Our monthly roundup of new gadgets

Razer

For as reassuring as it is to look forward to the next Samsung Galaxy powerhouse or new iPhone year after year, sometimes it’s interesting to see what a little fresh blood can do to shake up our tired old expectations. Gaming and peripherals company, Razer already had some experience with tablets and wearables, and now we have the company announce the new Razer phone, with tons of RAM to satiate even the most demanding apps, as well as an extra-high-refreshrate screen designed to offer some of the smoothest graphics around. The Razer Phone is a glimpse into the future. If you buy one today, you can experience (and brag about) a piece of technology that may appear in many phones down the road: a screen that refreshes 120 times a second. It makes using the entire phone better.

It’s the difference between swiping down a blurry web page and one that has crystal-clear text you can actually read as it goes by. When you tap the screen to launch an app or interact with a game, it feels faster. Not because the processor is faster, but because the screen shows the results quicker than other devices.

The Razer phone is the first to offer a 120Hz screen -- competitors are generally half that speed -- and like Apple’s Retina Display before pixel-dense screens were the norm, it’s hard to go back once you’ve tried it.

The front of the phone is dominated by a big, 5.7-inch screen, but maybe just as eye-catching are the large speaker grilles flanking the panel’s top and bottom, promising some big stereo sound. The top grille is interrupted by various sensors, a status LED, and the front-facing camera. The top edge is free of ports, while the combination SIM and microSD tray lives on the right edge. The Razer phone really does deliver when it comes to gaming. While performance isn’t a huge leap beyond anything we’ve seen to date, the high-refresh-rate screen makes even familiar games look all the more impressive, and the very configurable Game Booster easily allows users to tweak advanced settings to strike some informed performance/battery life trade-offs. If the idea of a powerful, no-nonsense smartphone running nearly stock Android sounds appealing to you, the price: Rs. 54,990.

TrakDot Traveling can be a hassle. Lose your bags and that hassle can become a nightmare. No clean underwear, no toiletries, and no rain coat for those relentless downpours means a trip that will be spent inside your overpriced hotel room. While the TrakDot can’t ensure that your bags will show up with you, it can provide some peace of mind. You pack the small device in your luggage, and the rest is automated. The TrakDot knows when you’re flying and shuts down to conserve energy. Upon landing it wakes, automatically checks to see which city it is in, and sends you a text or email with its location. Needless to say, if the city matches your intended destination, your baggage hasn’t been sent to the other side of the world, and your trip is one step closer to being a positive one. Power up the accompanying smartphone app, and the TrakDot will detect when your luggage is within 30-feet of you, making it easier to collect your bags at the carousel. The TrakDot costs price: Rs. 4554