Plugging into the future

It’s been a while since the world of gadgets became this exciting. There are several fundamental changes underway in the technologies which power modern devices, and 2011 will have its share of some of these changes. Here are some technologies to look out for:
New silicon
Currently, all laptops and computers are powered by a CPU (central processing unit) and a GPU (graphics processing unit).In 2011, it will change. Sometime around March if you go out to buy a laptop, you may find an APU (accelerated processing unit), based on Intel’s Sandy Bridge or AMD’s Ontario, in specification sheet instead of any CPU or GPU. While details are too geeky to be covered in a few paragraphs, it is expected that APUs will fundamentally change laptops by enabling manufacturers to cram lot more performance and excellent multimedia features in thin, light, sleek and cheap devices.
Battle of tablets
It’s going to be a three-way contest. In the next few months, iPad 2 should hit the shelves. Around the same time, there will be BlackBerry’s Playbook and tablets powered by Honeycomb, next version of Android. It’s speculated that iPad 2 will get a few USB ports, a camera or two and a sleeker body. Honeycomb, meanwhile, is expected to bring all the goodness of Android — open and tweakable OS, cheap prices — to tablets. Playbook, powered by a dual-core processor, ticks all the right boxes as far as hardware is concerned and may prove to be the surprise hit of the year.
3G-enabled, finally
BSNL and MTNL are offering it for months now. But they don’t count. The service is poor and areas where 3G is available, too few. Though a few private players already offer 3G in several Indian cities, wide availability is expected only in the next few months. It’s evident that 3G is not going to be cheap in India. Still, for most of us this will be our first brush with high-speed connection on mobile devices.
Mirror removed
After a stupid race for more and more mega-pixels, finally there is some true innovation in the world of digital cameras. In 2010, Sony introduced a slew of digital cameras — NEX 3 & 5 series and Alpha 33 and 55 — that, unlike traditional SLRs, have no mirror in their body. Removing the mirror allowed Sony to equip the camera with a large sensor and yet, keep the size and weight small. For now price is quite high but once companies like Canon and Nikon join the fray, mirrorless cameras will be more affordable.
It’s their last chance
For several years now, Nokia is hard at work to build a modern mobile OS and 2011 is likely to see its labour bear fruit. Smartphones powered by MeeGo, which the company is developing in partnership with Intel, are likely to come to the market in the second half of 2011. A lot rides on MeeGo and if Nokia fails again, it will, in likelihood,
be forced to bow out of high-end mobile phone market.
Fresh take on casual gaming
In the last two years, Nintendo and Sony have lost some ground to smartphones. Now, both Japanese companies are trying to reinvent their hand-held gaming devices. Nintendo is giving DS a 3D makeover, one where users won’t even have to wear any special glasses, and Sony is cooking up a PSP that will double as a smartphone. Nintendo 3DS and PSP Phone are expected to be available in the next few months.
Need for speed
USB 3.0 is almost here and with its blazing transfer speed, it’s going to make USB 2.0 look like an old Fiat, slow and outdated. Compared to USB 2.0 that provides theoretical speed of around 60MB per second, USB 3.0 is expected to push around 400MB/s. The wide availability of devices and pen drives supporting USB 3.0 is likely to be in the second half of this year.
Phone 7 in new avatar
It came in 2010 but the saga of Windows Phone 7 has just begun. In its first avatar it packs a graphics user interface — termed Metro — that is fluid and great to look at. But the OS is somewhat crippled in functionality. It is expected Microsoft will address the shortcomings of Windows Phone 7 this year. Once that happens, it will pose a formidable challenge to iOS and Android.
Two cores in a phone
With companies like Nividia, Samsung, Texas Instrument and Qualcomm busy giving finishing touches to their Next Gen processors based on ARM’s Cortex A9 design, in a few months we will see smartphones with dual core processors flooding the market. The new chips like Tegra 2 from Nividia are likely to give impressive performance boost to hand-held devices, bringing capabilities like 1080P, basic photo editing, better gaming capabilities and overall fast and fluid performance to smartphones.
An OS in cloud
Call it the cloud simplified. Built to power netbooks, Google’s Chrome OS promises users an almost instant access to the web and services like emails and social networking they use most. It also aims to free people of their desktops, so they can access all their data from any place where internet connection is available. Devices powered by Chrome OS are expected in the second half of 2011.
Crysis again
When Crysis came out in 2007, it was not just a video game where you shoot aliens and kill monsters. It was also a testimony to how far technology has come. With an engine that brought even most powerful computers to their knees, Crysis was capable of creating virtual images that looked almost as good as real. All in real-time. Crysis 2 will come in March and yet again it is expected to push technology to its limits and show how much we have progressed in real-time rendering of graphics.