Android tablets are a dime a dozen these days, and rarely do you come across one that makes you really excited at the prospect of picking it up.

The Xperia Tablet Z is definitely one of those rare ones. …

HP has released an affordable, entry-level Android tablet, the HP Slate 7, which looks set to challenge Google’s Nexus 7 in the 7-inch tablet arena.

The most attractive thing about the HP Slate 7 might just be its price – at a mere S$249, the Slate 7 is S$100 cheaper than the Nexus 7 in Singapore. Pre-order it online at the HP online store and the HP Slate 7 costs only S$199 – that’s substantially cheaper than the Nexus 7, which is priced from S$349. …

The much-anticipated Samsung Galaxy S4 is finally going on sale in Singapore on April 27. Without an operator contract, it will go for S$998, roughly the price of main rivals like the HTC One and Sony Xperia Z.

For many phone enthusiasts looking to buy the next big thing, the past couple of months have been spent comparing the features and usability of all three top-end smartphones.

Still can’t decide? Fret not. We have a quick guide to help you pick from the three most desirable phones out there.  …

It’s a PC. No, it’s a tablet. No, it’s both.

Not content to let Lenovo and Sony steal the show with humongous desk-bound tablets, ASUS has unveiled its own take on the “coffee table computer” – the ASUS Transformer AiO.

True to its transformer moniker, the computer runs both Windows 8 and Android 4.1, and has both an Nvidia Tegra 3 processor and an Intel Core processor. …

If there’s still any doubt that the two big phone makers – Apple and Samsung – are the ones making most of the money, the latest figures now show that they together gobbled up 52 per cent of global smartphone sales in the last three months of 2012, up from 46.4 per cent three months before.

Research firm Gartner also said earlier today that more than 207 .7 million smartphones were sold in Q4 2012, up 38.3 per cent from 12 months ago. This, unfortunately, did not lift the overall mobile phone market.

Including sales of so-called “feature phones”, there were fewer phones sold in the entire 2012, compared to a year ago. The 1.75 billion phones sold represented a 1.7 per cent fall from 2011, the first decline in three years. …

LG’s Optimus G was unveiled in September last year – an age ago in mobile electronics – and will finally be available in Singapore this Saturday for  S$798 without a telco contract.

The Optimus G is undoubtedly the first LG phone to warrant any real excitement, a fact that even LG executives on hand at the launch event were not shy to admit. What’s all the fuss about? …

We’re still waiting for Sony to announce a definitive launch date and price for its newest flagship smartphone Xperia Z, and HTC is leaping into the gap with information about its own next-generation smartphone — the Butterfly.

Available on January 26 for S$928, the Butterfly sports many familiar specs. …

Yet another year filled with surprises and no less interesting technology products and services has passed us by, perhaps too fast for some of 2012′s winners and not too soon for the strugglers.

The past 12 months have seen a great variety of tablets, from the Google Nexus 7 to Apple’s iPad mini, while Microsoft and partners tried their best to jump on the mobile bandwagon by bringing touch screens to everyday PCs with Windows 8.

In many ways, the much-talked about convergence of computers and mobile technologies has brought about some of the keenest competition that hasn’t been seen in years.

That’s not even mentioning the other big headlines of the year, like Facebook going public, Apple and Samsung’s courtroom joust and in Singapore, the arrival of cheap and fast fibre broadband.

Now, just hours away from 2013, users could well be staring at another year of great tech gadgets, sometimes frustrating technologies that fail to live up to expectations, and oh, winners and losers, definitely. Here are eight trends to look out for in the new year. …

Over the last couple of years, e-mail has become an essential part of our everyday lives and the slew of email service providers have us spoilt for choice.

Just last week, Yahoo has further sweetened the deal by concentrating on what users want in an e-mail experience, offering up a new, revamped Yahoo Mail with a considerably sleeker interface.

On the Web platform, Yahoo has cut down on the clutter and reduced the number of buttons on the page, making it intuitive as well as easier to navigate. It has to buck up because Google and Gmail have become the default tool for many users of Android, the most popular smartphone operating system now. …

Last week, Google launched Ingress, a mobile augmented reality game that depends heavily on your Android phone’s location and imaging capabilities.

In the game, there are two groups of people vying for dominance, and you have to pick a side and commit yourself to its cause. Then, you’ll have to walk around your city collecting “exotic material” (XM), which lets you “hack” into “portals”. According the help page, “portals manifest themselves usually as public art such as statues and monuments, unique architecture, outdoor murals, historic buildings, and unique local businesses.” …