Toys ‘R’ Us a is building up the hype about their upcoming Black Friday event by giving us a taste of the deals they have in store. Apparently, this year will boast 50% more Doorbusters than last year—a total of 150 from 5am to 1pm on November 28th. Toys ‘R’ Us will be unveiling 100 of these doorbusters on their website starting on midnight November 26th/27th and in a 24-page circular that will appear in newspapers on Thanksgiving day. An additional 50 “mystery deals” will be unveiled in stores only on Black Friday. However, a sample of the deals shoppers can expect on Black Friday and over the course of their 2-day sales event can be found right now—after the break.

Doorbusters:

* FREE Play Station 2 Deal – 6 FREE Games, FREE “21” DVD and FREE Play Station 2 DVD Remote with the purchase of the Play Station 2 System
* FREE $50 Toys“R”Us Gift Card with the purchase of a Black 16GB iPod nano®
* FREE Nintendo® DS™ accessory with the purchase of Nintendo® DS™ Brain Age Bundle or Nintendo® DS™ Super Mario Bros. Bundle
* More than 80% off Xbox 360 Wired Guitar Hero Game Controller
* 60% off TOYMAX EyeClops® from JAKKS Pacific®
* 60% off Disney® High School Musical 2 Figures 3-Pack
* More than 50% off Littlest Pet Shop VIP Plush Pets from Hasbro®
* Up to 50% off Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Bundle for Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360
* 50% off Little Tikes® Diggers
* 50% off Jumbo Talking Elmo from Fisher-Price®
* 50% off Huffy® Scooters (Power Rangers and Cinderella, sold separately)
* 33% off V-Tech® Learning Laptop
* More than 30% off Thomas & Friends® Train Sets (Thomas & Percy Wooden Starter Set and Great Race Take Along Set, sold separately)
* $60 off iHome® Portable iPod® Docking Station (iPod® sold separately)
* $50 off Sony® 7.2MP Pink Cybershot Digital Camera

Deals for 2-day sales event (Friday, November 28, and Saturday, November 29):

* FREE Smart Animals 2-Pack with the purchase of Smart Animals Scanopedia from Discovery Kids®
* FREE Spiral Train Set with the purchase of Arch Train Table from Imaginarium®
* More than 70% off Nick® Scene It? and Pirates of the Caribbean Scene It?
* More than 65% off Dance Dance Revolution DVD Game and Twister® DVD Game
* Up to 55% off Select Hasbro® Games
* 50% off Star Wars 10” Transformers Millennium Falcon from Hasbro®
* 50% off Barbie® Princess 2-Pack Dolls from Mattel®
* 50% off Infrared Mini R/C Helicopter from Fast Lane
* 50% off iPod® Dock & Clock Radio (iPod® sold separately)
* $9.99 Sale on ALL Skateboards, Helmet & Pads from Channel One®
* $20 off Disney® High School Musical Alarm Clock with iPod® Dock (iPod® sold separately)
* More than $40 off Electric Guitar Pack from First Act®
* $70 off Woodland Climber from Step 2®
* $80 off Picnic on the Patio Playhouse from Little Tikes®
* $500 off Easton 7-foot 2-in-1 Swivel Combo Table

[Businesswire via I4U News]

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I’ve long suspected that the best job ever would be to work in product stress testing—because you basically get paid to break shit all day. Nokia sent over a bunch of info detailing how their test centers operate, leaving me fully convinced this would indeed be my dream gig. Not only do they run over 200 mechanical tests on these things, but where else could you play with a bunch of machines that bend, bake, humidify, spray, poke and drop phones? (And yeah, that phone in the picture above just got poked a million times…literally.)

Here’s a look at a handful of different tests and what each one tries to accomplish.

Liquids

Nokia places a phone under a bunch of needle-sized water dispensers and then lets it drip all over the phone, which tests for resistance in situations like rain, or splashing from a pool.

The humidity simulation, which tests the durability of phones in up to 95% humidity, is helpful in determining if a phone will hold up in particularly damp areas like South and Central America, where gadgets don’t have the longest lifespan.

Nokia also tests how the phone reacts to various liquids, creams and gels (lotions, hand sanitizers, etc…), since stuff like that tends to accidentally spill while sitting in a purse or backpack with the phone.

Sturdiness


Tests for bending and twisting are pretty straight forward and self explanatory. Still, you can’t help but cringe to see a phone placed in such an unnatural position. Nokia says when you have your phone in your back pocket and you sit on it, it’s susceptible to bending.

One of the cooler stress tests that exists is the Drop test—not only because it uses a giant friggin’ machine, but also because they record the drops using a camera that can record 100,000 frames per second, which is 3,000 times faster than the normal video camera. The videos are then analyzed frame by frame, determining the degree to which a device becomes distorted upon impact. Check it out.

When Nokia drops a phone, they drop it from about the height of a shirt pocket onto concrete, since that’s a likely scenario for dropped phones. They also attatch a phone under a steel device that pushes down 100 newtons of force.

Wear and Tear

Nokia has a series of wear and tear stress tests, when gauge the phone’s ability to take bumps, scratches from daily use. Dust testing involves throwing a handful of phones in a dust filled box and letting everything co-mingle. How much dust gets inside? And do buttons stop working when foreign substances get under the surface? This is where you find out.

They also let phones roll around in a bunch of pieces of hard, pointy plastic to see where it might scratch, scuff or crack under duress. These pieces are like plastic chocolate chips and bite-sized pyramids, and they’re pretty sharp. This phone met an unfortunate demise in the name of quality control.

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Other weird tests include rubbing a piece of denim up against a phone to test the effect of friction when the phone rubs up against your clothes and subjection the phone to temperatures ranging between -40 and 185 degrees Fahrenheit; this determines whether or not the phone can survive in the most extreme conditions on earth.

When testing is finished, they have a battery of analytic procedures to determine how well or how poorly a phone held up. This includes analyzing a phone under electron microscopes, 3D X-rays and X-ray Spectroscopes to check for any related damage; possible micron-sized soldering cracks, component failure or any breakdowns in the materials.

As you can see, these tests aren’t lightweight by any means, and most of my Nokia phones over the years have been pretty durable. What about yours? [Nokia on Giz]

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Things are bad out there, people. We’re going to see a pretty sad holiday shopping season from retailers perspectives. Yet these Black Friday ads we’re seeing, they look just like they do every year. I don’t think they adequately reflect just how badly they want, nay, they need your money. Let’s add a bit of that desperation into their advertising, shall we?

For this week’s Photoshop Contest, I want you to make some brutally honest Black Friday ads. Work your magic up and then send the results along to me at contests@gizmodo.com with “Honest Black Friday” in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs, GIFs or PNGs with the filename FirstnameLastname.jpg. Get your entries in by next Tuesday, then look for the top three winners as well as the rest of the best in our Gallery of Champions. Get to it!

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Jason, I was in LA for a bit yesterday, helping Jalopnik cover the LA autoshow with my long lens. (It was a boring show with nothing too interesting other than the Electric Mini and Honda Concept.) But it was coincidentally the same day JJ Abrams was showing off some scenes from the new Trek movie, so I stopped by. This is funny: When they asked me if I had any recording gear in my bag, I had a heart attack. Most people had a mere cellphone, but I had my full journo-blogger-battle messenger and so I ended up checking like 4 pieces of AV gear and a laptop. So embarrassing.

Inside, I don’t usually get star struck, but how can a geek not get excited seeing both Harold from Harold and Kumar and Sylar in the same theater sitting in the same row watching themselves on the screen. And it was Trek! Not the old Trek, and Not even Next Generation, but a new kind of Trek with the origins of the old characters and how they met up. Shields up, spoilers ahead.

They first showed the new trailer, previewed in theaters playing Bond, which you can see here.

Then they went through the scene were we see a trouble Kirk getting into a bar fight with cadets until a man stationed on his father’s ship realizes who he is, stops the fight and asks him if he wants to do something better with his life. Kirk takes him up and joins. The next scene involves Kirk working with Bones to smuggle him aboard the Enterprise and he saves them from walking into a trap. The next scene involves a fight scene with John Cho (HAROLD and Sulu) and Chris Pine (Kirk) vs some filthy Romulans, skydiving (yes, skydiving) and a saber fight. And the final scene involves Spock and Kirk meeting Scotty.

The Trek Dorks are currently a bit polarized, a few upset over rewriting canon and a few worried about the stylistic updates. But I really like the New Trek, and I think it could break out of the category of Films Only for Nerds. You’ve got more action, humor, and heat than you did in the old ones. Even if its a bit less intellectual than previous movies at times, if the preview was any indication, it doesn’t seem to ever slow down. And most importantly, it’s impossible to not resonate with the young cast playing the classic characters as they express the old mannerisms; Kirk runs like Kirk, Bones complains like bones, and Scotty, well Scotty is 100x more funny than the old Scotty. Come to think of it, everyone with an accent is extremely funny, but maybe because I’m a bit racist. (In a loving way.) Someone should have done an origins movie long ago, but within a year, we’ll have a modern telling of the heroes many of us grew up with. If you’re like me, you’ll probably find the story of how they all got together as cadets and juniors as important as the actual adventure they go on. Maybe we can do an io9/Gizmodo reader meetup movie night.

Here are my favoritest Giz stories today:
• BlackBerry Storm Review (Verdict: Not Quite a Perfect Storm)
• Future iPhones May Have Always-On Display
• Giz Explains: Every Video Format You Need to Know
• 10 Takes on the Blackberry Storm
• Dealzmodo Hack: Accessorize Your iPod/iPhone Like MacGyver
• At Gizmodo Gallery: The Red One Camera
• A Look at the Nokia Damage Test Labs

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Unlike other models we’ve seen, this roll-up mouse pad doesn’t just have some random, empty cylinder hanging off the side, spiting you like an empty tallboy through the workday. Instead, it uses this otherwise empty space to store a 4-port USB hub and a speaker complete with 3.5mm in and outputs. In other words, you can charge your MP3 USB gear while playing it right back through your mouse pad. Priced at $22, it’s not especially easy on the eyes, but its casual disregard for style is kind of what makes it great. [Gadget4All]

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