Sony Bloggie Touch Mini-camcorder Reminds us of a Smartphone
Only one thing comes to mind after a glance at the new Sony Bloggie Touch: is it a smartphone? As the follow-up to last year's MHS-PM5, the $200 Sony Bloggie Touch MHS-TS20 shares the same minimalist design as an iPhone and a Google Nexus. The front of the handheld camcorder is dominated by a 3" 230k-dot capacitive touch screen. So you do most of the navigations through swiping. There's only one button below the LCD. The power button is on one side while the HDMI connector is on the other. The flip-out USB connector is revealed by pressing on the release latch. Unfortunately, there's neither removable battery nor expandable memory slot.
You will find a nice big lens on top of its curvy back brushed metal casing. And that's clearly distinguishes the Bloggie Touch from the competitors. The f2.8 lens has much needed auto-focus and macro mode. It can also record panoramic video with ease at twice the resolution compared to previous Bloggie. Sony cites the Bloggie Touch's low-light performance to be equally impressive thanks to the Exmor CMOS sensor. The on-board accelerometer allows video to be shot in both landscape and portrait mode - a feature first found on iPhone. We are still waiting for a mini-camcorder that does 1080p60 for those fast motion recording, but 1080p30 and 720p60 will have to suffice for now until Sony decides to quadruple the built-in 8GB memory (4GB also available) to 32GB. Still, we would suggest you check out the formidable Xacti VPC-PD2 (hint: optical zoom, built-in flash) first before making a decision.
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iPod nano Welcomes Multi-touch, Says Goodbye to Click-wheel
After five generations of nano, Apple now dumps physical button navigation in favor of multi-touch interface. The iPod nano's form factor is long due for an update, but that click-wheel is obviously standing between miniaturization and innovation. So it's logical to let go of the wheel. This move could signal the end for the legendary click-wheel should Apple also decide to phase out the iPod classic in near future. There's a lot to like about the new 6th generation iPod nano. With a tiny 1.54" touch-sensitive display and a size not much bigger than the shuffle, it looks a lot like those cheap photo frame keychains. The software interface is completely revamped, resulting in something that is reminiscent of iPhone's home screen. You are allowed to have 4 pages, each of which contain 4 icons. Like the iPod touch and iPhone, you can customize each screen by moving these icons around. Trying to scroll through the song list is by swiping in either up or down direction. During playback, the album art dominates the entire screen. Apple did remove a few things, notably the camcorder, H.264 video playback, and ability to run iPod games. FM radio, pedometer and VoiceOver stay. There are now seven colors to choose from, down from nine of previous generation. iPod nano 8GB will retail for $149 and the 16GB for $179. From the looks of it, the capable yet compact iPod nano 6G could cannibalize iPod shuffle even if the latter is now only $49.
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