We took a trip to Birmingham yesterday for our annual geek pilgrimage to the Gadget Show Live. We managed to get some facetime and our hands on time with the latest tech from Sony, Samsung, Asus and Elonex – the show kicks off to the public today at Birmingham's NEC.
The first stand we went to was the Sony stand who had a fine selection of gadgets on show; from 3D TV's to their new Xperian PSP - but their new range of laptops probably was their most impressive piece of tech.
The new Vaio F series laptop has full 3D capabilities, with a an impressive 1080p screen, 6 GB of ram and up to a 750 GB hard drive, and you can even have Blu-ray drive - it's quite clear that Sony are going to try and take on the MacBook pro range.
We got our hands on Samsung’s new superphone, the successor to the hugely popular Galaxy S - the Galaxy S 2.
What stood it apart from the rest of the smartphones on show is how amazingly light and thin it is. Compared to its nearest competitor the iPhone 4, the S2 felt like a dream to hold and use.
Samsung has managed to make the S2 0.8mm thinner and 21g lighter than the iPhone 4. Compared to its predecessor, the Galaxy S, the S2 is 1.4mm thinner.
It was super snappy with it new CPU and GPU and is certainly going to fly off the shelves when it hits its May 1st release date, which the rep assured us it would.
Samsung have improved the Super AMOLED screen that was in the original Galaxy S, using a new 'Super AMOLED Plus' screen in the S2. The Samsung rep boasted to us that it is the brightest screen you'll find on a mobile phone, and we'd have to agree with him.
We also came across a selection of tablets from Elonex with six varieties in its Etouch family. The Android tablets are available in a choice of either 7-inch or 10-inch size and start at an incredibly low £119 – so you can enjoy a post PC device without having to spend a small fortune.
Elonex said, “New technology carries a premium price tag and it was Elonex’s vision to stand out from the competition to offer high quality tablets at an affordable price-point.”
The 7-inch models are the Etouch 760ET and 702ET. The main difference between the two is that the 760ET has a resistive touchscreen while the 702ET has a capacitive touchscreen. The 760ET is the cheapest of the Etouch family at £119, available now, and the 702ET is £179, available later this month. Both run Google’s Android 2.2 operating system and the 702ET is 10.6mm thick.
Our spies told us that Androids new OS Honeycomb was on show at the Nvidia stand, as they provide the power for Aus Eee pad and pretty much every other Android Honeycomb tablet, although the Galaxy Tab 2 wasn’t on show, from what we could see. We naturally headed to their booth to take a look.
The first tablet we got our hands on was the Asus Eee Pad Transformer, one of a series of new Android tablets from Asus.
The Eee Pad Transformer was fortunately without the keyboard dock that gives it its namesake, although we think it works and look a lot better just as a it is
Aesthetically, Asus have done extremely well considering the £370 price tag. The Eee Pad Transformer is very slim and lightweight for a 10.1 inch tablet, yet it feels well built without being too heavy.
We’ll have some more news from the show over the coming days, and if you are attending let us know what you think is the best tech on show.