Digital Trends
If a building is only as good as its foundation, then a smartphone is only as good as its app store. Even as manufacturers continue to stack their handsets with YouTube support, instant messaging, and other essentials right out of the box, the features just don’t add up to the amount of capability a phone can take on in the hands of the right developers: You name it, a good smartphone can do it.
With a new crop of ever-faster, ever-smaller, ever-better smartphones launching seemingly every month, there has never been a more enticing time to buy a smartphone. Or a more confusing time for the prospective buyer. The same plethora of options that make today’s smartphones the most best ever made also make the marketplace a minefield to navigate.
We’ve all been there: Your best friend claims the iPhone is the only way to go, but your boss insists you need a BlackBerry, the engineer who lives next door claims you need to go with Google Android, your geeky dad still swears by Windows Mobile, and your coworkers are all trying to cajole you into the Palm Pre.
Microsoft has made no attempt to hide which trendy little MP3 player lay in the sights of the recently released Zune HD: Apple’s iPod Touch. Apple turned the market upside down when it released the Touch back in 2007, and while Microsoft let its own Zune line languish for two years before responding, the silver bullet Microsoft has finally offered up has clearly been engineered to drop Apple. But will it succeed? With both players in hand, we ran down the key advantages of each to determine which truly makes the ultimate portable video device.
The PS3 Slim on top of the Sony PS3
So you’re ready to take the plunge and buy a PlayStation 3 Slim. Congratulations, at $300, there’s never been a better time to buy. But the skeptical consumer can’t help but wonder: What’s the catch? Is it missing something? In short, the answer is “not much,” but Sony has made a handful of very slight changes to the new machine that are worth reviewing before you buy. Here’s what’s new.
Refreshed Design
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Zune HD vs. iPod Touch: Who Wins? – Now that Microsoft has priced its Zune HD and significantly undercut the competing iPod Touch, the battle is on for back-to-school dollars. Rob Enderle offers his hands-on impressions of the new player’s vibrant OLED screen, while the panel debates whether the tradeoffs in compatibility and other factors will warrant passing up the iPod Touch for a Zune HD.
Whether you’re desperate to get Hulu and YouTube on the big screen, or just need a box to access your terabyte and a half of ripped DVDs without tethering a laptop to your TV, home media centers just make sense. But for the price of a high-end set-top box like Netgear’s rather disappointing EVA 9150, most savvy buyers can’t help but notice that you can get a far more functional Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 – both of which make fine media centers in themselves. Fans of both systems routinely debate which is the better box for fragging aliens and racing Ferraris, but what about if you’re primarily looking to watch video, play music, and view pictures? We’ve taken the latest versions of both systems and compared them head to head to determine which really belongs in your home theater.
For those seeking the smallest, sexiest notebooks on the market, there are no closer two choices than Apple’s trend-setting MacBook Air and its late-coming competitor, the Dell Adamo. Though strikingly similar in many ways, they differ enough that true fashionistas will want to take a good hard look before plunking down $2,000 for either one. We’ve poked, prodded and broken out the calipers on both units to figure out which belongs in your chic Italian leather notebook bag. Read on to see which emerges victorious.
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