on the show floor yesterday, except it was called the Logic Bolt, by a company called Logic Wireless. According to an article at PC Mag, Logic Wireless found “an existing company that made a prototype of the projector-phone. [They] took over the exclusive rights and redesigned all the features of the phone.” I’m not sure what they mean by “features,” but it kinda looks exactly the same as a Chinavision model except with tweaked guts that do include an upgrade to quad band GSM (from tri band) but no other changes that I can easily identify.

Anyway, here’s the specs: quad band GSM, QVGA (320 x 240) touchscreen, VGA (640 x 480) integrated projector and speaker, 3 mpx camera, 4 gigs storage expandable with microSD, 3 hours talk time and 2 hours projection time, accepts inputs from VGA and RCA sources with included adapter.

From the sound of things, the current version of the Bolt isn’t exactly a production model, although it will be for sale. A much smaller/better version is in the prototype stage and will be unveiled at CeBit Germany later this year. It may include a physical keyboard and will likely run either Windows Mobile or Android. So, um, yeah, don’t buy one of these anytime soon I guess.

Rumor has it that the phone is going to be available on T-Mobile, and that it’s going to cost $100 (subsidized) or $400-$600 straight up. Or you can (still) get a kinda the same model from Chinavision for $265.50.

Thanks to PC Mag for the additional info

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The buzz has been all about the LG “Dick Tracy” watch phones that were unveiled this week at CES 2009. Essentially the watch phones will feature touchscreen, a speakerphone as well as bluetooth, a rather large amount of internal memory for playing MP3 music, and a text-to-speech recognition for you to listen to any text messages come in.

While a very cool innovation, they will not be ready for release until the second half of this year, at the earliest. So the models they showed off at CES were basic prototypes and were nowhere close to what will be on the final production model. I was able to take a video of one of the LG reps showing off the device, which I will post later. For now, let’s show off some pics of the clever new device!

Would you purchase a watch phone? It sure makes us gadget geeks drool, but I’d like to know how much interest people would have in this particular gadget in everyday life. If the price is right, I’d personally be tempted to get it. Using your phone as a wristwatch would certainly make it more difficult to lose or drop it, I believe!

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We’ve seen the Grippity back-typing keyboard move from mere prototype to working, production model, so our interest was definitely piqued when we heard that the developer would be at CES with his one-of-a-kind QWERTY board. Well, he came by with the Grippity, and we got some finger-time with it. The keyboard’s certainly not an immediately comfortable or intuitive typing experience by any means, but it’s got a real charm to it. The designer also kindly did a demo for us, and even he — the creator of the device — wasn’t exactly what we’d call lightning fast on it, but see for yourself in the video (and gallery!) after the break.

P.S.- Yes, that’s the inside of the Engadget double-wide trailer in the video — we promise we’ll have some more pictures as soon as all the real CES news dies down!
Gallery: Grippity keyboard

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