Gadgets Gizmos Gossip

Ever wanted to combine your sunglasses with your iPad or your phone? How would you like to be able to answer calls without anything more than a touch of your sunglasses? Or to be able to listen to music on the go without getting annoyed with wired headphones or worrying about keeping track of wireless earphones?

Well now you can with the Trispecs Bluetooth Stereo Fashion Eyewear; developed and manufactured by US consumer electronics company Trispecs. The sunglasses, which are fairly stylish given the amount of technology they’re housing, deliver wireless stereo headphones and an integrated Bluetooth headset, allowing you to use them for voice communication.

The sunglasses also feature patented STEP Labs noise reduction technology, cancelling out ambient noise including wind, cars and background chatter. This provides clear, crisp audio, both when listening to music and speaking on the phone.

The frames don’t just deliver when it comes to audio clarity, but they also offer everything you’d expect from modern sunglasses. The SOLA Sunlens lenses (developed by Carl Zeiss Vision) deliver 100% UV protection and extremely high levels of anti-impact resistance. The frames are also RX compatible, meaning you can get them with prescription lenses if required.

If you’d like to grab yourself a pair you can find them at trispecs.com, with prices starting around £120.

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Post from Chris at Direct Sight – the leading providers of prescription and non-prescription designer glasses and sunglasses in the UK, visit us online for frames starting at just £19.

So, here’s a question for all the gadget fans: is Android unfashionable? At first it would seem like something of trick question. After all, the numbers most definitely tell us otherwise. Android is now the operating system installed on the majority of phones out there currently. But let’s backtrack on that a second: does ‘installed on the majority of phones’ mean the same thing as ‘fashionable’? After all, Android isn’t overtaking iPhone or Blackberry to take number one positon, it’s overtaking Symbian. Symbian is the operating system behind most phones from the last decade. Your mum probably has it on her phone. Your grandmother may even have it. That’s not especially ‘fashionable’, is it?

The Case of Blackberry

RIM’s mobile devices were most definitely fashionable, and you know what? I can’t explain for the life of me why this was the case. Ok, so the Blackberry messenger application kept many a financially unsound user from racking up bad credit over their text message bill, but the time of restrictive messaging allowances are now truely over. Everyone surely gets three thousand of the things. And when it comes to one important factor – the aesthetics – I simply cannot understand why people every found these ugly things attractive enough to swing them around like fashion accessories. Oh wait, the trend setters (reality show stars, pop-starlets) were probably paid to.

Regardless, Blackberries are kind of on the way out, but a much heftier opponent approaches.

Apple, the Undisputed Kings of the Smartphone?

Android has only one thing on iPhone. Fortunately for the members of the handset alliance, it’s the only thing that matters to most of us: Price. Want an Android, you get out your Credit Card. Want an iPhone, and you may as well ship in the gold bullion.

The problem is though, the iPhone does and always has looked like a million dollars. Its design philosophies are so radiant that they’ve seeped into every crack of the machine. Only Apple could sell you a device without an accessible battery and make you love it precisely because there’s no ugly seams to make your 2001-esque monolith of evolutionary thought look less striking.

Aesthetics

One of the most common criticisms (and arguably benefits) of android is the split nature of the platform. Most manufacturers have a high end version of their devices, and a low end version. You get whichever one your Vanquis card can stretch to. Some (like HTC) have high end, mid, low end devices and then just keep expanding upwards with variations on their most expensive models. By aesthetically? On the screen, the android UI ranges from pleasing (HTC sense) through ‘ok if you like blue’ (Sony Ericsson) through dull as dishwater (the default, as seen on the Nexus One). As for the cases of the phones themselves? There’s always some weakness or other. The HTC legend has a beautiful aluminium shell, but flimsy looking buttons. And the Galaxy S? Can you Say ‘Overgrown iPhone 3 Rip-Off’?

Conclusion

At the moment, I’d say that Android is at a crossroads. People who don’t care how their phones look have them, and people who love features AND aesthetics have them. But there’s no ‘wow! You have THAT phone’ factor. They’re not specifically fashionable, but they’re not yet unfashionable either.

Ever since Apple released the iMac with the swivel base, I’ve been fairly obsessed with getting my screens in a position where I could swivel them and move them closer and/or further away.

Imagine my excitement then when I came across the Vogel Flex Mount, which allows you to attach your iPad to the wall (or anywhere else for that matter) and move it around on the flexible mount:

Attaching the iPad to the mount with an innovative casing design, which makes removing and re-placing the iPad incredibly easy:

I’m not entirely sure how much these retail for, as there doesn’t appear to be any prices on the iPadOnTheWall website. Unless they’re particularly expensive however, I’ll be getting my iPad on the wall as soon as I can get hold of the mount!

Thanks to Gizmodo for the pictures.

Written by Robert, who works for a logistics management company, but is currently spending his day off trying to book a hotel for our Easter family holiday.