10 Must Have Devices Coming Out Next Year

Every year we find ourselves coveting ever more sophisticated technological playthings and yearning for the next possible point for upgrade.

For those of us out there with a slightly geeky bent, gadgets are more than mere things, they can be useful tools, entertaining toys, the object of a far flung desire and sometimes, they can actually make a difference to our lives.

As the march of progress continues, every year we find ourselves coveting ever more sophisticated technological playthings and yearning for the next possible point for upgrade.

Here are 10 upcoming gadgets that have our geek glands engorged and our hearts racing.

1. Alienware 13 Gaming Laptop: At this point, the thinnest gaming laptop available has been Razer’s Blade series but the daddy of high performance gaming is not going to be outdone. Alienware’s new model is slightly thicker than the Blade, but the extra 0.3″ of thickness houses some pretty beefy specifications. At the top level the 13 features 2560 x 1440 touch screen, NVidia GeForce 860M GTX GPU, SSDs, the latest wireless technology and a whole host of other premium features that you would normally find in the most expensive desktop machines.
2. Rolto iPhone Printer: This little device is already available in Japan and China and is poised to make waves in the west in the next year or so. Apple introduced AirPrint to iOS a few years ago and since then there has been a bevy of network ready printers which have allowed users to print a document from their phone with a few taps of the screen, but the Rolto does things slightly differently. It prints to long roll paper in the same way a credit card machine or cash register prints, meaning that for small businesses, receipts can be printed directly from the phone, card transactions can be recorded, invoices can be documented on paper all with a handful of taps.
3. TouchPico Projector: The TouchPico is a portable computer with a built in projector that projects up to 80″ and is touch responsive. Yes, that’s right, you can project an 80″ touch screen onto any surface of your choosing with a device no larger than an external hard drive. The applications for this are outstanding, from business meetings, to classrooms to performance art, the possibilities are genuinely endless. An example on the TouchPico website has it being used to project a touch screen onto a glass table, which has any Star Trek fan salivating with expectant joy.
4. Korg Cliphit: Well for all desktop drummers out there, Korg have revealed the Cliphit, a curious little toy that allows you to stop imagining the sounds those pencils could be making and gives you some genuine drum samples. The Cliphit features three wired clips which you simply attach to anything in reach, when you hit attached items the Cliphit triggers sampled drum sounds and outputs them through a little speaker.
5. Navdy: The guys behind Navdy are trying to mitigate such brushes with the law with this cool little heads-up-display (HUD). Navdy is a little box with a miniature projector that sits on your dashboard, right in your eye-line. The device connects to your phone via bluetooth and displays key information in an easy to read UI. If you’re using the navigation on your phone, it displays the directions in an easy to read form, if you receive a text it can display it on the screen and allows you to dictate and send a response. It can be controlled using voice and gesture meaning you never actually need to touch the device or reach far from the steering wheel at any given time.
6. Amazon Fire Phone: To look for attempts at innovation in the crowded smartphone market, you need to look onto the Android side of the world and then look at the newcomers to the market. The most high profile example is Amazon's Fire Phone, poised for release at the end of September. Given their experience with the Kindle and Kindle Fire range of tablets and E-readers, Amazon have crammed their expansive UI into a handset no bigger than those already on the market. The Fire Phone even takes risks by employing concepts seen on the Xbox Kinect. Dynamic Perspective uses four infrared sensors on the face of the handset that track where your head is facing and at what angle you are in relation to the phone. With this information, the phone can then adjust 3D backgrounds to move with your head and show content outside of the frames of the usual image.
7. Dell 5K Monitor: 4K is so last year, seeing as Dell have recently announced their first 5k monitor. Yes, you read that right, 4K is barely out of the starting blocks and Dell are already attempting to best it. The 5K refers to the 5000 vertical lines of pixels, with over 2000 horizontal lines, the pixel density on these monitors of 218dpi and a colour range of over 1billion, viewing content on these monitors should be the visual equivalent of greasing an engine with the finest oil money can buy. The only problem at this point is, to run a 5K display for maximum effect you will need a graphics card that doesn't exist yet. The amount of power required to run these displays to their capacity won't be available for a little while and even then, they’re going to be hideously expensive, though if you can afford one of these 5K beauties, money shouldn't appear to be much of an object.
8. Samsung Galaxy Note 4: For those who can get around the vast 5.7″ screen, the Note features the highest pixel density of any phone on its Super AMOLED display as well as 3gb of RAM and a Quad Core processor running at 2.7ghz. Add to that the multifunction S-Pen stylus and you're heading towards one of the most technically advanced phones to hit the market. What is most exciting about the Note 4 however, is its ability to be used as a VR headset. Samsung have worked with Oculus (more on them later) to develop a VR viewer headset that will work with the Note 4. Simply enough, the headset allows you to slot the phone into the viewer, which then splits it's image across both eyes and provides stereoscopic 3D directly to the viewer.
9. Oculus Rift: The Rift headset features two miniaturised HD screens, placed behind a lens directly in front of each eye, with software designed to split an image to slight left and right perspectives to generate the illusion of 3D. Like the aforementioned Galaxy Note 4 add on, the Rift features motion sensors which track the user's head and allows you to move around in a world in real time. Designed primarily with gaming in mind, enterprising developers have created immersive worlds ripe for exploration in true first person 3D. Add in some motion controllers you can hold with your hands and you’re one step closer to being able to jack into the Matrix for real.
10. Apple Watch: The main thing that the Apple Watch is doing differently to other smart watches is dropping the reliance on touch screen gestures. While the screen is still touch sensitive, the watch can also be controlled with gestures, the rotary “crown”/home button, essentially simplifying the controls while also avoiding to obscure the display. Consider the behind the scenes functionality such as the heartbeat sensor, the fitness tools and then the ability to read and reply to text messages, use Siri and a whole host of other basic iPhone functionality and it's easy to see that Apple look like they're poised to dominate the wearable tech market with their first attempt.

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