Home | Gadgetz | Technology

There's now a 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor meaning more power, along with a 20-megapixel camera sensor lifted from Sony's Cyber-shot range. Oh, and the 5-inch full HD display has been made better. Available from September, the Sony Xperia Z1 is worthy of your excitement.

Samsung Galaxy Note 3

No sooner had Sony updated its flagship Android smartphone, Samsung dropped the phablet bomb. The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 rolls out with a 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor and 3GB of RAM, making it one if the highest-spec devices around.

Samsung has made design tweaks, with a leatherette back cover and stitching detail to make the Note more notebook-like, as well as boosting the display to 5.7-inches with a Full HD resolution. There's heap of software improvements too, meaning that multitasking is now even better and the S Pen more effective.

Sony QX10 lens-style camera

Is it a camera? Is it a phone accessory? Is it a lens? The lens-style cameras from Sony might be dividing opinion, but we admire the fact that the Japanese giant is still prepared to gamble. The play here is for better-quality images, giving you a real lens, a big sensor, but leaving the controls to your smartphone. That means you get the advantages of quality and connectivity. 

If quality is what you want, then it’s the £399 Sony QX10 that you need. Its expensive, but then it gives you the lens and sensor array from the £649 high-end RX100 II camera. That means Zeiss glass and a 20.7-megapixel 1-inch CMOS sensor. Maybe it's crazy, maybe it's brilliant, read our hands-on and be the judge.

Samsung Galaxy Gear

It's going to divide opinion, some hate smartwatches, some are overwhelmed with excitement, such is the world of wearable tech. Samsung made its predicted announcement of the Galaxy Gear smartwatch and we're quite taken with it. Sure, there are some limitations at the moment: it's a fledgeling platform for apps and compatibility with your phone is current restricted with Android 4.3 Samsung devices, but we still feel that something special has happened here.

It's not the first smartwatch, but it might be the biggest driver for smartwatches in the near future. It's nicely built and intuitive to use and that's the most important point: it does the things we want it to do. So maybe the novelty of taking a call through it will wear off, but with Samsung pushing the app support, Galaxy Gear feels like the first step in something much larger.

Philips 4K Ambilight TV

Announcements about next-gen UHD TVs are appearing all over. There's jousting over smart TV functions, about ecosystem compatibility with a woder family devices and barely the mention of the lack of actual 4K content to watch on these super-sharp TVs. If you're looking for a real differentiator, then we give you Ambilight. Philips's light-fantasic feature has been available for a number of year, helping the action spread from your TV into the room, making for something that not only looks great, but is uniquely immersive too.

With the 65FPL9708, Philips brings you bang uptodate with the latest display technology, as well as the Ambilight tech. It's slim, the picture looks fantastic and it stands out from the crowd in the UHD TV line-up. What more could you ask for? An aggressive price, that's what, with the 65-inch 4K beast hitting the shelves at €4,999.

Some things are just too good to pass up. Presented by a Planar 84-inch touchscreen 4K TV wired up to an Intel NUC mini PC on the show floor at the Intel Developers Forum, we were quick to dig into the Windows 8 apps on offer.

And what better to play than a bit of Fruit Ninja HD? The app popped up at gigantic scale on the 3840 x 2160 pixel panel and we were joined by some helping hands to make the most of the 6-point touch panel.

It looked rather amazing - impressive enough that the fourth-gen Intel i5 NUC with Intel 5000 graphics could power it all. But the input lag of the touchscreen was awfully bad. So much so that the game was barely playable - a swipe would lag about half a second behind the physical on-screen gesture.

However, for other touch-enabled uses where speed isn't as critical we can see the potential. Think of it like a giant interactive white board; an educational tool.