Name: Sony PlayStation Vita (PS Vita)

Type: Handheld Gaming Console

Specs: Click here for full specs

Price: Starting at £197 (Wi-Fi only) from Amazon

Sony's long-awaited PSP successor, the PlayStation Vita, is finally here. The most powerful handheld gaming console of all time, there's no denying it's a mightily impressive bit of kit. But in this age of tablet and smartphone apps, not to mention having a direct rival in the form of the Nintendo 3DS, is there room for another gaming device in our already stuffed pockets? Read on to find out.


Build

The PS Vita is big. Game Gear big, almost. But thankfully, it's rarely uncomfortable. Measuring 182mm across, 83.5mm tall and 18.6mm thick, it looks fairly similar to the PSP 1000 model, but scaled upwards slightly. Therefore you've still got a black, elongated oval-ish shape in your hands, with two shoulder buttons, a D-Pad, and the four Cross, Square, Triangle and Circle buttons. There are also start, select and a PlayStation-branded home button for jumping out of games or back through menu screens, as well as a modest 0.3MP camera on the front.

The most significant difference from a purely gaming perspective when it comes to design is the inclusion of dual thumb sticks. In 3D games for instance, this means you get control over both your character and the camera, or in a shooter control over both movement and aiming. Though smaller than you'd find on a PS3 controller, they're responsive, and sit in a comfortable position on the console.

The rear houses another 0.3MP camera, and two small indentations with which to better grip the console. At only 260 grams for the Wi-Fi version and 279 grams for the Vita with 3G added, you're unlikely to find holding the console over long periods too uncomfortable. That is, barring one new addition; the rear, touch-sensitive backplate. Its uses vary depending on the game played, but we often found our fingers straying onto it unintentionally, triggering actions in-game that we hadn't wished too. Hopefully many games will make its use optional.

Onto the edges! Underneath, you'll find the headphone socket and proprietary charging port, which has a USB connection on the other end of its cable for PC file transfer. The top edge has those two shoulder buttons of course, as well as volume and power buttons, and two covered slots, one for Vita game sticks and the other being an accessory port. If you pick up a 3G version, you'll find a SIM card slot on the side too.

Lastly, the screen. It's a beauty, measuring 5 inches in size, with full multi-touch capabilities. Being an OLED display, it's not too massive a drain on battery levels compared to LCD, and is bright and vibrantly coloured no matter what angle you're looking at it from. Just shy of a HD resolution at 960 x 544, 220 pixels per inch, the Vita still offers sharp visuals.

Gaming Performance

Powered by a quad core ARM Cortex-A9 processor and a quad core SGX543MP4+ graphics processing unit, the PS Vita is a veritable gaming beast. While we'll leave the specifics of which games look and perform the best for a future feature, needless to say the PS Vita is graphically the most impressive handheld gaming console we've ever seen. It blows even the iPad 2's best efforts (like Infinity Blade 2) out of the water, and even recent 3DS visual showcases like Resident Evil: Revelations can't hold a candle to the stunning looks of Vita launch titles like Uncharted: Golden Abyss. Speedier games like WipEout 2048 run at a brisk pace, with little or no sign of slowdown. It's not quite as pretty as a PS3, but the fact that it's even comparable is mind-boggling.

The Vita is not without its faults though. Loading times, whether pulling your downloaded games from onboard storage or retail sticks, can be lengthy. Again, I'll state I'm not a fan of the rear-touchpad, which requires insane dexterity to use efficiently. Some may also find the face buttons and sticks a little too small as well. For the most part though, this is an incredibly impressive offering from Sony, who really are giving the hardcore gaming crowd the handheld they've yearned so long for.

With all its bells and whistles though, the console still also has lots to offer the casual market. Touchscreen controls and augmented reality gaming through the onboard cameras and gyroscope open up the potential for more casually-orientated games too, not to mention the secondary functions such as web browsing the device offers.

Pretty much every base is covered here, bar one; backwards compatibility. Though you can go back into the PS Store and again grab downloadable copies of your old PSP games, what of your titles stored on UMD discs? Japan have been offered the UMD Passport, allowing gamers register a bought UMD game on your PSP and then download a digital copy to your Vita for a tiny fee. No word yet on a similar scheme for UK users, which will have some Sony fanboys no doubt fuming.

Interface and Software

Sony have stuck loyally to their Xross Media Bar for a long time now, and while it's not a bad interface, it's more or less done away with in the PS Vita. It's replaced by a touch-focussed, colourful UI that will look more than a little familiar to any iPad fans. Applications and settings are housed in little bubbles that, while circular, have more than a passing resemblance to App icons. That's fine in our books; we'd rather a recognisable and intuitive interface that tips its hat to a rival than one that takes an engineering degree to figure out. Multiple screens full of these bubbles can be rearranged and customised through long presses, which will also be familiar to Android or iOS users.

Straight out of the box, you have access to a ton of pre-installed applications on the PS Vita, and even more if you delve into the PS Store application, where you can also download full games and videos.

For instance, you've got a multi-touch enabled web browser, that handles navigation and bookmark management as solidly as any mobile browser, Party, Friends and Group Messaging apps for getting in touch with your pals and organising online gaming showdowns, PS Trophies which also sync data to and from your PS3 trophy collection, as well as offerings from the likes of Skype, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Foursquare.

Media playback is great too through the Music and Video apps, with the console handling pretty much every conceivable music or video file, as well as the ability to rent or buy movies through the PS Store. The great screen makes it a joy to watch over prolonged periods, and neat features like Scene Search (splitting video files into chapter-like image thumbnails) even gives it the edge over dedicated PMP players in some cases.

Remote Play functionality returns from the PSP allowing you to access content and games stored on your PS3 through your PS Vita's screen instead. So far it's limited to select PS3 and Vita titles, and lets you also prepare downloads between your Vita and PS3 while out and about. However, we've already seen hacks showing Batman: Arkham Asylum playing on the machine, as well as Battlefield 3, meaning there's real potential for some mad streamed-gaming abilities here.

When it comes to secondary capabilities, the real let down is the cameras. At 0.3MP, you're hardly going to be taking shots to with which to fill your personal gallery with the Vita. The snaps captured are fuzzy and lack real vibrancy, and the same goes for videos captured too.

Battery life

With a giant, bright screen, quad-core processor and Wi-Fi/3G connectivity, the battery life on the PS Vita isn't all that great. Play a graphically demanding game with brightness levels at full blast and dipping in and out of online play, you'll squeeze 3 hours at a time out of the console. Scale back the brightness, avoid web connectivity and play through only a couple of songs or movies, you might stretch that towards the 5 or 6 hour mark.

It's not great therefore, and the sealed battery compartment makes hot-swapping to a spare battery not an option. You'll also have to wait a few minutes before the console fires up again once it's been totally drained, even if plugged into the mains.

It's annoyingly weedy in terms of battery life but, in the Vita's defence, it is comparable to rivals, with the 3DS producing similar results with it's 3D screen cranked up, and iPhones and iPods lasting similar lengths of time when pushed to their gaming limits. Tablets, thanks to their larger size and ability to house larger capacity batteries, are the only remotely comparable devices where the Vita genuinely plays second fiddle in terms of playtime.

Value

Arguably, the most pressing point of all; is the PS Vita worth your money? Lets take a quick look at a rough breakdown of the costs then.

The Wi-Fi console has a price tag hovering around the £200 mark, with the 3G version closer to £260. If you opt for the 3G version, you're going to have to shell out for a monthly data plan to go with it, with even the most conservative of plans kicking off at the £10 mark at the very least.

Retail games are fairly expensive, sitting at around £35 a throw, and are similarly priced when downloaded through the PS Store. Without any internal memory, you're going to have to invest in a memory card should you want to download games or movies. It's really frustrating, and borderline greedy, that Sony chose to use a proprietary storage format, meaning your SD and microSD cards are no good here. Kicking off with 4GB cards and going up to 8GB and 16GB, even the 4GB cards cost at least £15.

Though there are bundle offers available which run the cost down considerably, you're most likely going to be shelling out over £300 for a console and a couple of games then. It's not cheap, but for a hardcore gamer you're investing in genuine gaming quality here, not mere Angry Birds puff. You get what you pay for, as the old adage goes.

Verdict

The PS Vita delivers exactly what Sony promised it would; a no-compromises hardcore gaming experience that wows instantly and blows the socks off the competition. It's the most fully featured handheld to date, with its touch controls, dual sticks, 3G connectivity and plethora of downloadable content and apps, even if some of its features (here's looking at you trackpad and cameras) don't shine like they ought to.

It's not cheap, but get the PS Vita in your hands and you'll realise that it really shouldn't be undersold either. It's a premium bit of kit that delivers a premium experience, at a premium price. Whether or not the masses jump onboard as a result is yet to be seen, but Sony certainly have this reviewer sold.

Toys for boys don't get much cooler than the Parrot AR Drone quadricopter line. Lightwieght, iPhone controlled four-bladed remote control helicopters, they stole the CES limelight back in 2010. Back with a new and improved version (set for release in the UK in June 2012) we went hands on with the Parrot AR Drone 2.0 at a preview event last night, managing a mid-air collision in the first 20 seconds of getting our hands on the controls. Whoops!

That's not to say the AR Drone 2.0 is difficult to pilot. Far from it in fact; thanks to a new iOS app (compatible with iPod touch, iPad and iPhone) it's easier than ever to fly the Drone. A new "Absolute Flight" method has been added, making flight controls very intuitive. Two thumb sticks are onscreen. While the right stick is a touch slider that controls height and rotation, the left one is actually a button which activates the iOS device's gyrometer. With the button pressed, it's just a matter of leaning the controller forwards, backwards, left or right to get the chopper heading about in the appropriate direction.

The unusual shape of the Drone means it can sometimes be difficult to recognise where the front of the quadricopter lies, and so orientating your movements to ensure you're always headed in the right direction could be tough with older models. The Drone 2.0 uses a 3D magnetometer, which uses the pilot's positioning as the reference point for movement, meaning you no longer have to worry about which way the Drone is facing. It's optional of course (you can still go through the app's settings to select "Relative Flight" mode, making the nose of the Drone the true front position), but it's a welcome addition for flight newbies.

Once you've mastered the basic controls, you're now able to pull off stunts with the Drone too. Double tapping on the app's thumbsticks sees the Drone 2.0 do a quick mid-air flip, which raised gasps from the journalists collected at the preview event. The Drones are surprisingly stable too; we pushed down on one hovering in mid-air near us, and it was able to adjust its pitch and yaw accordingly to remain in flight. With the range of the Drone only limited by the strength of your device's Wi-Fi signal, you therefore can trust in the Drone's ability to fly significant distances, even in fairly harsh weather conditions, without too many problems.

Perhaps the most useful new feature on the Drone 2.0 however is the ability to shoot 720p video directly from the chopper. When in flight, you get sent a real-time video feed directly to your iOS device of exactly what the camera is picking up. If it's something worth documenting, you can quickly hit the record button, which beams the video into storage on your device, ready to be quickly uploaded to YouTube. The same can be done with still images, which can be pushed to Picasa. Facebook sharing is top of the list of features coming in a forthcoming update too.

If the AR Drone 2.0 has one Achilles Heel, it's battery life. You'll get just 12 minutes of flight time per fully charged battery, and while the battery is easily removed and swappable, we weren't able to get confirmation of the cost of replacement batteries. If they're reasonably cheap that's not so big a deal, but it could be frustrating to have to head home from the park after less than a quarter of an hour's flight. With that said, we recognise it's a necessary evil; for flight control to be as effortless as it is with the Drone 2.0, the overall weight of the chopper has to be kept low, and a larger capacity battery would surely add significant heft.

But when it's in the air, it sure is a damn lot of fun. Hitting Amazon, Firebox, Harrods, Selfridges and select high street retailers and hobby shops in June 2012 for £279.99, we'll try to bring you a full review in the near future.

Alongside the Xperia U, Sony launched another mid-range smartphone at Mobile World Congress 2012 this week in the shape of the Sony Xperia P. We went hands-on at a recent London preview event.

The Xperia P sports a 4-inch "Reality Display" featuring a new screen technology called WhiteMagic. It adds a fourth sub-pixel to the standard RGB scale, much like the yellow sub-pixel added in Sharp's fairly recent line of Quattron TVs. Where Sharp used a yellow sub-pixel to add richer, warmer colours to their screens, Sony however are using a white sub-pixel to boost brightness.

WhiteMagic kicks in when the the phone's light sensor picks up strong readings, such as when in direct sunlight. This somehow fires up that sub-pixel, giving an extra brightness boost for outdoor daytime use. When sat side by side with the Xperia U in strong light, there was a noticeable difference in their maxed-out brightness levels. Paired with Sony's Mobile Bravia Engine technology, it resulted in a very vibrant, colourful display.

Like the Xperia S, the phone has a transparent strip towards the bottom edge of the phone, lighting up when call or text notifications come in, as well as when you're tapping away at the home, menu and back keys. We'll expect you can turn this off too if it proves a battery drain, but when set in the aluminium unibody case, the lack of any visible joining method makes for quite an eye-catching design.

Not quite as powerful as the Xperia S, the Xperia P is still a strong performer thanks to a 1GHz dual-core chip. It fired up apps with speed and swiped through menus with ease. It also gives a speed boost to the 8MP camera onboard which, like with the Xperia U, can be booted up from standby and capturing your first image in just 1.3 seconds. Any images or videos captured can then be shared smoothly across HDMI, or through DLNA if you have compatible A/V devices.

NFC-enabled, the Xperia P can be used with a series of "Smart Tags" to change phone settings and carry out other tasks on the fly. Two-penny sized circular NFC accessories, these can be programmed in all manner of ways, firing up apps and switching on and off connectivity features to name just a few of the stackable tasks that can be carried out simply by placing the phone in close proximity to them. Sadly, the NFC tags cant be programmed to carry out in-app commands; you'll be able to open your music app for instance, but not specify which artist and track to instantly play.

In terms of software, the Xperia P will be shipping with Android Gingerbread, which will be followed up with an Ice Cream Sandwich update shortly after the phone's proposed April launch window.

All in, it's looking a very capable smartphone. We'll try to get our hands on one for a full review in the near future, so keep your eyes peeled for more on the Xperia P.

We've all had at least one less than satisfactory cab experience; whether it's a driver that doesn't know where your destination is or having to wait an age for a taxi that never arrives, it can be a needless frustration when all you were after was the convenience of a cheap chauffeured drive.

GetTaxi, a cab booking app available for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry, looks to make booking a lift in one of London's black taxis simpler and more reliable than through any other web-connected booking service, giving full transparency to the user in order to avoid dodgy drivers and excessive waiting times.

When it comes to the software side of things, GetTaxi offers quite a few advantages over the competition. The most obvious selling point of using the service is the ability to watch the real-time movement of your cab when it's on its way, showing a little image of a taxi approaching your geo-located pick-up position on an embedded version of Google Maps, factoring in traffic stops and other delays. Picking the closest favoured driver in your vicinity through a tailored algorithm, you'll get an ETA on the cab, and can also send a pick up message with info for the driver (useful for those with disabilities, or perhaps holiday luggage). You're also sent a notification once the cab arrives at your location.

"It really is a consumer focused experience" said Neal Fullman, GetTaxi UK CEO.

"It's a simple way of ordering a taxi. You've got full transparency over the way the cab is being dispatched, which takes out the whole rubbish experience of hanging on the line at a call centre, not knowing where your cab is and when it's going to arrive or pull up outside."

As well as the clever software tricks used, the app offers tangible real-world advantages too; as GetTaxi exclusively uses London's fleet of black cab drivers, you're getting a fully licensed chauffeur who has spent around four years building knowledge of London's tucked away streets. Great, free banter comes as standard, and unlike minicabs blacktaxis can shoot through unoccupied bus lanes. Payments by cash or a card tied to your GetTaxi account can be accepted, which will be handy after a messy night when you've lost your wallet or handbag. There are no credit card charges either, compared to other similar services which do pile them on top of your fare.

GetTaxi so far have signed up the skills of over 1,000 London black cab drivers. Get a cabbie that you find particularly friendly or reliable and you can add him or her to a list of favourites (you can add a star rating to each driver), with the GetTaxi algorithm whenever possible offering that driver's services.

The benefits for drivers are great too. A free, touchscreen GPS module is installed in their cabs, expanding the number of fares they can grab at no cost to themselves. GetTaxi take a small commission from fares picked up through the app, recouping the costs of the GPS unit within a month or two.

"It's risk free for drivers, that's why we're building the fleet so fast", said Fullman.

"Previously they would have had to spend between 50 and 60 quid a week with a computer cab or radio taxi partnership, subscribing to the network. We only charge them based on the jobs that we get them."

Growing at a steady rate, GetTaxi have some big name London rivals in their hit-list. Namely, Addison Lee:

"Addison Lee are absolutely firmly in our sights as far as targets are concerned," said Fullman.

"We're picking up anecdotally, with every single driver that we speak to re-iterating this, that fares were Addison Lee customers and they've now come over to GetTaxi. For starters we're far cheaper on a shorter journey with our black cabs compared to a minicab, with no minimum charge other than the £3 black cab standard. The cheapest Addison Lee cash fare by comparison is well over £10."

The service has also had some unexpected benefits for passengers too:

"If you've left your iPhone in the back of a cab, we can report historically on all your rides, find out exactly who your driver was, what time of day you lost it, where it may now be, and whether or not the driver picked it up."

For more info on GetTaxi, visit www.gettaxi.co.uk.

Name: PRADA Phone by LG 3.0 (LG P940)

Type: Android Smartphone

Specifications: Click here for full specs

Price: £429.99 from Play.com, SIM-free

LG team up with fashion brand Prada in what may be the partnership's most accomplished device yet. With a re-skinned Android UI and sleek hardware design it certainly looks the part, but is it a case of style of substance? Read on to find out!

Design

With a big name fashion brand like Prada behind you, you really need to be pushing the boat out when it comes to design with a smartphone for it to be anything more than a cash-in on brand loyalty (if anyone has the money to afford to be loyal to Prada, that is). LG have done a reasonably good job in this department, though the name (PRADA Phone by LG 3.0) is rather clunky. We'll be calling it, for simplicity's sake, the LG Prada 3.0 for the rest of the review.

Measuring just 127.5 x 69 x 8.5mm, the LG Prada 3.0 is large enough to feature a generous 4.3 inch capacitive touchscreen, but remains light in the hand and catwalk-model slim. It'll fit easily into a pocket and, while those with littler hands might need to use both paws to move around the large screen, it'll be comfortable over prolonged use, both in calls and when navigating the screen.

Almost entirely black, there's a Prada logo sitting at the top of the phone and one on the back alongside an LG logo. Two volume buttons sit on the left hand edge of the device, while on the top edge sits the 3.5mm headphone socket, a neat chrome slider that hides away the charge/USB connection and two identical round chrome buttons for activating the camera app and switching off the phone. It's a very tidy set-up, though we found the camera/power buttons a little confusing, and a little difficult to press.

On the rear backplate of the phone, Prada's famous Saffiano  pattern is in full force, giving a textured grip to the device that's very welcome. It's a minimalist look overall, and one that well please both fashion fans and tech heads alike.

Under the hood, the LG Prada 3.0 packs in a 1GHz dual core processor backed by 1GB of RAM, 8GB of built-in storage space a microSD card slot, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, DLNA and NFC capabilities. On the rear you'll find also an 8 megapixel camera and a 1 megapixel camera on the front. Sadly, it's lacking a HDMI port, and though the 1540mAh battery sounds large, any media or GPS-intensive activities see it drain rather quickly. You'll struggle to get an entire day's use per charge from the LG Prada 3.0

Interface and apps

Perhaps the most striking thing about the LG Prada 3.0 is the way its build of Android 2.3 has been re-skinned. Almost entirely black and white, many of the stock Android icons have been redrawn, as well as plenty of the widgets too.

At first glance it looks great; a slick, again-minimalist interface that has the phone really showing off its fashion chops. Sadly, it's just a little too inconsistent. Once you scroll away from the landing homescreen (there are seven overall) you'll soon encounter full-colour Google icons, Facebook and Twitter feeds. Even some of the LG re-skinned widgets that appear to be in black and white turn out to be just a front for their regular full colour versions when you dig into them a little deeper, like the main homescreen's weather app. We can appreciate that LG probably struggled to get permission to alter some icons from their parent companies, but it leads to a patchwork feeling in what could have otherwise been a very strong unique selling point.

Regardless of the homescreen you're on, you'll always have four soft buttons on screen, giving access to the dialler, contacts, messaging and applications.

The stock four Android buttons (Home, Back, Menu and Search) sit on a little touch strip below the screen with vibrating feedback. Backlit, the buttons never glow long enough, meaning you're going to have to memorise the placement of these buttons if you're to avoid tapping the screen each time to fire up the backlight before hitting one.

As well as the regular raft of Google Android apps (including Gmail, Maps, Latitude and the official Android Market app) LG have squeezed quite a few other apps in from the off too, many of which are actually quite good.

Polaris Office lets you create Word, Excel and PowerPoint-compatible documents on the go from your mobile. An image editing app is fairly robust, letting you crop photos and images, add filters, borders and more. Richnote is also quite useful, letting you combine text, hand-drawn notes, pictures and audio files, and then email them to others.

There's also a few apps that tweak the phone for use in different scenarios. Desk Home looks great, adding a large flip-over style clock that will make for a good overnight charging screen, while Car Home simplifies everything into large icons for safer use when on the road, giving direct access to navigation features, music controls and contacts, all voice controlled.

Of course, with this phone being Android, you can easily customise the layout of all the homescreens, moving about apps and dropping live widgets more or less where you please.

Internet

With such a generously large screen, the LG Prada 3.0 is well suited to web browsing. Featuring both Wi-Fi and HSDPA (3G+), it's well kitted out for surfing the web either indoors or out, with HDSPA supporting  21Mbps download speeds over the standard 7.2Mbps. Get into an area which supports the speedy data rates and you're flying here.

All the usual touch gestures are onboard the browser here, including pinch and/or double tap to zoom. Text reflow is good too, squeezing lines of text to be read in a more natural way rather than having to scroll around, making the browser a comfortable read. Scrolling around in general though is a pleasure, with a smooth, stutter-free feel.

Flash support is just as smooth, even when running content on multiple pages. Our one bug bear with the browser was the Read It Later button, which is slightly misleading. Rather than saving stuff for offline reading, it's just a glorified bookmark tool, requiring a web connection to access your saved stories.

Calling and Messaging

The LG Prada 3.0 handles contacts and calling very well. Sign into your Google account and all of your contacts and details fall into the address book too. You'll get double entries if you're using an old SIM card, but the app does manage to filter and intelligently add details when you sync Twitter and Facebook contacts too.

Smart dialling is built into the phone, meaning you can tap a contact's name in rather than their number to get hold of their digits. Considering the size of the screen, it's a pity only one contact can be brought onscreen by the smart dialler at once, which makes the tool a little redundant if you have a large contacts book. You have to access a drop down menu to see other close matches, by which point you may as well have browsed the entire contacts book.

Call quality on the LG Prada 3.0 is particularly good. Two microphones (one for voice and one for noise cancellation) ensure that the audio you send is clear and loud, while the speaker delivers an equally clear quality for you to receive. In a nice touch you can send a series of pre-written "Excuse" messages with just a few presses, should you need to screen and avoid a call, telling your caller that you are, for instance, "in a meeting".

Social networking is integrated reasonably heavily into the phone. One of the pre-set homescreens for instance houses the Social+ widget, which pulls in feeds from Facebook, Twitter and (rather anachronistically) Myspace too. It automatically updates with new messages from pals, and you can even set the increment at which it refreshes to save on mobile data charges. Facebook updates can be sent, messages replied to and friend requests answered, while with Twitter you can tweet, @ reply, and send DMs. The button to switch between networks is a little fiddly, but other than that it's all good.

SMS and Email messaging, for the most part was good. The keyboard, particularly when used in landscape, is large and easy to tap at. The black and white interface keeps things simple, and the conversation flow is easy to read. Annoyingly though, there's no tap-and-hold function for accessing symbols; you'll have to tap through to another keyboard screen to get to ?,!, and @ signs, among others.

Media Playback

Media playback, both video and audio, is handled incredibly well by the LG Prada 3.0. All manner of formats we threw at the device worked perfectly, including MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+,DTS, and EC3 audio and DivX, MPEG4 and H.264 video files. Videos look great on the screen despite the relatively low resolution (800x480) and, at this comfortable size, makes the phone a capable PMP replacement. Even the speakers, which won't trouble dedicated audio devices of course, performed as well as the best smartphone offerings.

The interfaces with which to browse your media files look great too. They cut artwork in favour of the previously-detailed black and white look, but in the wider context of the rest of the phone's UI, it makes sense.

DLNA sharing through LG's SmartShare app was simple to use too, allowing us to share to and from networked media devices and our phone, which went some way towards making up for the lack of a HDMI port.

Still Camera and Video

The 8MP rear camera has a flash, and is accessed through a nice interface that plenty of options and settings in a thing left-hand edge bar on screen. What it does lack however is filters and borders, which rather bizarrely can only be applied with the afore-mentioned image editing tool.

Image quality is decent, without being mind blowing. You'll get a fairly accurate colour reproduction from your stills, and the autofocus was accurate consistently. Images took a noticeable hit when in low light situations though, and often came out softer than we'd have liked.

Video shooting , captured at qualities up to 1080p, was reasonably sharp, and managed not to jump and stutter too much with movement. It did suffer however in low lighting situations, meaning this handset wont fully replace a dedicated camcorder or camera.

Verdict:

It may be aimed more at fashionistas than hardcore tech fans, but LG's latest Prada phone ticks many of the boxes that even the most demanding of gadget fans chase. It's built well, looks great and is comfortably slim in the pocket. Its UI, though inconsistent, is unique and stylish. Its processor allows for swift application usage and media playback, and though its imaging systems leave little to be desired, its call quality is top notch. Though we'd still be a little wary of recommending the handset to a tech whizz, near-everyone else will be pleasantly surprised by its quality.

Prototype, released back in 2009, was a bit of a rough diamond. Putting you in control of the hideously mutated, wildly over-powered anti-hero Alex Mercer, its brand of virtual havoc-wreaking was as satisfying as its storytelling abilities were shallow. The Blacklight virus-infected Mercer could well have taken on a whole army single-handedly in the open world adventure, but you'd be hard pressed to find a gamer who actually liked the a-hole.

Scouring internet message boards, developers Radical Entertainment have taken constructive criticism to heart, and are looking to work out all the kinks for the sequel Prototype 2.

First off for Prototype 2, a new suitably-gruff-with-a-heart-of-gold protagonist; Sergeant James Heller. Looking forward to getting back to his wife and kids after a middle-eastern tour of military duty, he is horrified to return to find his wife and child murdered. But it wasn't a simple stick up job. Nope, the military-constructed Blacklight virus, turning the citizens of New York into grotesque zombie messes, is still ravaging the city, and at the heart of the madness is once again Mercer, seemingly responsible for the Heller family's death.

But following an early confrontation with Mercer (who also imbues Heller with his own brand of gooey, powerful, Hulk-SMASH limb possession, nearly killing him in the process), the original mutant madman claims to not have had anything to do with the Heller's deaths, and hints at a wider government conspiracy.

Though we haven't seen enough of the game to say confidently whether the first game's story-telling failings are completely patched up, it's certainly a more promising premise this time around.

Action came in spades in the first game, and the ante has been upped once more here. Heller has massive stretches of New York city to explore at any given time, and a crazy arsenal of offensive abilities with which to avenge his family's death. As well as being able to glide and run up walls, Heller can turn his arms into massive blades, and giant hammer-like fists. Two attack styles can be used in tandem now without changing them out in a menu screen, allowing for combinations of fast and heavy attacks.

Brand new moves are introduced too, and are particularly gruesome. Tendrils can now fly out of Heller, attacking multiple opponents at once and stretching them between buildings into contorted positions. Even more disgusting is the bio-bomb, where Heller grabs an infected New Yorker, pumps them full of a mutagen that attracts other gooey street crawlers, before blowing them all into offal with an explosion.

All these skills can be upgraded to make Heller into a true beast, capable of taking out hundreds of zombies, soldiers, tanks and attack choppers in seconds. You can still also commandeer the many military vehicles that come to attack you too (or pull off their giant projectile weapons and turn them against your foes), but with Heller so intimidating to begin with, and vehicle controls fairly clunky, it's not a very useful skill.

There are even some light stealth sections, with Heller consuming civilians and government soldiers whole, taking on their appearance, healing his wounds and, in some cases, absorbing their memories which can be vital to mission progression. A biological sonar of sorts can be used to track down targets, adding a pulse like shimmer to the game world as you go on the hunt.

It's often a frenzy of mutant minions, screen filling Titan bosses, explosions and flying gore, but even in the pre-release build we played there was little sign of slow down. It's also gut-turning and grisly; if you're not a fan of the red stuff, this game certainly will not be for you.

The main fear was that Prototype 2 may struggle to build meaningful missions around the chaos; why stop to progress through the constraints of a mission when you've got the freedom to do practically any destructive task you desire? Radical Entertainment will have to work very hard to keep the single player missions more varied, rewarding and (most of all) exciting than the madness surrounding them.

One area where Radical Entertainment have definitely made significant strides is with art direction. The first Prototype game delivered a world that was cold and washed out; suitably depressing as a setting for a plague, but repetitive and boring when stretched over the entire game.

To get around this, NYC is split into three distinct zones; Red, Yellow and Green. Red is Manhattan, where Mercer's influence and virus is in full force, with tendrils and pulsating growths dropping maliciously from the shimmering towers. Yellow is a quarantine zone, where New Yorkers live grim lives in shanty towns and the government forces carry out shady experiments. The Green zone is heavily militarised, but has yet to feel the effects of the virus.

Each zone is vastly different in look and feel, adding much needed visual variety to the series. You'll feel dread as you enter the Red zone, pity in the Yellow zone and anger in the Green zone, with a level of detail missing from the first game in the series.

Prototype 2 sees the franchise expanding on what made it great first time around, upping the chaos but seemingly with a far more refined, emotionally involving story to grab you along the way. However, it can still be too easy to get lost in the over-powered madness. Radical Entertainment have certainly built a great base to springboard from; hopefully the directed story missions will be just as engrossing.

Prototype 2 is set for release on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on April 24th.

Name: Samsung Galaxy Note

Type: Android Smartphone

Specifications: Click here for full specs

Price: £499.91 from Amazon, SIM-free

The Samsung Galaxy Note, AKA the Samsung Galaxy Personality Crisis. Is it a smartphone? Is it a tablet? Is it some altogether new-fangled tech beast? And is it any good? All these questions and more answered in our full review!

Design

Samsung's Galaxy Note is gigantic. If you thought the HTC Sensation XL was big, or even Samsung's own Galaxy S II, you've got another thing coming. The Note is Texas big. Brian Blessed big. With a 5.3 inch screen, it sits somewhere between a smartphone and tablet, while never really feeling quite like one or the other. It'll fit in your hand relatively comfortably, and will cover half your face when making a call.

Big doesn't mean heavy though. Like the Galaxy S II before it, it's very light for its size, weighing just 178g. Despite being so large, it will fit in a generous trouser pocket, though it'll fit more comfortably in a jacket pocket or bag.

The trade off here of course is that whopping screen. While an iPhone may sit snugly in a shirt pocket, it offers nothing close to the visual bang that the Note does. Thanks to 5.3 inches of WXGA (1280 x 800) Super AMOLED Plus goodness at 285ppi, there's little to match the Note's screen in terms of clarity, brightness and vibrancy. A 1.4GHz Exynos SoC (system on chip) processor is onboard, and is basically a slightly souped up version of the processor found in the Galaxy S II. As a result, the phone swipes through screens without any difficulties, and showed very signs of lag.

Measuring just 146.85 x 82.95 x 9.65mm, the handset adopts a fairly minimalist approach to design. A single hardware button sits on the bottom of the Note's front, with a power switch on its right edge, a volume rocker on its left, a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top edge and a recess to tuck away the Note's true USP, the S-Pen stylus, along the bottom edge. More on the S-Pen later, but for now take comfort in the fact that, thanks to a large 2,500mAh battery, you'll get easily a day's worth of use per charge, even with the screen running at its brightest.

The S-Pen stylus

Touchscreen phones were meant to kill off the stylus, right? The late Apple boss Steve Jobs' personal bug bear has even been dropped by long-time supporters Microsoft with Windows Phone 7, but Samsung still see a place for the stylus, resurrected here with the Note as the S-Pen.

Despite a major part of the marketing of the Note (the combo of a large screen and pen-like device is supposed to kill off the need for paper and pencil) the S-Pen proves little more than a gimmick. Though it's comfortable to hold and slips tidily away into a recess on the underside of the phone, it's practically pointless.

You've got note taking apps pre-installed and ones for jotting down doodles, but this is nothing new in and of itself. The note taking app could have had some decent application were its handwriting recognition up to scratch, but in reality it's prone to mistakes and slower to use than simply tapping out a message on a keyboard. The S-Pen may well have 100 levels of sensitivity, but it still sometimes didn't register input, and the software tended to lag slightly behind our preferred scribbling speed.

Sure, it's nice to be able to sign documents properly from your phone, and annotate the odd image or website, but it's a mostly needless addition.

Calling and Messaging

It may be gigantic, but the Note is still a phone at the end of the day. You'll look like a plonker holding it up to your ear, but it's not as ridiculous as using, say, a Galaxy Tab as a phone. Your best bet is to pair it with a Bluetooth headset, though that's not a necessity, providing you've got reasonable mates who wont twist your arm too much for the size of your phone.

The dialler is pretty much standard Android fare, but has a few Samsung stylings of its own. Along the top of the app are tabs for the keypad, call logs, contacts, favourites and groups. You can manually attach Twitter and Facebook info to contacts too, though it is not handled quite a slickly as HTC's Sense manages to.

If you can brave putting the Note to your ear, call quality proves excellent, with no interference and clear noise reduction. Signal strength remained consistently high too. As you'd imagine, the phone is a perfect fit for video calling apps, using the Note's 2MP front-facing camera.

For email, you get the standard Android Gmail client with is always excellent, and Samsung's own Mail app which can also pull in all manner of  POP3/IMAP and Exchange accounts you may use. It also makes full use of the large screen, offering a split, two-pane view of your messages when put in landscape orientation.

The standard Gignerbread keyboard is here for email and SMS messaging, but with the screen the size it is, you'll only comfortably be able to tap out messages with two hands. Of course, you could use the S-Pen, but as we stated above, that's just as clumsy.

Interface and apps

Just missing out on Ice Cream Sandwich, the Note is running Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) out of the box, with Samsung's light TouchWiz re-skinning over the top. Again, if you've used a Galaxy S II, you'll feel right at home, with "Hubs" collecting apps for social sites like Twitter or Facebook, gaming portals and apps in the Gaming hub, book buying and reading apps in the Reader hub and music and media playback in the Music hub.

As with all Android phones you get ample ability to customise the experience, and Samsung offer a strong array of live widgets (many of which can be resized) for displaying information at a glance across the seven homescreens. Pinching the screen gives an exploded view of all seven homescreens at once, letting you jump quickly from one to another. It's a little fiddly, but apps can be arranged into folders too.

Drag down from the top of the screen and you'll be presented with the Android notifications bar, housing all your email, app, or social network updates. Samsung place a quick settings toolbar in here too, which is handy for quickly accessing GPS, Wi-Fi and profile options.

All the usual Google apps are onboard, including Maps, Talk, Latitude and Places, and you get access to the Android Market app store for grabbing new software. Voice control comes courtesy of a premium version of Vlingo; it's not quite as fully featured as Apple's Siri, but you can quickly train it to navigate media and jump to contacts with the power of your voice alone.

Samsung's Internet browser is the star of the pre-installed app line up though, and again that's mostly thanks to the quality of the screen in the first place. It's so big as to make full screen browsing not far off the experience you'd have with a tablet device, with eminently readable, crisp text and vibrant images. This being an Android device, you have none of the Flash woes that hamstring Apple's devices when it comes to browsing.

The extra screen real estate allows for a few useful additions to the browser UI, such as dedicated page forward and back buttons, as well as dedicated button for jumping between open tabs. There's even static page name info above the address bar. Though text reflow could at times be a little erratic when pinching and zooming on pages, it's still the closest we've come to a desktop browsing experience from a pocketable device.

Media playback and Gaming

The Galaxy Note really comes into its own when it comes to media playback. With a screen this big, and this gorgeous, it'll be a godsend come lengthy car trips or when you're stuck for something to watch in bed. Grab something like the Netflix movie and TV streaming app and you may find yourself glued to the Note all day long. There's even a setting that pushes the brightness levels of the screen even further for viewing in direct sunlight, though be prepared to take a noticeable knock to your battery level as a result.

Samsung have done a good job of providing solid file-format support with their video player, with the device expertly handling everything we threw at it, including MP4, M4V, Xvid, DivX, AVI and 3GP file types. Throw in DLNA support and you're sharing video to and from the Note to all manner of devices, making it an expert media experience. Samsung's video playing app even allows for some basic editing work to be done, which is handy if you're looking to upload to YouTube directly from the device.

Though competent enough, the music player is basically stock Android with a slight re-skinning. You can muck about with EQ settings, and get album cover artwork, but for a deeper music organisational experience you may want to download a third party app.

Gaming on the Note is also really strong. With a powerful processor and impressive screen, you're approaching iPad levels of playability. This was best illustrated with a quick game of the Grand Theft Auto III Android edition, where there wasn't a hint of stutter and the the virtual control pad didn't impede the view of the action in any significant way.

Still Camera and Video

The Note uses an identical 8MP rear camera as that found in the Galaxy S II. That's no bad thing, as that smartphone was capable of some superb shots. Thanks to the dual-core processor, you can boot the phone up from off and be in the camera app shooting snaps within little more than 5 seconds, which is great when you've got to capture a fleeting moment.

Images are crisp and detailed, with accurate auto-focus and colour reproduction. You also get a decent array of manual controls such as ISO settings, as well as Panorama modes and plenty of scene selection settings to scroll through to add a smidgen of Instagram-like cool to your shots.

Despite its strong image capturing chops, the Note is hardly the ideal snapper though. As it's so large, it's actually quite cumbersome to hold when taking a picture. With no dedicated shutter button, you'll be tapping away at the screen to take shots, which means you have to hold the over-sized device in some quite awkward positions. The size of the screen also makes it far too easy to accidentally brush it while taking a photo, leading to unintentional shifts in focus.

Video shooting still impresses though, with Full HD recording at 1080p/30fps possible. The results are sharp, and the image stabilisation does a good job of keeping moving images from being too jumpy. It suffers a little from noise in dark scenes though, and sometimes takes a little longer than we'd have liked to find a sensible point of focus using AF.

Verdict:

Samsung's Galaxy Note has all the trappings of a great phone. Its re-skinned version of Android gingerbread is understated and makes useful changes. Its screen is gorgeous to look at and a joy to use. Its processor allows for demanding multitasking and its camera offers both detailed still photography and clear HD video capture. However, its main selling point (its large screen) is also its downfall, as it's just impractical as an everyday device. It's just too cumbersome to replace a smaller, more versatile smartphone. Also, the Note's S-Pen is a massive disappointment, a gimmick that doesn't really add any useful functionality to an already-responsive UI and touchscreen combo. While it's a superb multimedia device, its going to take a person with very unique needs for it to be their ideal smartphone.

Name: Otone Audio Stilo

Type: 2.1 Desktop Speaker

Specifications: Click here for full specs

Price: £69.99 from Otone Audio

Otone Audio are the latest UK-based company to throw their hats into the home audio ring. As well as a range of 5.1 systems, they're also launching a range of desktop PC speaker set ups. Today we're taking a look at their Stilo 2.1 PC speakers. Read on for our thoughts.

Comprising two satellite speakers, a subwoofer and wired remote, the Stilo speakers are a bit of a missed opportunity when it comes to design. While the cube-shaped subwoofer is simple enough to be easy on the eye (measuring 220 x 211 x 230mm and making up a substantial portion of the package's overall  3.65kg weight), the satellite speakers, measuring  253 x 65 x 106mm , look needlessly cheap. They're a desktop friendly size, and we quite like the the cut-oval shape. However, the decision to make them from a mix of gloss black plastic and a matte silver/grey is a bit of a mess. Perhaps they'll suit the tastes of others, but we'd have preferred just the gloss black, thank you very much.

The pebble-shaped wired remote, which plugs into the back of the powered subwoofer, is a little tidier, with the mix of blacks, silvers and a green LED (indicating the speakers are on) reminiscent of the Android smartphone colour scheme. A dial controls the volume levels, clicking from a low volume setting to off at the counter-clockwise extreme. There's a little bit of a sharp spike in volume level when dialling past the halfway mark though. On the back is a handy pair of ports for auxiliary line in (letting you plug an MP3 player directly into the speakers and bypassing a PC) and a headphone port too, with a standard 3.5mm jack.

There are few other audio connectivity options on the subwoofer though beyond the 3.5mm line-in jack, so if you're looking for a more complicated set up with a high-end sound card, these probably aren't the speakers for you.

For everyone else though, they'll perform very nicely. Using a space-age sounding patented Vortex Drive system, they'll pump out 40W (2 x 10 + 20W) of power, easily reaching room-filling levels. 2 x 2" high-sensitivity twin drivers sit in the satellite speakers, and while a little lacking at the treble end, were otherwise warm and clear. We did experience a little rattling in the subwoofer cabinet at maximum volume levels and with the subwoofer itself turned to its maximum bass setting, but we're fairly sure that was down to a slightly loose fixture in our individual sample, and nothing that should worry any prospective buyers.


Verdict:

The Otone Audio Stilo 2.1 desktop speakers sound, for the most part, great, especially for the £69.99 asking price. You may need to scale the mid-levels back a little in your EQ settings, but our love of the odd spiky guitar shred and rattle of gunfire from Call of Duty wont likely line up with everyone's tastes. They're solid sonic performers either way. It's a shame then that the satellite speakers themselves looks so underwhelming. Sat on a retailer's shelf next to the sci-fi stylings of Harman Kardon's Soundsticks, it's unlikely the Otone Audio Stilo set will get a second look, which does the audio quality they're capable of something of a disservice.

Name: Desaia Beat Box

Type: Bluetooth speaker

Specifications: Click here for full specifications

Price: £54.99 direct from Desaia

Desaia may be new kids on the block when it comes to portable audio systems, but their Beat Box Bluetooth speaker shows promise to come. Does it have enough polish to warrant your attention, and your cash? Read on to find out.

Desaia's Beat Box is almost a perfect cube, barring its curved, slightly tapered edges. It stands just 80mm x 80 mm x 76mm and weighs around the 150g mark, making it an easy fit in even the most modestly sized handbags or satchels. It's not much of a looker (our review sample was a black model, though more colours are on the way), but its perforated plastic casing and glossy plastic 4-way button pad on top are simple and functional.

On the rear of the speaker you'll find a port for hooking up non-Bluetooth music devices over a standard 3.5mm audio jack, and a mini-USB port for charging the speaker.

Hooking up the Desaia Beat Box over Bluetooth is a piece of cake. Holding down the Play/Power button fires the Beat Box up, with a blue LED ring flashing around the button pad (which turns red when switching off) letting you know it is ready to pair with a Bluetooth device. It's then just a matter of using your tablet, smartphone or MP3 player's Bluetooth manager to search for the speaker and unite the two units in musical matrimony. We used the Beat Box with an iPad, HTC Desire HD and an iPhone 4S, and had no problems at all with dropped connections during lengthy play sessions.

Those musical marathons can last up to 10 hours if using the Beat Box at around half its maximum volume, which isn't at all bad given the 2-and-a-bit hours charging time needed. It's even better when you note how loud the Beat Box goes. Despite only having a 2x2 W max output, it gives the impression of going far louder at full volume, particularly when placed on a resonant surface such as desk.

Sonically, there are better performers than the Desaia Beat Box. It pushes its mid ranges too much to the fore, while treble is harsh and lacks detail. Tweaking your EQ settings on your device helps to counteract this somewhat. However, you're never going to find audiophile quality sound in a device of this nature, so its something of a moot point; you buy a Bluetooth speaker for simple, on-the-go amplification of your digital tunes, and in that regard the Desaia Beat Box fits the bill nicely.

Verdict:

While its audio quality leaves a little to be desired, the Desaia Beat Box performs well when put alongside other similarly-sized Bluetooth speakers. It's a truly portable bit of kit, offers enough battery life to provide a day's worth of tunes down the park and (while still a little too expensive in our books at £54.99) is priced competitively against rivals such as Logitech's Mini Boombox. We expect to see lots of these sitting around outside tents come the summer festival season.

Tech Digest's wasted youth has paid off; we're now official holders of a Guinness World Record for playing Tetris!

Myself (Gerald) and ShinyShiny editor Becca Caddy now hold the record for the "Highest score on Tetris (Nintendo, 1986) for a team of two."

"The highest score achieved by a team of two sharing one controller on Tetris (Nintendo, 1986) is 23,552, achieved by Becca Caddy and Gerald Lynch (both UK) at the launch of Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition 2012 at Liverpool Street Station, London, UK, on 18 January 2011," confirmed the record tracking team today.

As if testing our dexterous digits wasn't enough, the Shiny team broke the record using the world's biggest NES controller, which measured a whopping 12ft x 5ft 3 in x 1ft 8 in.

I type this with a tear in my eye. It's the pinnacle of my geeky life. Great job!

Out now, the Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition 2012 is available from all good bookstores. And some rubbish ones too!

Name: Resident Evil: Revelations

Genre: 3rd Person Shooter / Survival Horror

Platform: Nintendo 3DS

Price: £32.70 from Amazon

Capcom have made some missteps of late with their Resident Evil series, focussing too much on action and not enough on scares. Resident Evil: Revelations for the 3DS looks to go back to the series' survival horror roots. Are Capcom back to their shocking best, or have they been smoking a bit too much of the Green herb again?

"Survival Horror", a phrase so familiar to gamers, was pretty much coined to describe the first batch of Resident Evil games. Creeping around secluded, drab settings like the Arklay Mansion or the desolate streets of a Racoon City run rife with zombies, each second in the early Resident Evil games was a terrifying race to survive, hunting down weapon ammunition and supplies whilst hoping that turning the next corner wouldn't present you with a shambling horror eyeing up your guts for lunch.

As the series evolved, that slightly slower-paced, brooding terror was swapped out for faster monster movie action that saw you mowing down a near-endless stream of undead or mutant foes. It worked excellently in Resident Evil 4 (which retained a feeling of foreboding), but lost a significant scare factor with Resident Evil 5 and its sun-drenched streets.

Resident Evil: Revelations then represents the game that long-time series fans have longed for arguably since before Resident Evil 4 was released way back in January 2005. Creepy, dark and oozing dread without scrimping on the action, it's one of the best games the series has seen in a long time.

This is partly achieved by the superb setting for the game. For the most part, you'll be controlling series stalwart Jill Valentine as she explores a bio-terrorist attack on the cruise liner Queen Zenobia. Its flooded, cold corridors prove as claustrophobic as the original game's Arklay Mansion and through some stunning work in the graphics department, about a thousand times more realistic. Revelations looks good enough to rival some console games, with excellently moody lighting, detailed character models and a surprising amount of variation in its scenes considering the predominately ocean-bound setting. 3D visuals add slightly to the tension on the 3DS, but we proffered to play with 3D switched off in this case, as higher levels of anti-aliasing then kick in, making everything look silky-smooth. Sonically it's hellishly spooky too, if putting to one side the series almost-trademark, comedically-hammy voice acting; from enemy moans, the screams of survivors to the haunting soundtrack (which Capcom deftly know exactly when to par down to increase tension), you'll have chills down your spine throughout.

The boat proves a great setting to let loose the games monstrous "ooze" enemies too. Closer to Dead Space's Necromorphs than the zombies of old, their loose, flowing nature makes them the perfect fit for the wet world you explore. Their fluidity also makes them far more vicious than previous Resident Evil foes; a seemingly safe corridor can quickly become a battleground as the amorphous nasties slide up through grates all around you. Boss battles are wondrously gruesome too, each offering just the right amount of challenge, needing unique tactics to fell each varied beast.

Enemies are made even more fearsome by the game's return to a survival focus, with methodical combat and scarce supplies. Though the optional Circle Pad add-on for the 3DS offers dual-stick controls, the game is at its heart-pumping best when in fact played with the limited movement offered by the traditional Resident Evil tank-like controls, turning your character on the spot to pick your shots rather than running and gunning. You can move and shoot now in a slightly clunky way, as well as use a rudimentary dodge move, but those added skills prove only a minor help in facing the horrors surrounding you. For once, "hamstrung" controls are intentional, and to the benefit of the tense nature of the game.

It's also a return to desperate item harvesting. Even when at your most shaken, you'll still need to deeply explore your surroundings for supplies, or a weapon box to swap your load out to suit your next challenge. Revelations introduces the Genesis scanner tool to your arsenal. A bit like the visor from the Metroid Prime series on the Gamecube and Wii, it rewards you for carefully examining your surroundings, throwing up snippets of info on the game's backstory, clues to Revelations well-thought-out puzzles and the odd reward for item conservation.

If there is one place where the game's atmosphere proves a bit of a let down, it's in the story. Sure, we've come to expect completely whacked-out plots from Capcom, but what's on show here veers dangerously from B-Movie territory to nonsensical. If you can get your head around the several-too-many twists across the course of the game, it's unlikely you'll care too much about the tale's outcome.

In contrast, the supporting characters aren't wacky enough. They're a dull bunch, while Jessica Sherawat's impractical, revealing costume undoes much of the good positive gender role work being done by Jill's strong lead role. The cast prove just as useless when in a supporting AI mode, shooting by your side but doing no real damage, and acting only to alleviate the game's bread-and-butter tension.

Gameplay is split into chapters, which proves both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, you've got roughly-hour-long chunks of gameplay to attack in a sitting, which is quite well suited for on-the-go gaming.

On the other hand, however, these chapters introduce Revelations' subplot, centred mostly around Resident Evil's other main hero, Chris Redfield. His action takes you away from the menace of the ship, and often throws you straight back into the kind of mindless shooting galleries that characterised and, to some extent, ruined Resident Evil 5. Chapters will of course naturally break up the flow of gameplay and cut through any tension built, but the transition between Jill and Chris's segments is almost always maddeningly jarring.

The game is fairly lengthy, easily taking the average player well over 10 hours to complete. But it doesn't end with the single-player campaign. Completing the main game opens up the Raid Mode, which supports co-op online play and makes characters such as Jessica and O'Brien playable. Here you and a pal fight through key sections from the main game, with set challenges and differing enemies than you may have experienced in the single player game. Success rewards you with points which can be used to buy upgraded weapons in the Raid store. It's a much better home for the action-orientated gameplay that feels shoehorned in elsewhere in Revelations.

Verdict:

Capcom have done right by the hardcore fanbase with Revelations. While not shying away from the action-orientated gameplay that revived the franchise after Resident Evil 4, they've managed to return that creeping feeling of unease that was missing from Resident Evil 5. The story is even more ludicrous than ever, with the supporting cast never exciting in terms of plot nor allied-AI. However, atmospherically and graphically it's a stunning achievement, which deserves not only to re-iterate Capcom's stellar horror chops, but also to highlight the potential of Nintendo's 3DS console in the right hands when put toe-to-toe with more powerful hardware like the PS Vita.

The Nokia Lumia 800 is the first Nokia phone to boast Windows Phone and comes with Mango as standard. Sporting a seamless 'polymer' design and a 3.7 inch touch screen - the Nokia Lumia 800 is the Windows Phone we've been waiting for.

Now with Three's all-you-can-eat data, you'll have all the internet you'll ever need. Tech Digest is offering one lucky reader the chance to get their hands on this cool new smartphone. It comes with a Pay As You Go SIM pre-loaded with all-you-can-eat data so you'll be free to stream, download, tweet and surf the web without ever worrying about the cost - there literally are no limits.

To be in with a chance of winning the handset, follow these two simple steps:

1) "Like" the Tech Digest Facebook page, which can be found by clicking here.

2) Leave us a message telling us why you think you deserve to win the Nokia Lumia 800, and what you''ll do with it, either via our Facebook page (with the message text starting with "TD NOKIA LUMIA 800") or by sending us an email explaining why you should win the smartphone to shinymediacomps@gmail.com, with the subject header "TD NOKIA LUMIA 800".

Good Luck!

Terms and Conditions

1. Only one entry per person will be counted. Only entrants who are also Tech Digest Facebook page fans will be eligible to win.
2. The competition closes at 5pm GMT on Monday 20th February 2012. No entries will be considered after then.
3. This competition is open to residents of the UK and Ireland.
4. The decision of the judges is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
5. The winner will be notified within seven days of the closing date.
6. All prizes are non transferable and there are no cash alternatives.
7. Submission of an entry will be taken to mean acceptance of these terms and conditions.

Keep an eye on www.techdigest.tv/promotions and the Tech Digest Facebook page, for chances to win more prizes in the future!

The Guinness World Record for the largest videogame controller on the planet has been broken! British electrical engineering student Ben Allen along with co-creators Stephen van 't Hof and Michel Verhulst put together a gigantic 12ft x 5ft 3 in x 1ft 8 in, 18 stone NES controller to take the title, a joypad so big it needs two people to operate!

"The idea basically came from a brainstorm," said Allen.

"We were sitting around between lectures having a chat and a coffee, someone came up with the NES idea and we ran with it. From the conception to the completion of the controller took about six months, and after spending a lot of time planning, the actual build took about four weeks. There were lots of late nights, and lots of not sleeping! In fact, I even fell asleep on the controller for about half an hour one night!"

Showcasing the achievement at London's Liverpool Street Station, Tech Digest got some hands-on time with the daddy of all retro controllers. Though it takes some getting used to, the oversize buttons responded really well, pushing back against our hands with a satisfyingly spongy feel. Tech Digest, alongside Shiny Shiny's Becca, managed a respectable 67 lines on the NES version of Tetris, a potential record in itself on the unique controller.

But construction wasn't simply a matter of scaling up components found in a regular NES joypad. After a few nights spent stress-testing the unit in a rowdy local pub, Allen's team quickly realised the original iconic design couldn't withstand the repeated button presses made when playing scaled up to the new size.

"In the original controller there's just a bit of padding on the back of each button and a mesh on the circuit board," explained Allen.

"When you press the pad there it short circuits the mesh and pulls the signal low. Here we do it slightly differently. The mechanical switches in our prototype broke, so we went with a light-based system with a sensor. When you press a button, the light beam hitting the sensor is broken, the sensor filters that information and pushes it to the same electronics as used in the original NES controller, which then in turn registers your intended inputs."

So, could anyone make a working version similar to the record breaking kit on show? Allen, who studies at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, believes so:

"If you wanted to do it at home I reckon you could. Perhaps using a wooden frame rather than the stress-tested steel frame we've built, without the car wheel ball bearings too. Though it's not a cheap thing to do, if you had three guys, working four full-time weeks, you could probably do this, and some more."

The event was held in order to promote the release of the Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition 2012, which also features other quirky gaming records like "Longest Gaming Session in Free-Fall" and "Largest Competitive Pokémon Videogame Family". We can't begin to imagine what the conversation around that family dinner table must be like!

"We've been burning the midnight oil like ninjas for the 2012 Gamer's Edition: witnessing record attempts, talking to developers and playing as many videogames as we could handle." said Guinness World Records Gaming Editor, Gaz Deaves.

"Gamers all over the world can finally get their hands on the result of our hard labour, and this year's book packed with all the amazing records, facts and feats that they have a right to expect from Guinness World Records."

Out on Thursday 19th January, the Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition 2012 will be available from all good bookstores. And some rubbish ones too!

Tried to get onto Wikipedia today? If you're from an English-speaking nation, then you were probably presented with the image above, and not the free source of community-built knowledge that the web encyclopedia is known for. And it's going to stay that way until 5am (GMT) tomorrow too.

Why? In protest to controversial US anti-piracy bills: The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate partner, the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

The bills are intended to strengthen the position of intellectual property holders and content providers on the net, who argue their industries are being monumentally damaged by online pirates. Their argument is sound, but many feel the bills' combative methods are not; while the music, film and software industries may be protected by the SOPA and PIPA bills, Internet advocates fear the heavy-handed tactics proposed by the bills will lead to a stifling of free speech on the net.

The new legislation would support laws already in place to protect copyrighted material, like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). However, while the DCMA targets the removal of the infringing content, SOPA and PIPA set their sights on the platforms hosting the content, giving the Justice Department the power to hunt down even foreign websites, cutting their support (and often revenue streams) from US-based advertisers, ISPs and card companies.

It essentially means all webmasters worldwide would have to vigorously monitor their sites for infringing content, something that many feel not only crosses the line into censorship, but, in the case of massively popular websites, would also prove a gigantic policing task and resource hog. Start-ups couldn't defend against possible violations, and the Internet's growth would be cut short.

And while the legislation primarily targets foreign sites hosting the infringing content, even domestic US sites could face heavy penalties, just for linking to the foreign pages in question. On a community driven site like Reddit, which relies on the sharing of content and healthy, open forum it has created to survive, it could eventually spell the end.

As a result, many sites alongside Wikipedia (including BoingBoing, Mozilla, WordPress, TwitPic, MoveOn.org and Reddit) are putting a "blackout" blanket over their sites to illustrate the potential dangers of the bills. Other sites, like Twitter and Facebook, have not took part in the blackout, but have been equally vocal in opposition, while Google too has a protest doodle with the message" Tell Congress: Please don't censor the web" alongside it.

"Today Wikipedians from around the world have spoken about their opposition to this destructive legislation," said Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia co-founder.

"This is an extraordinary action for our community to take - and while we regret having to prevent the world from having access to Wikipedia for even a second, we simply cannot ignore the fact that SOPA and PIPA endanger free speech both in the United States and abroad, and set a frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world."

It's been an important few days in the fight against the bills. While no-one questions the fact that Internet piracy is a massive problem for the creative industries, even the White House has now began to withdraw support for SOPA, awaiting modifications for the legislation.

However the Senate is still scheduled to hold a procedural vote on PIPA on January 24th, which could yet see the bill instated.

If you think this is primarily a US concern, think again. The USA, in effect, could potentially hold the entire web to ransom, and where the US leads, the UK is sure to follow with similar legislation on our own domestic sites. With so many massive companies and media conglomerate's bank-balances tied to the success of PIPA and SOPA, there is heavy pressure for the bills to be passed.

The Internet as we know it could be about to change forever.

3D TVs still aren't quite taking off in the way the tech manufacturers had hoped for, but there's no sign of Hollywood slowing down their support for 3D content, what with the higher ticket prices they can charge for the privilege of adding a little depth to your screening.

But this year, for once, that's no bad thing! A whole host of madly-exciting 3D movies are hitting cinemas over the course of the next 12 months. From the long-awaited sci-fi return of Ridley Scott with Prometheus to Marvel's all-action The Avengers flick, returning characters like Judge Dredd in Dredd and ol' Spidey in The Amazing Spider-Man, there'll be plenty of reasons to pile on the popcorn in 2012.

Scroll down for Tech Digest's Top Ten Must See Movies of 2012!

After a lengthy wait, the Netflix streaming service is now open for business in the UK, offering a robust catalogue of movies and TV shows onto a wide variety of devices, with an intelligent platform and UI that the company claims delivers the best streaming service currently on the market. But does it have what it takes to compete with LOVEFiLM's UK dominance, and is Netflix up to the unique challenges the UK market presents?

We caught up with Netflix CPO Neil Hunt at the launch of the UK service to find out.

LOVEFiLM is already a well-established brand in the UK and, on the face of things, Netflix looks to offer a very similar package. What would you say are the key differentiators between your service and theirs, and what would the reasons be for LOVEFiLM subscribers to join Netflix instead?

I'd say we have a different catalogue of content that is broader and more interesting so they should definitely try that out. We also have a free trial for a month so there's the option to try it out to see how it works too. We have a tremendous range that you can view on practically any screen you put in front of yourself. LOVEFiLM, Apple TV, do not have that reach. We'll continue to expand that platform reach over time. We've been focussed on streaming since 2007 when we started streaming in the US, and we make streaming work really well, both in quality of delivery and the adaptive bitrate technology we use to put the best possible picture onto whatever platform you're viewing from.

Finally, but not least, I'd say the focus we have on streaming, with the single price point at £5.99, with no confusing pricing layers or tiers, no pay per view, no DVD, means your choice is very much simpler. That will translate into a much easier decision making process, and an easier to understand user experience. It's telling that LOVEFiLM is advertising a competitive price point, but it's not so easy to find on their website. Their website has various DVD programmes in it, and that's not where we're competing.

In the UK, one of the big bonuses of your service compared to competitors is that you're pushing 1080p full HD streaming. However, our ISP set-up is quite different from in the States; we get a lot of bandwidth throttling for instance, which harms video streaming, as well as wildly varying download speeds. Do you see this as a potential barrier?

I think we've put in a lot of energy to make it work well in the presence of variable bandwidth. The whole adaptive bitrate streaming system works by starting with a very low quality bitrate, and then quickly escalating the quality of the stream to match your connection capabilities, up to 1080p if you've got it. If the bandwidth is being throttled, you'll lose picture quality, but it'll still work seamlessly in terms of delivery, with no stutter. I certainly hope that there is no anti-competitive behaviour from providers who have their own video service, looking to penalise us as competitors. But the temptations are the same, and the regulatory framework is similar to other territories where we've had no real problems, so we're not expecting any real issues with that.

Much has been made of HBO's recent refusal to allow you access to their catalogue of Blu-rays and DVDs in the States. Is this a sign of things to come, what with Netflix now commissioning their own shows? Do they see you as muscling in on their turf?

Competition is always no-holds barred. I don't think HBO's posture with respect to the wholesale of DVDs and Blu-rays actually has much to say about their position on streaming content. HBO has rights to a portion of Hollywood output, but not all of it, and we've been successful in negotiating lots of other great stuff. We'll always have a content offering that's rich. It may not always have every specific piece of content, but there is plenty to go around.

You're working on bringing a brand new season of Arrested Development to Netflix, a show that, despite critical acclaim, was eventually canned due to low viewer numbers. Word-of-mouth now sees the show more popular than it ever was when it aired first. Is Netflix a good platform for similar slow-burning content?

Perfectly, yes. The key thing about the over-the-top delivery is that the content has a very long life span. We're not trying to find a mass audience to consume it all at once. We can afford to bring it to two people today, five people tomorrow and twenty people the next, as long as we an get enough people to view it over a window of several years.

All of the personalisation stuff that you see is really about learning about the content and the people, and matching that together. For instance, the first few people viewing new content help us understand what's great about it, and other users it might appeal to. Then you can deploy that over a long period of time, so that long-length lifespan for content definitely works to our advantage.

Do you think the rise in mobile streaming will affect the formatting of video in the future? For instance, will mobile data caps result in TV episodes being delivered in 5-minute chunks, or longer movies a "chapter" at a time?

To begin with, our platform already offers great "resume playback" and bookmarking functionality; you can start a show at home, and pick off directly where you left it on your mobile device when out and about. What we've seen with mobile and to some extent tablet usage is that there is plenty of reach, but shorter views. You can view mobile perhaps as a sampling method, helping you pick what you'll watch on the big screen. A lot of the content has been produced with the 40 inch or 40 foot screens in mind, so perhaps the small form factor consumption isn't up to that.

Will we see a shift in the kind of content? Perhaps we will, I'm not sure. I believe we have a platform that potentially allows us to match the content to the form factor. If there are fundamentally different types of content that better suit the mobile format we'll be able to take advantage of that and promote them for the appropriate devices.

It's well noted that you had a large number of subscribers drop off the service when you changed your pricing format last year. What have you learnt from that experience?

A lot of stuff about how to run a business! I first want to challenge the supposition though; we changed the pricing on the DVD services but we didn't change the pricing of streaming. The impact therefore was largely on the DVD space. The reason we did that was in a perhaps over-eager attempt to focus their energies where it really mattered, and that's on the streaming side.

Do you see streaming as the inescapable future of video distribution then?

Totally. Streaming is the future. My entire team is focussed on streaming.

But surely then, if you're experiencing drops in subscriber numbers, your customers are saying that they don't see it the same way, and still want equal importance given to the DVD services and physical formats too?

No, I think it's that we forced the choice for a lot of people. Many of them did choose streaming. The hours of viewing through the streaming business has grown month on month; we've never gone backwards on streaming progress.

The business of the future is streaming, there's no question about that. We deliver many times more hours of streaming every day in the US than we do through physical copies. In the UK, Canada and 43 other territories we only offer streaming. We deliver to the UK market the best possible streaming product. The missteps we had with delivering DVD were through focussing more energy on streaming. Maybe we reacted too hastily, and we were too optimistic about costumers rationality, but that's water under the bridge.

Though you're not the sole cause of its downfall, Netflix has played a substantial part in the demise of the once-mighty Blockbuster. What can be learnt by their failings, and do you ever feel any pangs of guilt for your hand in bringing a massive global brand to its knees?

(Laughs) Pangs of guilt? I don't feel any pangs of guilt for providing a more compelling service to more people, and fundamentally that's what free-market capitalism is all about. If you can provide a better product then you should get the resources to do that better. And that's what this was all about.

Netflix was certainly not the sole contributor. But the lesson to be learnt here is that hanging on to an old business model when a new one presents itself can be bad. Blockbuster waited far too long to find a place in the new subscription model market, at which time it was very difficult for them to compete effectively. We took that lesson, and realised that it'd be a big mistake for us to over-invest in improving and enhancing our subscription DVD service when we needed to get focussed on streaming, which is where the real competition is. Unless we focus all our energy on winning in the streaming space, we might be the next Blockbuster. It's another reason why, looking back at the DVD issues last summer, it was right to focus on a tremendously compelling product in the streaming market.

You've warned investors that the UK venture may take two or so years to turn a profit. At the same time you're slowing international expansion. How much is riding on this current wave of expansion?

We've spent a lot of money licensing content in deals that last many years. It's for the long haul, there's no pulling out. We need to be successful, and we can afford to fight with this for a long time. Our goal is to produce a compelling product at a phenomenal price point. Consumers will see that this really is the future.

Great, Tech Digest will be looking forward to how your UK roll-out pans out over the coming months. Thanks!

Thank you. We hope you enjoy what Netflix offers the UK too.

Day two of CES 2012 is in full swing in Las Vegas now, with more gadgetry goodness pouring in. The UK Tech Digest team is rolling in for the night, but before we do that, here's a round up of all today's big CES stories.

Shiny Shiny will be continuing to post Stateside through the night, so be sure to keep a track of their findings from the show floor, as well as the constant stream of updated CES video content hitting our YouTube channel! Also, be sure to check out yesterday's round-up for all the pre-show and day one news!

Dell will try again with tablets in 2012

Can they learn from the disastrous mistakes they made with the Dell Streak?

JVC announces GY-HMQ10, world's first 4K camcorder

Ultra-high definition recording is no longer the reserve of Hollywood!

Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 mobile chips more powerful than Xbox 360

Another blow for dedicated handheld gaming devices.

Griffin turn your iPad into a music studio with StudioConnect

Because all the best songs are written on the road.

Panasonic's VT50 plasma is the 3DTV to save the pennies for

Probably the best plasma screen TV in the world today.

Parrot Starck Zik NFC headphones launched

Do you really need NFC tech in your headphones? The answer is yes. Yes you do.

Polaroid SC1630 - Is it a camera? Is it an Android phone?

Half Android, half camera. If my maths are correct, it all rests on whether it's half smartphone too...

VIDEO: Razer Project Fiona is a gaming tablet with controller handles

The maddest CES 2012 launch so far, and definitely one to keep gamers happy.

VIDEO: Lenovo IdeaCenter A720 All-In-One hands-on

Giant transforming touchscreen PC heading to a tabletop near you soon.

VIDEO: Lenovo IdeaPad YOGA hands-on

More flexible than a contortionist made of Play-Doh.

For more news from CES 2012, click here.

Viva Las Vegas! Tech Digest and Shiny Shiny are back bringing you all the latest technology news from the annual CES (Consumer Electronics Show), direct from Sin City itself.So far we've seen a ton of TVs, cameras and phones, but the most exciting (and rapidly expanding product category looks to be ultrabooks, with all the major PC and laptop manufacturers throwing in their first stabs at the ultra-portable, ultra-powerful form factor.

For your easy-reading pleasure, we've collected all of our pre-show and day one CES 2012 coverage below. Take a look, and feel free to fire over any questions or requests for a closer look at any gear via our Twitter feed.

Sony HX8 3D Bravia's ready for a battering with Gorilla Glass

Won't stop that cheeky monkey from Planet of the Apes destroying the world though. You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!

Wi-Fi added to Canon's M-Series camcorder range

Cable-free video uploads ahoy.

Sony Bloggie Live adds live Wi-Fi video streaming

Because everyone needs to see your YouTube reaction videos in real-time.

Xperia S to be debut standalone Sony smartphone

Features the same screen technology Sony put in their HDTVs

Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 flies to new heights

For the Peeping-Tom in your life.

Kinect motion controlling its way to Windows in February

But will only support development for Windows and Xbox 360 apps.

Lenovo get flexible with IdeaPad Yoga Windows 8 tablet/ultrabook hybrid

And not a fitness freak in sight.

HP Envy 14 Spectre dishing out ultrabook Beats

Spooky name, serious sounds.

Samsung's Series 9 900X3B claims "world's thinnest" title

This ultrabook could do with a good dinner.

Samsung boost smart camera line-up with WB850F, DV300F and ST200F models

Great for vanity shots.

Samsung reveal trio of ST compact cameras

Three new pocketable snappers from Samsung.

Samsung Series 5 ultrabook revealed

Already available in Korea and hitting the UK soon.

Watch out LG, here comes Samsung's 55-inch Super OLED TV

Samsung 55 inch OLED or LG 55 Inch OLED? I like them both. But which one is better? There's only one way to find out...

Sony Xperia Ion drops Ericsson, adds LTE, HD and 12MP camera

Another Ericsson-less smartphone from Sony.

Verizon Motorola Droid 4 revealed, Stormtroopers lay down their weapons

Smarter than an R2 unit, doesn't suffer from "bad-motivator" syndrome.

Sharp super-sizing 8K screens

Sharp looking to cater almost exclusively for the premium AV market.

HTC Titan 2 boasts titanic 16MP camera, LTE speeds

Are whopping camera specs enough to tempt you into the Windows Phone herd?

Canon PowerShot G1 X is compact in size with APS-C size sensor

Impressive specs in a compact body size, but may prove to be a little too pricey.

Huawei Ascend P1 S is world's thinnest smartphone, needs a Bic Mac

No excuses not to buy those crotch-hugging skinny jeans now.

LG's EM960V 55-inch OLED TV to hit UK in 2nd half of 2012

Specs and a release date for LG's lust-worthy OLED TV.

LG LTE Spectrum with IPS HD screen headed to Verizon

Superfast download speeds with a screen that will work well in direct sunlight.

Lenovo IdeaPad U310 and U410 ultrabooks revealed

Lenovo get in on the ultrabook action.

Samsung bringing Skype and Internet to your TV with InTouch

Big screen HD video calling. Better perfect your make-up.

Sunshine charging for book lovers with SolarKindle cover

Never need charge your Kindle again thanks to this cover, providing you live in the Gobi desert.

Griffin Twenty adds Apple AirPlay features to any old Hi-Fi

Don't quote us on this, but we think jukeboxes may now be AirPlay enabled thanks to this Griffin gadget.

LG launching 3D Google TV at CES 2012

Will LG's Google TV succeed where so many others have failed?

Motorola launch Defy Mini and Motoluxe Android smartphones

One for the posers and one for the wannabe Bear Grylls out there.

Ultra cool, Ultra Definition 84 inch LG 3DTV headed to CES 2012

Great; now I need a new larger home that I can't afford to house a TV that I can't afford either. Anyone need a kidney?

CES 2012 debut for Samsung's Series 9 27 inch quad-HD monitor

Paper-thin, icy-cool sci-fi monitors from Samsung.

Samsung launching multi-device compatible audiophile speaker docks

Both Apple and Samsung smartphones wirelessly supported by these high-end docks.

Razer tease Project Fiona: "PC gaming in an all-new form factor"

Razer in new-gaming-PC-form-factor-shocker.

Nikon has just revealed its latest flagship pro DSLR, the D4. Bringing over 45 new or improved features compared to the previous D3 model, it's been tailored especially for sporting and news reportage photography.

Before we delve into the features on show, here's a quick run down of the key specs:

- 16.2 million pixel FX format sensor
- ISO 100-12800, expandable 50-204,800
- Full HD video recording at 30/25/24fps
- 720p HD video recording at 60/50fps
- 3.2 inch 921k dot resolution rear LCD screen
- Up to 11fps shooting
- 51 AF points

Taking a closer look first at that 16.2 million pixel FX full frame format sensor, it's capable of low noise images thanks to redesigned 14-bit A/D signal processing tech. It also allows for a standard sensitivity range of ISO 100-ISO 12800, which can be tweaked to the equivalent of ISO 50 and up to ISO 204,800.

Sitting on the camera's rear is a 3.2 inch wide-angle LCD screen with automatic brightness controls, running at a 921k dot resolution. Whether shooting in landscape or portrait orientations the button layout remains the same, while one handed ergonomics have been improved, as well as the ability to swap between AF and AF-area mode selection without taking the camera away from the users eye.

Moving onto video capture, and the Nikon D4 is capable of Full HD video recording available at 30p, 25p, 24p, or 60 p for slo-mo 720p clips. Each clip can run for 29 minutes and 59 seconds.

Both FX and DX formats are supported through a new multi-area mode, letting you capture the same scene with differing crop levels. Uncompressed HDMI output fro pro editing is now possible, as well as an audio out for headphones for quick edits while out in the field.

Nikon's proprietary Advanced Scene Recognition system is onboard, using the new 91,000 pixel RGB sensor to keep scene reproduction as accurate as possible, better track 3D movement and detect human faces. The Multi-CAM3500FX AF Sensor module has 9, 21, and 51 point coverage settings allowing for quick subject detection, and also lets autofocus be possible in incredibly low light scenarios.

Keeping the wildlife/reportage focus in mind, the D4 matches the power of eleven central AF sensors, particularly useful when shooting from a distance with an extender. The redesigned Kevlar shutter is good for at least 400,000 releases, with superfast operation speeds of 0.012 start up time and 0.042 seconds for release lag.

Two card slots are now onboard, a first for any DSLR, compatible with both high-speed UDMA 7 CF cards and the new XQD format. Another Nikon first, a wired LAN connection also features on the camera, while newly designed WT-5 wireless transmitter for HTTP and FTP connections has been included. HTTP now also works with iPhone and iPad screen resolutions.

Due on February 16th 2012, it has an RRP of £4,799.99

Have you been outside today, British Tech Digest readers??? It's like walking down Hurricane Alley with a parachute trailing behind you!

For those enjoying sunnier climes, the UK is currently being battered by gale force winds that would make the X-Men's Storm blush, knocking out power lines, toppling trees onto roads and causing the sort of first-week-of-January-blues that are usually reserved for Christmas Mince Pie withdrawal syndrome.

To help you better battle the elements, we've put together this handy little list of apps that make braving the freak weather a little easier.

Main Image © David Killock - Flickr