Gadget Master

What's this week's Gadget of the Week?

Well, let's move quickly past the spacecraft-shaped, 60 watt Scandyna Ball subwoofer. And we'll also ignore the frivolous football-shaped 4-port USB hub, and the navigation system featuring my favourite Simpsons character. Not so much Tom Tom, as Homer Homer...

Huawei's E583X wireless modem, however, did catch our eye, turning 3G signals to WiFi. It exchanges the more familiar fat-dongle shaped mobile Internet form factor for a place in your pocket or bag, by receiving the 3G mobile data and communicating it to your laptop as WiFi. The blinking lights are a featureless extra...

Also snagging our attention is the Motorola Endeavor HX1 Bluetooth headset, which apparently features "bone conduction technology" to attract your attention when operating in stealth mode (pictured below). Well I never. There are also the D-Link DCS-1100- and DCS-1130 network cameras, first showcased at CES, with the DCS-1130 featuring built-in 802.11n comms and functions such as a 16x digital zoom, a microphone and motion detection.

So, while noting a new 15.5in Blu-ray notebook from Sony, the NW-series Vaio, there's no doubting that in the week of the launch of the iPhone 3GS the gadget of the week must be a smartphone. But as the iPhone as been done to death - see Apple unveils the iPhone 3GS - the smartphone in question is the Nokia N97, pictured below.

The week's Gadget of the Week weighs 150g and features a 3.5in touchscreen  TFT display with 360 x 640 resolution, a slide-out QWERTY Keyboard, and it runs on an ARM 11 with the S60 platform.
 
Mobile broadband is courtesy of WLAN or HSDPA (3.5G), there's GPS, a 5 mega pixel camera and automatic geotagging of images and videos. Additional features to note, according to Nokia, include:

• Accelerometer Sensor
• Ambient Light Sensor
• Compass
• Files on OVI
• Flight Mode
• FOTA Firmware over the Air
• Magnetometer Sensor
• Nokia Maps 2.0
• Nokia Music Store
• Ovi Store
• PictBridge
• Proximity Sensor
• Share on OVI
• Software Updates
• Stereo FM RDS Radio
• Stereo Handsfree Speakers
• Still Image Editor
• Themes
• TV Out
• Visual Radio

Read more on the N97.