Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S

Specifications
Android 2.3
125x63x8.7mm
117 g
4.3-inch
WVGA Screen Resolution
7.5 hrs 3G Talktime
8MP Camera with LED flash
1GB Internal Storage
1.4GHz


Sleek and powerful Android machine
The Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc was launched at the start of 2011 and represented something of a return to form for the ailing phone brand. Featuring the latest Android OS and a chassis that was among the thinnest on the market, it quickly became a hit with the smartphone fans.
Sony Ericsson has decided to crank things up a notch with the Xperia Arc S, which offers an improved CPU, meaning that applications open up much more smartly and internet browsing is even slicker than before.
The camera has also been updated, with the superb 8MP device bolstered by a 3D picture mode, which means that anyone with a compatible TV will be able to show off their holiday snaps in the third dimension. They’ll still be boring, but at least your friends will now need special glasses to see them.

The rest of the phone is identical to the original Arc, but that’s no bad thing: the inclusion of the Bravia engine on the phone means watching video is just brilliant, with sharp images and fun colour reproduction to help alleviate the boredom of the daily commute. The camera packs Exmor R technology, also borrowed from parent company Sony, giving excellent snaps even in low-light situations, should you surreptitiously want to take photos of funny cats at dusk.
We still can’t really believe that one of the top-end smartphones is available at such a low price. Sure, it’s not dual-core and so lacks the super whizz-bang speeds that brings, but the sublime chassis and clever Android overlay means the Xperia Arc S is a real budget winner.

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Acer Travelmate 8410T

Specifications
Intel Core i5 24671.6GHz
3GB RAM
320GB Hard Disk
No Optical Device
14-inch Display Screen
1366x768 Display Resolution
Intel HD 3000 Graphics Card
326 x 262 x 48mm

1.8kg

3 USB Ports

Windows 7 Professsional

Price : £750

Stunning portability, but it’s no Ultrabook
The Acer Travelmate 8410T (£750 inc. VAT) is a fantastic ultraportable that would have blown us away just a few months ago. However, with the amount of exciting Ultrabooks on the horizon it underwhelmed us too much to for a recommendation.
It weighs just xxkg and comes in a fetching black brushed metal finish.
Opening the lid reveals a matte 14-inch screen which doesn’t reflect in direct sunlight, making it great for mobile workers. The immediate reaction is to notice the lack of bezel, and the screen fills the lid space with no room wasted, which accommodates that 14-inch screen, while maintaining a size equivalent to most 13-inch portables.
Inside is a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5 processor. While only clocking in at 1.6GHz, it still performs remarkably well, sealing an impressive score in our lab tests. It’s more than capable of photo editing, multitasking demanding programs and watching high-definition videos, making this a great all-rounder.


Great battery life
The great processor performance is thanks to Intel’s TurboBoost technology, which means that the Travelmate reacts to demanding tasks, and can provide surges of power to get things done. Booting was incredibly fast, with resuming from sleep and starting from cold stunningly responsive.
Battery life was extremely impressive, and our heavy tests achieved nearly five hours, which is equal to more than six hours of light use. This is as close to all-day computing as you’re likely to find and great for working on the move.
The rest of the specs are slightly less impressive, and it leaves the Travelmate slightly lacking in comparison to its competition. There’s a 320GB hard drive, which means you’ll need to invest in a portable drive to back up your pictures and media. What’s more, there’s only 3GB of RAM and, while the system felt responsive at all times, 4GB is merely par for the course these days..
While the brushed-metal finish does make the Acer Travelmate 8410T a real head turner, we did find it attracted marks and dirt very easily, so it’s best to invest in a good case. We were also disappointed with the keyboard, which had quite a dramatic flex in the middle. It was comfortable to type of for long periods, and accurate, but not the kind of quality we’d expect in this price range.
The Acer Travelmate is a great ultraportable laptop, which can be used all day, without breaking your back. While it’s incredibly light and thin, the Acer is no match for the latest wave of Ultrabooks, including Acer’s own Aspire S3. The build isn’t as thin, alluring, the processor is outmatched by the Intel Core i7 version found on most Ultrabooks, and the Acer S3 Core i5 is only £699. This sadly renders the Acer Travelmate 8410T slightly redundant, which is a shame, as three months ago it would have received a hearty recommendation.

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Nikon COOLPIX S8200

Specifications

16MP backlit sensor
14x optical zoom
Compact, pocketable size
Lens-shift Vibration Reduction
6fps burst mode
1080p HD movie mode

Price : £279

Point And Shoot With 14X Zoom

The S8200 is Nikon’s latest entry into the medium zoom a 'travel zoom' compact sector. It comes equipped with a 16MP backlit CMOS sensor and 14x optical zoom (24-350mm equiv.) lens with optical Vibration Reduction (VR) technology. That equates to a wide 24mm through to telephoto 350mm range that's ideal for group shots, close-ups or zooming right in on far away action.
Although the S8200 lacks full manual controls, its main mode dial comes laden with shooting modes: there are a variety of Scene and Effects modes, full Auto and a variety of other selections including a 6fps burst option. Whatever mode you're in the one-touch movie button will start up 1080p recording at 30fps too.
Considering the 14x optical zoom lens the Coolpix S8200 manages to keep its size suitably small and this makes the camera an attractive prospect. The zoom is operated via the toggle around the shutter button and the main mode dial sits next to this for quick selection of modes. The rear d-pad doubles up as a rotational wheel, though you'll need to click into the main menu to utilise it to cycle through modes. There's also a powered pop-up flash - as much as we like the way it 

pops out of the body when needed fa use, it's not possible to push it back down by hand.

Put to work and the Coolpix is fast to focus, and confirms so with rectangular green box areas. Unlike most compacts that have pre-defined focus areas, the S8200's Target Finding AF mode adjusts these areas’ sizes as is fitting for the shot at hand. This works well for the most part, though the focus point can slip away from where you'd like it to be and, in some cases, we found the full length of the zoom led to soft shots. There are plenty of focus modes: Face Priority automatically recognises and selects faces in a shot; Auto does what it says on the tin; Manual allows for a single AF point to be positioned via the d-pad although not around the edges of the screen; Centre provides a single, centre-fixed AF point; while Subject Tracking will follow a target around the screen.
The benefit of Nikon's Vibration Reduction system is immediate to see and a necessity in use at the longer focal lengths. The 14x zoom isn't quite as significant as the Nikon's close rivals, such as the 16x Panasonic TZ20 or Sony HX9, but still presides a decent range and moves smoothly through its range.
Also unlike its rivals the S8200 lacks manual controls, instead concentrating on the camera's various Effects modes. The choce of Selective Color, Soft, Sepia, Mono and High/Low key can be applied in camera.
Beyond still images the 1080p movie mode is a top addition to the camera - it captures clips at 30fps and the zoom can be used while recording.
Another boon is the 921 k-dot LCD screen - a high quality, high-resolution feature that's good to see at this price.

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Apple iPhone 4S

Specifications
iOS 5.0
Apple A5 1GHz Processor
16GB/32GB/64GB Internal Storage
No Expandable Memory
512MB RAM
Apple/3.5mm Connectivity
8MP Camera
VGA Front Camera
140g
3.5-inch Retina Screen
960 x 640 Display Resolution


Price : £499


A solid update to a fantastic handset with great features
The iPhone 4S (£499 inc. VAT) caught many by surprise. Apple had been expected to release the iPhone 5, but instead we got an iPhone 4 with overhauled innards.
The changes to the iPhone 4S are easy to document: the camera has been upgraded to 8MP (with an improved aperture ratio), the CPU is now the same dual-core A5 model found in the iPad 2 and graphical processing is seven times more powerful than previous iterations.Apple has slightly changed the design of the iPhone 4S somewhat though, by switching to a dual-band aerial design in order to avoid a potentially embarrassing repeat of the antenna fiasco we had to endure with the iPhone 4.
The new system apes Android by using a drop-down menu from pretty much anywhere in the phone to let you see all manner of updates, weather news and messages.
Plus, new notifications will now ping across the top of the screen, rather than disrupting whatever you were doing by plopping straight into the middle of the screen as before.
It’s not revolutionary, by any means, but it’s well-integrated and makes the whole system feel a whole lot different to iOS 4.

The lock screen is now called into more use than ever before, too, with new notifications sitting on top to be easily accessed with no need to mess about inside the phone.

We quickly got to grips with this new system and can see a lot of people really enjoying being able to open the camera quickly, too, which you can do by simply double tapping the home button on the lock screen.

As mentioned earlier, the iPhone 4S now comes with the dual-core A5 processor, which should prolong battery life and ensure that the phone operates even more snappily.

Speedy snapper

In our tests, we barely noticed that much of a difference in speed with the iPhone 4, as there was never really a problem with opening and closing applications.

With the animations still present, it seems like the iPhone 4S is a little slower than other dual-core handsets on the market (although we mean by only a tiny amount) but in general use it works perfectly.The iPhone 4S can definitely replace your point-and-shoot camera for snapping. The only real issue we can see is the lack of an optical zoom to get closer to the object you’re trying to capture, but compared to the convenience of always havingyour camera with you, it’s no contest in our book.

There are other cameras out there that are worthy of a mention - the Samsung Galaxy S2, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc and the HTC Evo 3D arc all worthy of a mention. But to our eyes, the iPhone 4S trumps all of these by producing the best quality shots each time.

And if you turn off the HDR shooting mode to just get ‘normal’ quality snaps, the speed at which you can move from taking one photo to the next is simply mind-blowing.

One of the big stories of the iPhone 4S is Siri, the voice-activated assistant that automates actions on your phone. It uses natural language, which means you can talk to it as if it were a real person and it will interpret your answers.

It’s not infallible, by any means, but is undeniably fun and makes mundane admin tasks like setting meetings and reminders easier and a whole lot more entertaining.

The iPhone 4S is a great piece of kit, and one of the best devices Apple has ever produced. It’s easy to find things that will make you coo with excitement, and the way the phone is packaged makes it very easy to use, whether you’re a smartphone novice or an expert user.

Let’s make no bones about it: the iPhone 4S is one of the best phones on the market at the moment, and is arguably the best thing Apple has ever created.

It’s got all the right bits right - good camera, slick web browser, quality screen - and made it all work together in the slick, satisfying manner for which the Californian company is rightly renowned.

Some people might be disappointed not to have seen the fabled iPhone 5, with its larger screen and new design, but the iPhone 4S is more than enough to keep Apple fans happy.

Simply put: if you’ve already got an Apple iPhone 4, then there is no real need for you to upgrade (as long as make sure you update to the revised iOS 5 operating system) but for anyone else on an older device, or hankering after finally making the jump to an iPhone, you should run down to the shops and pick one up now, you won’t regret it.

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Braun Thermoscan 3

Specifications
3V lithium battery
11 disposable lens filters
1-sec reading time
Last temperature record

Price : Rs. 2,500


Quick Check
Using a thermometer with feverish babies is an action fraught with risks. The cranky youngsters could well damage them or hurt themselves. For such occasions, there is the Thermoscan 3 from Braun that is specially designed for infants.
The compact ear thermometer has a sleek nozzle that goes into the baby’s ear and reads the temperature. As infants are sensitive, Braun has taken care not to having a pointed tip. For hygiene’s sake, they have a replaceable plastic cup, called “lens filter”, to cover the nozzle after every reading. Considering how delicate and fidgety children can be, the company has ensured that the reading takes only a second, and not a lingering minute like normal. The procedures for using it for infants and for kids above a year old are different. For infants, the parents have to grasp the outer edge of the ear and pull it straight back to clear the way for the device. For others, pulling the outer edge of the ear upwards works fine. Then take the Thermoscan close to the ear and push the start button. It automatically turns off if not in use for 60 seconds.
Although the readings were mostly accurate, it did differ at times when compared with the concurrent thermometer readings taken of an adult. The pack contains only 11 disposable lens filters that exhausts quickly during flu season. The only relief is that these filters are easily available at the chemist shops.

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