Gadgezilla Growls

Automobiles

Toyota Etios India’s most anticipated and hyped automobile of 2010, the Etios came towards the fag end of the year and dazzled with a promise to shake up the market, ended up with a wait list that goes well into 2011.

Volkswagen Polo  Part of a platform that has been an international favourite, the Polo is gaining in popularity and numbers and is giving strong competition to everyone else in the small car category. Want it? Have to wait for around three months.

Gadgets

The focus was on new technologies. In television, even before LCD set foot in Indian homes, LED made inroads. But even before LED settled, there was a newer tech that grabbed eyeballs.

• 3D TV With the popularity of 3D movies, the idiot box added this dimension—to ordinary pictures as well. Samsung, Sony and LG, among others, joined this race. Blu-Ray established itself in India and began replacing DVDs, as the latter had ousted CDs and cassettes. The process got a push as the price of Blu-Ray players came down from Rs 20,000-30,000 to a sub-10,000 level. In the race are market leaders like Sony, Philips, Samsung and LG.
• Cameras DSLR: Canon 60D The 60D gives amateur photographers all that the pros boast of at a low cost. It sports a swivel LCD screen for low lying shots and shoots at 18 megapixels.
• Mobile Phones  With the new Android operating system from Google coming in, handset makers raced to adopt it. With it, the applications universe was limited to infinity. Android phones in India include Samsung (Corby, Galaxy), Motorola (Milestone, Milestone XT720, Quench) and LG (Optimus).
• Computers Integration is in. This was clearly the year of the tablet. With the hype created by Apple’s iPad, others had to follow with the slate-like machine which did everything from computing to movie viewing. And yes, some also made phone calls. Apple’s iPad, Samsung Galaxy S and Olive Pad stood out.