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Neil Gardiner (January 2010)

10 most anticipated gadgets of 2010

1 Apple Tablet Apple is one of the few companies whose secrets actually stay secret. But that doesn’t stop the Apple fansites having a good (sometimes educated and informed) guess at what Mr Jobs will show us next. Some even take the trouble to render their idea of what it might look like (see above). If we’re to believe the general buzz, the Apple tablet is due soon, though no one from Apple has confirmed (or denied) it. But, we’ve also heard there could be an XL iPod Touch version coming. So which is it, a big iPod or small computer? Your guess is as good as ours. Expected: September

2 Kodak Zi8 The Zi8 redefines the mini class camcorder. It features full HD-shooting capabilities at 30fps (frames per second) or 60fps at 720p for some slo-mo action. It also has electronic image stabilization, external microphone input and smart face tracking. A standard SD card will store your memories. Oh, and it’s going to be the cheapest of the bunch too. Need any more convincing? www.kodak.com Expected: First quarter 2010

3 Garmin Edge 500 Garmin’s focus groups aren’t made up of large, middle-aged American, SUV-driving suburbanites. They’re riding the Tour de France. Top 5 finisher in 2008, Christian Vande Velde from the Garmin-sponsored team had direct input into the design of this cycling specific unit, demanding a small device with easy-to-use buttons, a sturdier mount and a big screen showing speed, distance, time, elevation, as well as heartrate. www.garmin.com Expected: First quarter

4 Blackberry Bold 9700 Blackberry’s flagship model has an update due soon. The Research In Motion guys haven’t tampered too much with a winning formula. It’s been trimmed down a bit – 6g lighter, 6mm narrower, 5mm shorter and nearly 1mm skinnier. The pocket lint gathering trackball is out, replaced by an optical trackpad. Inside, there’s a 624MHz core processor, which means less waiting for applications to respond when the phone’s doing a few things at once. Shown here is the old Bold 9000 alongside the new 9700. www.blackberry.com Expected: February

5 Nokia Booklet 3G With the N97 and upcoming N900, Nokia now make phones that are almost like computers. Now they’ve actually made a computer. We had a brief chance to play with it at a low-key presentation by Nokia and on first impression, it’s a premium netbook running Windows with a slot for a sim card for seamless 3G connectivity. www.nokiabooklet.co.uk Expected: Nokia were tight-lipped about a release date.

6 Sony A-series Walkman We spotted this 7.2mm thin Walkman on the web and reports say it’s already on sale in Japan. It’s the new descendent of the perennial favourite and features a 2.8-inch OLED screen and an FM radio. The iPod Nano has that too, plus a video recorder and pedometer, but the A-Series has TV-out and noise canceling. Let’s call it a draw. www.sony.com Available: No word on SA availability, but we hope it’ll be here by mid 2010.

7 LG 15-inch OLED TV If you’ve had a look at our Men’s Health Tech Guide, you would already know that OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode and that the main advantages are very thin screens and a razor-sharp image with deep, rich blacks. The downside is the price though. OLED technology is on its way and we hope that, soon, it reaches that critical point where manufacturing costs are reduced and demand grows. In short, it gets cheaper. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ik6PrO0ykM Expected: Mid 2010

8 Mass Effect 2 Our gamer fanatics at the office go all bleary-eyed when they talk about Commander Shepard on a new suicide mission in this second part of the ME trilogy. He must assemble a squad made up of crazy geniuses, powerful mystics, robots and convicts in the galaxy. His cause – find out why humans are vanishing from the galaxy. Will he succeed? Only you can answer that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fuiNpTHzY Expected: End January

9 Microsoft Office 2010 By 2010, it’ll be 3 years after the release of Office 2007, and with Google frightening the daylights out of them, Microsoft are aiming to ‘help increase work-flow efficiency’ and ‘offer a refined user experience’ with Office 2010. Sound familiar? Yes, but this is the first time the Office suite will debut off free online versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, like Google Documents. Office’s email promises better integration too. With tough competition, the days of almost-there, not-quite-right software releases could be over. www.office2010themovie.com Expected: Pre release is out, uncertain when full retail version will be available.

10 Lumix DMC-GF1 The retro-looking Olympus E-P1 (featured in our recent Men’s Health Tech Guide) can’t claim to have started a retro revolution, but they’ve got other manufacturer's attention. Now comes Lumix’s answer, the GF1. The Micro Four Thirds Live MOS sensor packs 12.1 megapixels with ISO 3200 sensitivity (great for low light shooting), and can shoot 720p video at 30fps. This is far from an amateur point-and-shoot, with the body, the 20mm/f1.7 "pancake" lens, together with the 14-45mm/f3.5-5.6 zoom costing nearly $900 in the US! www.panasonic.com Expected: Second quarter