Technology
Buy or Wait By Nigel Chiwaya It’s the holiday season and your family has a huge list of tech gift demands. What should you buy and what should you wait for? Read on to find out A funny thing happens every year at this time: once Thanksgiving rolls away and Black Friday hits, the general public seems to lose its collective mind in regards to the proper value of products. Indeed, visit any mall and you’ll find people waiting on line for the latest video game console or paying exorbitant prices for the newest computer. Yet most consumers could save themselves hundreds of dollars just by waiting a few weeks to buy their latest gadget. So collected below is a list of things that are safe to buy during the holiday season, as well as things that you’d be better off waiting for. Buy: iPods & iPhones: Apple has a vey set schedule for their product refreshes: The new iPhone is announced every June, and the new iPods are announced every September. The company hasn’t strayed from that schedule in quite some time, so it’s a safe bet that the latest iPods will remain state-of-theart for at least another nine months. The iPhone is a slightly different story. Apple released the iPhone 4 in June, and despite rumors of an impending Verizon iPhone, you can expect the iPhone 4 to remain up-to-date for the next six months. If you’re bothered by the thought of owning a gadget that will be outdated within half a 8 Winter 2010 www.itsqueens.com
year, take heart; Apple kept the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS around for an extra year after they were replaced by newer models. If you were thinking about buying an iPhone 3GS however, we would encourage you to wait until summer, when you can get the 4 for half the price. Video Game Consoles: As long as you don’t buy any ridiculous bundles, this year it’s pretty safe to buy the game consoles. The Xbox 360, Wii and Playstation 3 have all been around for at least three years, so the demand for them should be low and they should be easy to find. The new Kinect for Xbox 360 and Playstation Move might prove expensive, but they just came out, so they’re unlikely to receive a price cut for at least year. Absolute top of the line Smartphones: The pace of smartphone development has increased to the point where phones are outdated the moment they are released, but still, today’s current top-of-the-line phones (The Droid X and Droid 2 on Verizon, the EVO 4G and Epic on Sprint, the Captivate on AT&T and the G2 and myTouch 4G on T-Mobile) all have processors that are more powerful than an early 2000’s computer. As such, they’ll remain speedy well into the new year. Just as important: the phones will continue to receive software updates from their manufacturers. Wait Laptops: January is home to the Computer Electronics Expo, when manufacturers show off their newest hardware. If you can
wait until then, you will be able to snap up today’s laptops at very well discounted rates. There’s a special exception for the Macbook Air which was just released and won’t be due for a refresh for at least a year. iPad: As we said earlier, Apple usually likes to stick to the product refresh cycle. This, however posed a problem for the iPad, which was announced last January and released last April. It’s quite possible that a new iPad will be announced next month and, with features that include two cameras and a bigger hard drive, could make this year’s iPad look like a relic of the past. Mid-level smartphones: We said earlier that today’s top of the line smartphones will remain pretty powerful into the new year. However, older or mid-level phones (the Samsung Intercept, the Palm Pre Plus or Pixi Plus) will be showing their age and won’t be as well supported. If someone wants a new smartphone for Christmas, either splurge for a top of the line model or wait until February, when the prices for the older models will fall to the basement. Nigel Chiwaya is the Editor in Chief of SmartphonePedia and covers smartphones, tablets and all things mobile at HTCPedia.com
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