Gadgets just in time for summer play
Summer means more time outside and more time to play. Electronics makers respond with gadgets that want to swim, hike, and fly with you–and help you stay in touch on the run. Here's a pick of gear to consider for your warm-weather fun.
T-Mobile Sidekick 3
For those in the young set who get more of their chats in text than voice, T-Mobile is updating its unique Sidekick–a combination phone and messaging device, with the emphasis on the latter. The Sidekick 3 (t-mobile.com, $300 with a two-year wireless plan, $350 with a one-year) adds an MP3 player, expandable memory, an improved camera, and Bluetooth support for wireless headsets.
T-Mobile wants to keep the Sidekick aimed at its niche market of 18-to-30-year-olds. That hasn't meant a huge market, but it has a loyal following, including a number of celebrities. The Sidekick still shines best at messaging, able to handle 10 IM sessions at a time and with a wide, QWERTY keyboard for typing. This version is somewhat less bulky than earlier editions, but that comfortable keyboard means it's going to be bigger than other handsets.
With a faster processor, the third-gen Sidekick can also tap T-Mobile's high-speed data network, making it better for Web browsing as well as messaging. The MP3 player is a nice addition, though it can't play songs from iTunes or Windows Media files.
Pure Digital Point & Shoot
Surprise: Digital video can be cheap and easy. The price of the new Point & Shoot (puredigitalinc.com, $130) video camera from Pure Digital, also sold as the RCA Small Wonder, is at the low end of digital cams. Unlike other camcorders, it won't take still pictures, settings can't be tweaked, and it has no optical zoom.
Ah, but there's the beauty–simplicity. It runs on AA batteries, is about the size of a compact still camera, and has only four buttons. One is for power, another is marked "play," and a third "delete." The fourth is a red button, for recording. There also is a four-way rocker pad that did take some fiddling to figure out. It's for queuing up recorded videos, adjusting playback volume, or using the digital zoom.
Skip the zoom, as it just degrades image quality, and the video isn't great to begin with. The Pure Digital version records in VGA quality, which looks decent on a standard TV set if not as good as more expensive cams. RCA's version has less memory, meaning its images look a bit less sharp than Pure Digital's when played directly on a TV (cables are included for connecting to a television)–but RCA's claims better battery life.
Either holds only 30 minutes of video, meaning this camera isn't about making high-quality epics. This gem is for grabbing a few minutes of your toddler dancing crazily and sending it quickly by E-mail.
Suunto X9i
Suunto has packed a striking mix of functions into its X9i wristwatch ($500, suunto.com/x9i), including perhaps the smallest GPS receiver sold. And while it sits high off the wrist, it's not too bad looking.
Suunto actually calls it a wrist-top computer, which is only a bit of hype. Besides GPS, it includes an altimeter for tracking how high you've hiked, a barometer for predicting the weather, a chronograph (fancy word for "stopwatch"), and a compass to help with the tracking functions. Yes, time and date, too.
It's the GPS functions that distinguish it. They work, if more slowly than hand-held GPS instruments, and are limited by the device's size and the life of its rechargeable battery, which can drain in a day of frequent GPS use. The 1-inch, text-only screen doesn't display maps, so tracking functions are similar to early GPS hand-helds. You establish way points, which are sites measured in latitude and longitude, either via a PC connection before you go out or by clicking buttons on the watch to note them as you trek. The watch helps you get from point to point. A Hansel-and-Gretel type function, for example, can get you home by backtracking sites you've noted along the way.
Olympus Stylus 720SW
Follow your kids under the waves and keep snapping with this Stylus 720SW ($400, olympus.com) camera, which can confidently dip under the waves as far as 10 feet down. It's a fun twist that has only been possible in the past by getting added underwater housings for digital cameras. The compact 720SW performs well enough underwater, capturing 7-megapixel images that seem as sharp as water might allow–and even grabbing as much VGA-quality video as the memory card will hold.
The camera doesn't come with a memory card. But more convenient than the small cards that come with other cameras, the 720SW has built-in memory that can hold about 10 high-resolution photos, or enough to help in a pinch. It also has a 3x optical zoom.
In another innovation, the camera can withstand a 5-foot drop–in or out of the water–because of a reinforced metal alloy body and what the company calls a "floating" circuit board. The shock resistance is probably more useful day to day than shooting underwater, as most digital cameras can withstand a bit of rain or water spray, if not a full-score dunking. Besides, it's not easy lining up a shot underwater; be sure to bring goggles, and take a deep breath.
Flashflight
Lighting up a Frisbee isn't child's play. The inventors of the Flashflight ($9 to $20, flashflight.com) tapped a number of modern technologies—most important, LEDs and fiber optics—to get a disk that not only would flash but fly.
Light-emitting diodes have been around since the 1960s, but recent advances have made them brighter and capable of producing more colors. They're expected to revolutionize the lighting market over the next decade or two.
Flashflight wasn't the first disk to try LEDs for nighttime play. Others hadn't struck the right balance between light and playability, say Frisbee fans. An earlier light-up disk, for example, had strung LEDs around the edge, which tended to blind players at night. Not to mention reports that it shattered after 30 minutes of play. So a key innovation of the Flashflight is using fiber optics to spread the light from a center LED to the edge.
Then they tried to account for the difference in flinging disks at night, when it's a bit cooler. The Flashflight uses a plastic that's a bit softer than other disks, aiming to avoid stiffening that would slam hands or shatter because it was too brittle.