Samsung phone, with anti-smudge screen, has high-definition video recording
Gillian Shaw
Sun
Galaxy S, Samsung
Kinect, Microsoft
Acer Aspire Predator, Acer
Galaxy S, Samsung, price to be announced
Apple may be making the news but Android phone sales have been quietly outstripping the iPhone. I tried out Samsung’s Galaxy S that is coming to the Bell network in early August and for those who didn’t line up to get an iPhone 4, this is a serious contender. Flick on the four-inch (10-cm) Super AMOLED touch screen and you’ll see why. The anti-smudge screen has great clarity, even in sunlight. It has a one-GHz processor, high definition video recording and a 5.0-megapixel camera with expandable memory up to 32 GB. The touch screen QWERTY keyboard has Swype technology — instead of tapping on each key you use one continuous motion to swipe across the letters of the word you want to spell out — a great way to speed up your touch screen typing. www.samsung.ca
Kinect, Microsoft, $150
For the uber-organized out there who are already making holiday game-buying plans, Microsoft has announced pricing on its Kinect for the Xbox 360 and plans for the release of its new four-GB console. Kinect, the hotly anticipated motion sensor video game accessory for the Xbox, lets players operate games by using body movements instead of a controller. The Kinect tracks your motions, translating movements into action on the video game screen. Using the voice recognition feature, you can run your Xbox with such commands as “Xbox, play” to start a movie or you can browse your music list by waving your hand. Microsoft will be bundling the Kinect with its new smaller form factor Wifi-enabled 4GB Xbox 360 and the Kinect Adventures game, selling it for $300 while the Kinect sensor with Kinect Adventures will be $150. The new 4GB Xbox will sell for $200. There are other Kinect titles in the works, with 15 expected to be available by launch day, including Kinectimals, Kinect Sports, Kinect Joy Ride and MTV Games’ and Harmonix’s Dance Central — retailing at $50 each. The Kinect sensor is scheduled for release in November; the new 4GB console in August. www.xbox.ca
Acer Aspire Predator, Acer, starts at $1,800
This newly released gaming desktop machine from Acer combines Intel Core i7 quad processor with NVIDIA GeForce GTX470 graphics with 3-way SLI support and nine gigabytes DDR3 memory, expandable to 12GB. A whopping one-terabyte hard drive with three more easy-swap hard disk drive (HDD) cages, allows for a total of four high-capacity hard disks with storage of eight TB — useful for saving movies, music, games and other content that can be easily removed for portability. www.acer.ca
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