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It’s been a week of exciting new gadgets, with Berlin’s IFA tech show spilling all of its technology-scented secrets. But not all tech is created equal, so which freshly revealed devices are worthy of your attention? Our team of experts is on hand to pick out IFA’s best bits.
Editor Jason Jenkins is up first — he’s been most impressed by the mind-warpingly gorgeous Sony 4K TV.
This televisual powerhouse is the next big thing in home entertainment, thanks to a stonkingly high 3,840×2,160-pixel resolution. That’s way higher than a current HD screen, and this telly comes with a neat feature that lets you use passive 3D glasses to get two people watching two different things at once, on the same screen.
Mystic. But there’s a catch — going on sale this year, this beast of a telly is likely to cost upwards of £20,000. No current sources can properly take advantage of 4K yet either, meaning the high pixel count is slightly wasted, at least for now.
Nevertheless, this TV is eye-wateringly beautiful, and a much more exciting future for telly-tech than 3D ever was.
Editor of Crave and all-around solid chap Rich Trenholm is fond of the Samsung Galaxy Camera, meanwhile.
One of IFA’s quirkiest reveals, this snapper has a whopping 21x optical zoom, and a 23mm aperture lens. Around the back though there’s a serious surprise in store — the Galaxy Camera has all the trappings of an Android smart phone.
Specifically, it has a 4.8-inch touchscreen, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, 3G and Wi-Fi support and it’s powered by a quad-core processor.
The idea is that with access to Android apps, you can edit and share your photos straight after taking them. It’s no wonder Rich chose this device — he’s said before that he wants to see phones in cameras, and not the other way around.
It’s an intriguing proposition, and we’re keen to see how useful this snapper proves when we give it the full review treatment.
Senior staff writer Andrew Hoyle has another Sony product topping his list, and that’s the Sony Vaio Duo 11.
This is truly the year of Windows 8, with loads of new laptops and tablets arriving with Microsoft’s all-new operating system on board. The Vaio Duo 11 is one of the more promising gadgets out there though, thanks to an 11-inch screen that’s small enough to be portable, but boasts a Full HD resolution.
Great stuff. The promise of powerful hardware and a sliding keyboard that transforms this tablet into a proper typing device are more reasons to be excited. Andrew told me he’s “really excited to give it a proper test”, so stay tuned.
As for me, I’ll have to give my stamp of approval to the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (alright, that blurry image above was pretty easy to guess).
This time last year I got my first look at the 5.3-inch Galaxy Note, and I’ll readily confess I wasn’t too impressed, thinking that nobody would really want a screen that enormous. But one year later I’ve been proved wrong, and the Note has become a surprise hit.
Samsung’s follow-up does everything you’d expect — making every aspect of the Note bigger and more powerful. The screen now measures a jaw-dropping 5.5 inches, while the processor has been upped to a 1.6GHz quad-core affair. Even the Note’s signature stylus has been made slightly chunkier.
Playing with the Note 2, I was impressed with how light and speedy it felt. The massive screen still won’t please everyone, but if you’re all about display real estate, I can’t see any manufacturer beating the Note 2 for sheer size and power. There’s a tonne of doodling software on board, which I’m really hoping proves useful, and not buggy and confusing.
Is there a gadget we’ve missed from our list? Has something been unveiled in the last few days that you’re really excited about? Tell me in the comments or on our Facebook wall.
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Samsung Galaxy Note 2 hands-on
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