Gadget Blog

It’s here: the most anticipated smartphone of the year. However, since the hype machine for the Samsung Galaxy S4 first revved its engine, we’ve seen new Android upstarts – the HTC One and Sony Xperia Z. Can the S4’s innovations help it wrestle back its crown? Time to find out… The design, for a start, is a very gentle upgrade to last year’s Galaxy S3. If you felt the S3 looked too plasticky, you’re unlikely to be impressed, but with straighter lines and a subtle texturing effect beneath the glossy...

THEN A LICENCE TO PRINT MONEY?“A revolutionary electronic currency is shaking the global money tree. It began as a toy for geeks but is now making millions for investors – and criminals. NOW STUCK IN A BOOM AND BUST CYCLE Although we’re no nearer to finding out the identity of the enigmatic “Satoshi Nakamoto”, the mysterious inventor/s of Bitcoin, its value has continued to rise. And fall. And rise. If you’d bought just one Bitcoin back when T3 looked into it in December 2011, it would have...

NOW PREMIER LEAGUE AND INTERNATIONAL FOOTIE GETS TECHY Once again, Germany has come out on top after a dispute over the goal line. This time it wasn’t a disallowed goal by England’s Frank Lampard that helped the Germans limp to a 4-1 win, but a decision by FIFA. Hawk-Eye, the British company bidding to provide goal-line tech for football’s big matches, has lost out to German challenger GoalControl4D. The fight to be the official goal-line tech provider began in February 2013, when all four companies...

Colourful, well connected and able to form a wireless multi-room set-up: the Pure Jongo S3 is more than just a bizarre name. With both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, the Jongo S3 has the flexibility to play content from just about anywhere. Streaming over Wi-Fi, via the Pure Connect app for iOS, with Android compatibility “coming soon” – see bottom left – allows you to control multiple Jongos, creating an ad-hoc, multi-room setup. Setup is fiddly over Wi-Fi, requiring you to enter a lengthy URL...

The best-looking lawn tamer to date takes the effort out of fighting summer’s turf war The Honda Miimo HRM500 is visibly – and audibly – influenced by its ASIMO robot, and should be let loose on your greensward a couple of times a week, cutting little but often.Using a fan to suck the grass towards its flexible steel blades, it doesn’t so much mow the grass as shave it, producing 2mm-3mm grass cuttings that don’t need to be raked or collected, just allowed to mulch back into the soil. It moves quietly,...

Lobster tennis ball machines are widely used by tennis pros and facilities around the world to  “groove their ground game” and what have you. Its Phenom 2 is as close as you’ll find to an  automated tennis coach (that resembles a large, red bucket). It can recreate anything from  ponderous, time-defying moonballs to fizzing passing shots, and is programmed with drills to  simulate every type of opponent, from “power baseliner” to “the grinder”. As a final tech flourish,  built-in...

Would you apply for a reality show handing out one-way tickets to the  little red planet? Maybe not, but  you’d probably watch… We’ve seen reality TV give people the chance to eat live bugs, score a record deal, re-animate a dead career and pretend to be a cat. But now, thanks to the Dutch, reality TV is going to select two would-be space colonists from a crowd of hopefuls and fire them at Mars. Mars One is a not-for-profit organisation  that’s devised one of the most ethically ...

People wasting hundreds on “free” games may be funny but should it  really be allowed to happen? It’s  consumerism gone literally mad… Once in a while, a news story comes  along that perfectly captures the  zeitgeist. This month’s involved a  rather miserable-looking, tattooed man in a  Rab C Nesbitt vest, holding a wildly cheery- looking, Rastafarian banana. As you probably read, Henry Gribbohm  of New Hampshire, USA – though let’s not  kid ourselves that...

Want to get cage-fighter ripped? Reigning UFC champ Georges St-Pierre has an app for that… As routes to well-being go, being fit enough to defend yourself from  facial pounding whilst locked  in a cage isn’t bad. So it follows a bloke  who’s won multiple cage fights is a good  fitness role model. Canadian beefcake Georges St-Pierre is the mixed martial-arts welterweight world champ, and this  smart app channels his plyometric- and  gymnastics-fuelled success into a rounded ...

Troubling examination of the hunt for Bin Laden is somewhat more enjoyable than being waterboarded In the post-Homeland world, Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-winning  War-on-Terror treatise suffers somewhat from being rooted in  that boring old place, reality. As ultra-motivated yet conflicted  Carrie, sorry Maya (Jessica Chastain), searches desperately for  terror leader Abu Nazir, sorry Osama Bin Laden, the excitement  is reduced by the fact we know perfectly well how this story...

Make Something Unreal Live, the international student game-making competition organised by Gears of  War maker Epic Games, has been won by  Sweden’s Dead Shark Triplepunch. The fantastically titled team from the  Blekinge Institute of Technology nabbed the  top prize of commercial Unreal Engine 3   and 4 development licenses for its unique  sports game Epigenesis (pictured above),  which is now set for a full release. Based on the competition’s theme ...

Up, up and away in our beautiful, crowd-funded flying machine… EVER DREAMED OF OWNING YOUR  own  Jetsons-style, one-chap ’copter? Well,   you fanciful devil, you may be in luck  if this IndieGoGo-funded concept gets   off the ground. It’s called the PSH-M1. That we know. The rest of the details are sketchy as the  Netherlands-based design team iron out a few thornier details. So far they’ve vowed  that it will run entirely on electricity and ...

Tablet or laptop? Lablet? Taptop? Quit  your arguing, guys: this Windows 8 Pro Toshiba is the latest hybrid device offering a bit of both. Rip the detachable, full-HD,  11.6-inch touchscreen tablet from the  splash-resistant keyboard dock and input  switches from backlit keys to ten-finger  multi-touch accordingly. An Intel Core  processor – precise model unconfirmed  as yet – two USB slots, HDMI and an SD  card reader all feature, while a solid- state drive...

MICROSOFT’S KINECT MAY ALLOW you to interact physically with games, but the  big M’s latest concept, IllumiRoom, will take  it one step further: making the game interact  with not just you but your walls, coffee table,  furniture, sofa and beyond. Currently in the early stages of  development, IllumiRoom extends the  game world beyond the confines of your TV  screen, bleeding it into your living space. First, Kinect’s camera is used to map the dimensions of your...