Screen stars
David Phelan turns on to the latest portable must-haves
Sony TZ21M
This laptop is extremely portable, with a 27cm glossy screen and carbon-fibre chassis that makes it very light (1.19kg). It has a 100GB hard drive, 2GB of active memory and battery life of up to 7.5 hours. This US$3,700 model can even surf the internet with no wi-fi net-work: it’s kitted out with an HSDPA sim card slot. HSDPA is the fastest data transfer available using the mobile phone network.
Philips PET835
This 8.5-inch screen is tablet-style – there’s nothing to unfold – and is visible from angles wide enough that two can watch side-by-side. DVD playback is detailed and it also plays DIVX files, so you can squeeze more movies on to a disk, though image quality is poorer. The $500 player has a digital tuner for watching broadcast TV, too.
Nokia N95 8GB
The Nokia N95 is one of the most versatile mobile phones. It has a five megapixel digital camera, GPS for satellite navigation – with maps supplied free – and a decent music player. But the new 8GB version is much better: the styling is cooler, build quality stronger, the screen bigger and storage for music, photos and videos doubled (enough for 2,000 tracks). And the battery life has been substantially improved. Deeply impressive.
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