Commentary: 2010 In Review

One of my co-workers said something a couple of months ago about how 2010 wasn't a very exciting year gadget-wise.  On the contrary, I'd say it's the most exciting year so far.  Let's review what happened this year:

Tablets
2010 was the Year of the Multi-touch Tablet.  The iPad was released, sold millions, and inspired dozens of other tablets, most notably the Galaxy Tab.  We should see more and greater tablets in 2011, but this is the year where it all started.

Smartphones
The iPhone 4 was probably the most exciting ongoing tech news story this year.  First, a prototype phone was revealed prematurely on Gizmodo.  This may have taken some steam out of the official announcement of the phone, which was still exciting because of the new features: retina display, front facing camera (and FaceTime app), LED flash, sexy new design, and new OS.  Then the discovery of its antenna problems set the blogosphere on fire.  It was a big year for the iPhone.

It was also a big year for Android phones. The Froyo and Gingerbread OS updates were released, providing lots of cool features like full Flash compatibility, wifi hotspot capability and Near Field Communication support, but it also led to more accusations of fragmentation.  Hardware-wise, there were dozens of new awesome phones, such as the Nexus One, Nexus S, Evo 4G, the new Droids (X, 2, and Incredible), and the Galaxy S phones (most notably the Epic 4G).  4G was finally made available to Americans this year through Verizon and Sprint, and only Android phones can connect to these new faster networks.  Even with a shiny new iPhone 4 in my hands, this is the year I finally felt envious of Android phone owners.

Lastly, Microsoft upped its game with well-received Windows Phone 7 phones.  If Android phones aren't the iPhone killer, these phones will be.

Gaming
Video games are a lot like movies: every year has a bunch of winners and a bunch of losers, but most of them are just entertaining enough to keep you busy until the next good one.  However, this year seemed different for video games.  This year had an unprecedented number of huge releases (and, interestingly enough, all of them were sequels).  Mass Effect 2, Red Dead Redemption, Starcraft 2, Civilization 5, Fallout: New Vegas, Halo: Reach, and my new favorite game that has been eating up my free time over the last few weeks: Call of Duty: Black Ops.  I don't think that there were this many reasons in 2009 to call in sick and play games.

But if you don't care about games, you were surely excited about the Kinect!  I kid Microsoft--this device has great gaming potential, but so far it's just potential.  Until its potential is realized, I'll continue to enjoy all these videos of Kinect hacks.

3D TVs
3D TVs!  If you care about that sort of thing.


And there you have it, a crazy year of non-stop amazing gadget news.