Gadgets For Life: Spring Sizzlers

Hey Guys! Its spring time and while you are getting ready to face the heat, let us draw your attention to some hot gadgets that might heat up things this season. Year 2010 promises to be a real winner as far as tech enthusiasts are concerned and there are some path breaking tech pieces waiting to make an entry to-your lives.

APPLE I-PAD

Rumours were afloat from month before Steve Jobs announced the launch of this wonderful device in front of a jam packed audience that broke a thundering applause. As the official communiqué from Apple Inc informed the arrival of the I-Pad tablet on April 4, 2010, the tech frenzy camaraderie was abuzz the world over.

APPLE I-PAD

The I-pad is a perfect slick device bridging the gap between a smart-phone and a laptop and what's more is low priced as well. Priced as low as $499 for 16 gigabytes of storage. An extra $130 is needed to equip it with third-generation wireless capability (to be launched later). The first thing that blows you away is the awesome 9.7 inch crisp screen. When you hold the iPad with the wider side down, in landscape mode, it gives an even more brilliant view.

The iPad has a near life-sized touch keyboard and supports Web browsing. It comes with a built-in calendar and address book. It's nearly big enough for touch typing - an improvement over the way that the iPhone's cramped keyboard that sometimes caused errors.

The iPad can run movies, games and a gamut of applications. And taking on e-readers like Amazon's Kindle, Apple announced a digital bookstore called iBooks that will let users buy from publishers including Pearson Pic's Penguin, News Corp's HarperCollins, and Hachette Book Group. Other analysts had speculated that the tablet may cost as much as $1,000.

Click on a book cover, and the book will open. You can read one page at a time in portrait mode, or, turn the iPad to either side and it will show you two pages of text. The screen is sharp and the pages turn crisply, more like a real book than on electronic ink screens.

It has got all that it takes to blow you away.

SONY XPERIA X10

Android is making deep inroads to the global market. This new generation of phones from Sony it seems is going to change the mobile OS game. Xperia X10 mini and X10 mini pro offer an open and intuitive communication entertainment experience and build on the human curvature design philosophy debuted by the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. Operating on the Android 1.6 operating system these phones come with access to Google services like Gmail, Google Maps, and the Android Market. They include a 2.55-inch touch screen and 5-megapixel camera.

Both the phones incorporate the signature application Sony Ericsson Timescape, which brings all communication together in one place so users can see at a glance text messages, missed calls, and Facebook and Twitter updates, without having to open lots of different applications. The interactive music player also uses the "infinite button" to pull together all music content from the music store and YouTube - a smart way to search for new tracks from a favorite artist.

XPERIA X10

The Xperia x10 mini Pro has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, an addition that makes it slightly heavier than the mini, 4.2 ounces compared to 3.1 ounces. The key benefit of the x10 mini is the ability to control it with just the touch of your thumb, since icons are located in the four corners of the screen. On the availability, the phones are expected to hit the Indian markets in April. Heat is certainly on.

PUMA SMARTPHONE

Sagem and Puma unveiled the sports-clothing company's first mobile phone - a phone that looks really stylish, comes with some great features and is environment-friendly as well.

Let's get to the key features: the dimensions are 102 x 56 x 13 mm and it weighs 115 grams. Then you have a 2.8 inches QVGA touch screen, a 3.2 Mega Pixel Camera with LED flash, a solar panel with charge indicator. This means that your device will charge whilst on the go and are not required to carry your charger along with you.

The phone has 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 2.9 Mbps HSUPA, a 880 mAh Li-Ion battery that's good for 350 hours of standby and 5 hours of talk time and 24 hours of music playback. On the connectivity, it has Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR, a 3.5mm audio jack, micro USB port, GPS support and a micro SD card slot.

That is not all; the PUMA phone also has loads of sporty features - a run tracker, a pedometer, a bike speedo and a sailing compass. For the people who love music on the go - the phone has a music player, FM Radio and a stopwatch.

The phone will hit the European markets this April. Let's hope it warms up the Indian shores soon enough as we have a lot of sun shine to charge it up.

IPHONE 4.0

Yes, millions are still making plans to buy the Apple I-phone 3gs expected to be launched in India later this month, something far more revolutionary is getting evolved.

Speculations are rife that the next-generation iPhone will be release in mid 2010. Let's take a look at some of the features, which as per the rumours, we would see in iphone 4.0.

It is likely to feature a touch-sensitive plastic back casing similar to the company's Magic Mouse released in October 2009. Apple Magic Mouse lacks any physical buttons on its solid acrylic surface. It allows multi-touch controls that are closer to that of a MacBook track-pad.

Some of the new features are rumoured to include a much better and improved battery life, which could give you around 14 to 16 hours talk time and internet time, the iPhone will be thinner and much lighter than the 3GS, there will be the addition of zooming in and out via the camera and video and that there will be an LED flash with the camera.

IPHONE 4.0

Reports also say that the next iPhone will have a higher megapixel camera visa-vis the current model.

The upcoming model is likely to have a 5 megapixel camera which will bring it on par with its newest rival Google Nexus One. Gossip mill also says that Apple will introduce an LED flash in the new model. This really looks like another game-changer from Apple.