Gadgets

Over in the UK, something is happening that will bring cheer to the miserable, heavily-drinking denizens of that gray, cold land: Competition. To be precise, competition in iPad plans.

3G operator “3″ has entered the iPad subsidy game, going squarely up against Orange, which announced its own plans earlier this week. The prices for the iPad itself are the same as Orange is asking – £200, £250 and £350 for the 16, 32 and 64GB models. The difference is in the data plans. 3 offers a massive 15GB per month, or around 500MB per day. To get these prices, you’ll need to sign a two-year contract.

When I’m not trapped in my elevator-free apartment by a broken leg, my iPad is in constant use on my own 3G data plan. Even then, I have never come close to hitting the 2GB cap. So unless you watch a lot of streamed video, 15GB may as well be unlimited.

When Steve Jobs introduced the latest iOS update (version 4.2), the biggest addition was AirPlay, a feature that wirelessly streams some audio and video from an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch to the Apple TV. An e-mail from the CEO suggests this feature is poised to become more powerful next year.

The AirPlay feature shipped in the latest version of Apple’s mobile software, iOS 4.2.1, and it works the way Apple advertised: It streams video only played from the iPod app on the iPhone/iPod Touch or the Video app on the iPad.

Dell’s Inspiron Duo is ready to buy. You may remember the clever flip-top netbook from its long gestation period: it can be either a tablet or a laptop or – with an optional dock- a small media center.

The trick is in the lid of this otherwise humdrum machine. The multi-touch panel is suspended within the screen-bezel and spins on its horizontal axis, facing out or in depending on need.

Just how dorky do you have to be to wear one of these lens bracelets? Pretty damned dorky, I’d say, and that’s coming from someone who is still seriously considering making a bracelet from a bike-chain.

The Lens Bracelets are made from silicon, and ribbed to further emulate the nodules that help focussing on a real lens.

Elecom’s wireless headphones for the iPod Shuffle take a low-tech — but still smart — approach to ditching the cable: There is a 3.5mm jack right there on the side which impales the Shuffle and keeps it in place. To change tracks, volume or anything else, just reach up to your ear and press. Who needs Bluetooth, especially when a Bluetooth dongle is the same size as the Shuffle itself?

It’s ingenious, and although apparently limited to the latest-gen Shuffle, I’m sure some clever hacking would let you squeeze an older Shuffle or even the new Nano on there. Unfortunately, the Actrail headphones (for that is their name) use the dorky wrap-around-the-back-of-your-skull design instead of a proper over-the-head band, but at least they didn’t try it with a pair of earbuds.

Here’s an amusing look at just how screwed up is the Apple rumor-mill. Today’s big “news” is that the iOS 4.2 update has been “delayed.” The problem? The official launch date is simply “November,” and we still have weeks to go.

The logic works like this. Initial murmurings said that iOS 4.2, the unifying release that brings multitasking to the iPad and AirPlay to all iDevices, would be delivered tomorrow. This fits, as last week Apple released the iOS 4.2 Gold Master (GM). A GM usually goes on, unchanged, to be the official release.

Now, thanks to iPad Wi-Fi connectivity problems suffered by testers (read: “people who grabbed the GM off BitTorrent), the rumors say that the release will be “delayed” until next week, either Tuesday or Friday, depending on the source.

And this may all be true, but there is no delay.

Blackberry’s Playbook tablet will go on sale in the first quarter of next year for “under $500″, according to Blackberry co-CEO Jim Balsillie. Speaking to Bloomberg, he said that the 7-inch tablet “will be very competitively priced.”

$500 seems to be the limit for non-Apple tablets, and if this is a real price and not just a spoiler to stop be-suited business-types from buying an iPad in the next few months, then it will join the Samsung Galaxy Tab in the marketplace for undersized tablets.

Microsoft staff refer to December 2008 as “The Reset” — the month that the company killed all progress on its Windows phone project and started over.

It’s a measure of how deep a hole Microsoft had dug itself into that the employees interviewed by Wired.com were unanimous in calling this a good thing. Even though the software titan had a head start on phone software beginning with Windows CE back in 1996, the subsequent Windows Mobile OS suffered from steep declines in market share when pitted against more user-friendly phones, like the iPhone and the Android-powered Droid.

Archos announced it was working on Android-based multimedia tablets in lots of form factors long before the iPad got everyone tablet-crazy. This week, the company began shipping its 4.3-inch and 7-inch models to customers in the US and Europe, while some Europeans may have gotten their 10.1-inch units early.

The Archos 43 is straightforward: 4.3″ FWVGA screen (480×854 pixels), Android 2.2 OS with an Archos skin, 1GHz ARM processor and 16 GB of flash memory for $250. (The tech specs say it also comes in an 8GB version, but that’s not an option now at the Archos store.)

The Archos 70 is a little more interesting, if only because it’s actually slightly more retro.

It’s nearly impossible for Sony to create a Playstation or PSP phone offering the same controls and same games as either device. Instead, Sony seems to be pushing for a different kind of mobile gaming altogether, using tablets and phones as the hardware for a new casual gaming platform.

“Mobile gaming is a very important business area for us,” said Sony’s chief financial officer Masaru Kato, according to a transcription of an earnings call provided by Seeking Alpha. “We started out with the PSP that was our first mobile gaming console, but since then the market as you know has expanded into bigger arenas; gaming on mobile phones, gaming on tablets and on certain mobile devices.