[Hoot Gibson]

I recently replaced my old Android phone with another cheap one. This time I opted for the Kyocera Rise, which has three times as much memory as my old phone and much better battery life. I use Virgin Mobile because the unlimited data plans are cheap. The Rise is only $100, requires no contract and uses the ICS OS.

I also picked up a 64 Gb Blackberry Playbook for $250. The tablet has a great display, nice audio, the battery life is 11 hours. The drawback is that it has far fewer apps available but its default web browser is the best one that I have used on any tablet. I hope that RIM survives as a company, but I feel like I got a bargain, even if the company goes belly-up in a few months.

The Playbook runs some Android apps, including the Kindle Reader, but a recent upgrade is supposed to make it much easier for Android developers to make their apps run in the Playbook's Android Player app.