Japanese smartphone makes calls, texts, detects radiation

Is SoftBank gearing up for the Apocalypse or simply cashing in on Fukushima's post-nuclear reactor disaster fear factor? The Japanese telecommunications company is outfitting every new Pantone 5 smartphone with a radiation detector that can be launched using a button on the Android phone's front. A SoftBank exec says, "I hope that mothers of children will feel safe by carrying this smartphone," but critics claim the company is playing on media-fueled paranoia -- a pretty promising marketing technique, if you ask us. We can hardly blame the petrified populace for wanting to perform its own spot safety checks -- though we hope the device is never actually needed.