Gillian Shaw
Sun
The HTC Diamond Touch
HTC Diamond, $150 with a Telus Mobility three-year contract.
Telus and Bell Mobility are hustling out alternatives for Apple’s new iPhone 3G, although they’re bound to be a tough sell with one million of the new iPhones selling in its first weekend. The HTC Diamond is one of the so-called iPhone killers, but it lost a lot of its punch when Rogers bowed to consumer outrage and dropped its data-plan pricing, at least until Aug. 31.
Bell and Telus had capitalized on the anger over Rogers’ first-announced higher price plans for the iPhone by highlighting their lower flat-rate plans but then minimized that advantage by announcing a charge of 15 cents for every incoming text message. Data plans for the Diamond come at $15 for unlimited e-mail and instant messaging or $30 with web browsing added (www.telusmobility.com).
Samsung Instinct, $150 with a Bell Mobility three-year contract.
Another smartphone and iPhone-killer wannabe, the Instinct is being introduced Aug. 8 by Bell and has also been promised in the upcoming Telus lineup. This can be had with a $10 unlimited mobile-browser plan from Bell for Internet surfing.
The most important point to remember in the competition for your wireless dollars is don’t buy the hype. Read the fine print, or you could find yourself paying a monthly phone bill that could finance a Caribbean cruise (www.bellmobility.com).
EOS Rebel XS, Canon, $750.
If you’re ready to graduate beyond a point-and-shoot digital camera, Canon has a new entry-level SLR (single-lens reflex) model coming out in August, the EOS Rebel XS. It offers the features of an SLR camera but keeps them relatively simple.
It has optical image stabilization, incorporates Canon’s auto-lighting optimizer to automatically adjust brightness and contrast when there are dark areas in an image, a 10.1-megapixel CIMOS sensor, a three-frames-per-second continuous JPEG burst rate that lets you shoot a scene until you fill the memory card, plus other features. It’s compatible with Canon’s lineup of more than 60 EF and EF-S lenses, including the EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS, the standard zoom lens included in the box (www.canon.ca).
Carry-On Expandable Upright U420NX , Briggs & Riley, $300.
We haven’t tested this bag’s claim of offering 30-per-cent additional space and still being small enough to take onto a plane as a carry on, but with luggage costs rising faster than a 747 we’re willing to give it a try. Now if they could only figure out how to fit our skis into carry on (www.briggs-riley.com).
© CanWest News Service 2008
