An elegant white rectangle, the Helio Kickflip ($250 list) could be a style icon on the order of the RAZR. Unfortunately, hideously buggy software forces me to warn you away from this phone, at least during May and June of 2006. Helio says it's fixing the software soon. When it does, I will revisit this review.

The software bugs are unfortunate, because this phone sure is pretty. It's a little heavy, at 4.5 ounces and 3.9 by 2 by 1 inches, but the hinge snaps open automatically with a firm touch, and it's tremendous fun to feel the kick of the screen flying into place. The number buttons are tight but big enough, the dedicated music and camera buttons on the outside work well, and the screen is gorgeous. If all you want to do is watch the logo flip up and down while swinging the snappy hinge back and forth, go ahead, buy one.

Unfortunately, the Kickflip's bugs affect even basic calling functions. During outgoing calls there's an unacceptable hiss in the earpiece, and the battery runs down after less than 3 hours of talk time. That's not good.

The phone has a 2-megapixel camera, but there's no way to get the photos out of it because it saves them in a bizarre, nonstandardized format, even when you transfer them to a microSD memory card. If you try to send them to yourself, they shrink down to 640-by-480. The phone also has a music/video player, but I could never get the phone to play MP3s off a memory card, though I could get it to crash a lot while trying to do so.

There were other, smaller bugs that were pretty annoying. If you're in an application that uses the phone's soft keys (such as the video player), and you flip the phone closed, the app keeps running with the soft key labels pointing to no buttons you can possibly press on the closed phone. Helio's HOT application, which brings news headlines to the phone's home screen, disables the phone's menu button, making it useless. To cap it all, the phone gets uncomfortably warm when left plugged in.

It seems to me the 320-by-240 screen is too good for Helio's video content. It is a big, bright display, but the video looks bad. A downloaded music video looked almost impressionistically blocky. The phone has TV-video out, which I couldn't test as my model didn't come with the right cable—and anyway, both the 176-by-144 videos taken with the phone's camera and the blocky music video I downloaded would look even more awful on a TV.

Helio plans to update the Kickflip's software in June to improve sound quality, battery life, and overall stability and functionality, though Helio is unwisely selling it now. Right now, anyone with half an ounce of sense should buy the Hero; if they want to try the Helio experience, and stay away from the buggy Kickflip.

Whassup?: With its purchase of hardcore gamer and industry news wires GamerFeed and GameDaily, game download network Gigex re-launches itself as GameDaily.com. The site now aggregates all of Gigex's pieces, a recently launched consumer editorial site of reviews, previews, et. al., the GameDaily feed of company announcements, and demo/trailer/patch downloads.

So What?: GameDaily almost gets it right by offering a cleaner, quicker presentation than the overstuffed big boys of game content. The tight, short drive-by reviews from the recently installed editorial staff are the best feature here. Still lacking is tighter integration of the consumer editorial, industry news and downloads areas, which lack a consistent navigational structure across the pieces.

Whassup?: Children are now spending more time with video games than TV, according to Michigan State University research with 1,000 5th, 8th, 11th graders and college students. The 8th graders are the sweet spot of game activity, with boys playing 23 hours a week and girls playing 12 hours. Collegeage boys (16 hours) and 11th grade girls (6 hours) are the least frequent gamers for their genders. Competition with peers and against themselves are the core motivations to game, the research finds, and as the gamers age they prefer more social interaction.

So What?: Researchers say that while boys are clocking in twice as many game hours as girls, the gaming gender gap clearly is closing with this generation, and educators may even want to encourage this trend. Gaming is an important way that kids become acquainted and comfortable with the technology that will be so important to their adult careers, MSU professor Bradley Greenberg says. Rather than "slapping a bow on Pac Man," he recommends designing games that appeal to female cognitive strengths: matching, memory, and verbal skills.

Whassup?: SiliconValley.com ran a profile of new head of Microsoft Game Studios, Shane Kim, saying he may (or may not) be the bottom-line bean counter some are assuming. MS has cut internal game development staff from 1200 to 1000 since last year and decided to skip a season of its entire line of sports titles. Kim argues it is because more third parties are now developing for the Xbox and MS is focusing energy on the big hits.

So What?: As the article also notes, some developers are grumbling, despite Kim's claims, that MS is losing direction in expanding its games library. Indeed, several industry analysts also argue lately that Xbox simply needs more titles and cannot subsist on an too limited a selection even of top drawer titles like Halo and Splinter Cell. After all, wasn't that the Nintendo GameCube strategy? So What?: Researchers say that while boys are clocking in twice as many game hours as girls, the gaming gender gap clearly is closing with this generation, and educators may even want to encourage this trend. Gaming is an important way that kids become acquainted and comfortable with the technology that will be so important to their adult careers, MSU professor Bradley Greenberg says. Rather than "slapping a bow on Pac Man," he recommends designing games that appeal to female cognitive strengths: matching, memory, and verbal skills.

Whassup?: SiliconValley.com ran a profile of new head of Microsoft Game Studios, Shane Kim, saying he may (or may not) be the bottom-line bean counter some are assuming. MS has cut internal game development staff from 1200 to 1000 since last year and decided to skip a season of its entire line of sports titles. Kim argues it is because more third parties are now developing for the Xbox and MS is focusing energy on the big hits.

So What?: As the article also notes, some developers are grumbling, despite Kim's claims, that MS is losing direction in expanding its games library. Indeed, several industry analysts also argue lately that Xbox simply needs more titles and cannot subsist on an too limited a selection even of top drawer titles like Halo and Splinter Cell. After all, wasn't that the Nintendo GameCube strategy?

Whassup?: American Technology Research analyst P.J. McNealy projects that the recent Xbox price cut will help the platform sell about 275,000 units vs. 200,000 PS2s for April, the first time any competitor will have outsold Sony's war horse. If Sony hasn't already cut its PS2 pricing as you read this at E3, it almost certainly will soon. After Sony surprised every one recently in announcing that PS2 sales could dip by 30% this year, many financial analysts suggested that unless Sony cuts console pricing game sales will suffer this year.

So What?: Without a compelling new title soon, Xbox sales will back off as quickly as GameCube sales did. Clearly Sony is working hard to extend the usual price drop cycle for its own machine, as they also reassured publishers and the market recently the PS2 would still be relevant until 2010. All of which begs the question of how confident Sony is about hitting its timetable and/or a good price point for its enormously complex, still unseen PS3.