If you’re a frequent traveler, or if you don’t have a garage or basement and find your kitchen table is doomed to serve most of its life as an electronics bench this hack is for you. [Robovergne] came up with a mobile electronics lab (translated) in order to help preserve the Wife Acceptance Factor for his hobby.

The project comes in two parts. On the right you see the pair of component storage cabinets. These are high-quality examples that fully enclose each drawer (cheaper cabinets are open at the back). This way, [Robovergne] was able to connect two of them together with a piano hinge, and add some carrying handles to the top.

The second half of the project is the bench itself. It features a lab supply, soldering iron transformer and holder, and some breadboards for good measure. The base of the unit houses a drawer which carries the bulk of his tools. Now he can pack up and clear out the living room in one single trip.

[Adam Outler] has been pretty heavy into mobile device hacking lately. The biggest problem with that field is recovering from back flashes or development firmware glitches. In many cases you can use a JTAG programmer to reflash stock firmware to resurrect a handset. Unfortunately you’ll be hard pressed to find a phone that comes with a JTAG header, and soldering to the microelectronic boards is not for the faint of heart.

But a solution is here, [Adam] pulled together a wide set of resources to create a package to unbrick Samsung phones. Now we’re sure that there’s more than a handful of people who would argue that a bad firmware flash that can be fixed this way means that the phone wasn’t actually “bricked” in the first place. But what we see is one more barrier torn down between being a hardware user and becoming a hardware hacker. You’re much more likely to get in there and get your hands dirty if you know that you’ll be able to undo your mistakes and reclaim you precious pocket hardware. See just how easy it is in the video after the break.

Today we received two very interesting hacks utilizing old cellphones within a matter of minutes of each other – Of course, this means war!

In the left corner we have the Mobile Mobile, a 50 cell phone collection dangling high above our heads by [James]. Loyal readers will remember his last match, a physical realization of the Spinning Wheel of Death. But today, Mobile Mobile tries to keep his title with the use of Twitter and live video.

In the right corner we have competition and newcomer  [Timo] and his Cellphone Symphony. With a combined amount of 150 cell phones including sim cards, he is going to be one tough cookie. It’s all down to this folks.

Both utilize MIDI to try and lift spirits this holiday season by playing music and sounds. Servers and custom software are of course both necessities… but who will be the winner? Check out after the break!

Round 1: Reaction Time
After pinging the cellphones, [James] and his team were able to knock response time down to 2ms. While [Timo] chose to use pre-existing cell phone networks, thus resulting in a 6 second delay. Mobile Mobile double jabs and gets a point.

Round 2: Press and Performance
The Cellphone Symphony might be wounded, but it’s definitely not out. Boasting a record for visiting the Estonia Concert Hall, where hundreds have enjoyed this unique performance. Mobile Mobile however has been hunkered down to only one small office. A left cross followed by an upper cut from the Symphony and it looks like it might be over.

Round 3: Final Stand
It’s down to this folks, I don’t know how much more suspense I can take. This truly has been a gruelling eye for eye match, but there can only be one grand champion of champions. Wait! Whats this? Both contenders are down after a double right hook. I can’t believe it, it’s a knock out, no winner!

Photos of the BlackBerry Storm 2, both inside and out, have been leaked. Engadget provides us with the specifics, going into detail about the four large piezoelectric pressure sensors that sit underneath the screen. It looks as though the screen will still function as a button, just without the physical movement of the previous model that received mixed reviews. For a better explanation of the technology behind the phone’s innovative screen, here’s a video describing it in more detail and a writeup over at the CrackBerry forums.

In a recent study, researchers were able to garnish all kinds of sensitive data from second hand mobile devices.  Of the units tested, 44% contained information such as salary details, bank account information, business plans, personal medical details, personal insults, and address book data.  Next time you get a used device, take a good look around. You never know what you may find.

[via Zero Day]

GpsPasSion forum member [Ospray] has released a new version of MioPocket. For those of you that don’t know, MioPocket is a great unlock kit for GPS units. It basically unlocks the hidden potential of your GPS so you can access the built-in functionality of a PDA as well as retaining the GPS software. This means you can play music, watch video, play games, read and write office documents, and many other things with the once single-purpose device.

Originally written for Mio brand devices, it has been successfully used on a couple other brands. We’ve seen it on a Navigon 2100 using a modified install. This software can run directly off the SD card, so it can easily be updated or removed.

The fun part is fiddling with the scripts to get the newest releases to work on the Navigon and Magellan devices.