It’s that time of the year again! You have to offer gifts, and you think, hey, why can’t I just give someone one of those cool tech gifts I keep hearing on the news? Like one of those flashy mobile phones? Or that device that gamers gesticulate in front? Yeah, but which one? Read this guide and you will probably find something to gift, according to your budget.

Do note that I will not list any specific seller, nor specific prices. I’ll leave the choice of the seller to you, while the prices are indicative only. Do try Amazon, Ebay and your local shops.

1. Mobile Phones

Lots of new contenders this year, ranging from the excellent, but it-doesn’t-receive-signal Apple iPhone 4, with its Retina display, claimed to have such a pixel density that your eyes secretly sing in delight on seeing the screen, with so many apps that the grain of sands are thinking it’s time consider a strike. What more can you ask of it? Well, better hardware specs maybe? The price is around $500+, if you manage to find it unlocked. Check out the older iPhone 3GS too. iPhone 4 may be the newest iPhone, but 3GS is still a respectable phone. In case you have an old one with a cracked screen, take it to phone screen reapair – Pro Phone Repairs of Albuquerque.

If that’s what you want, the Samsung Galaxy S will delight you with its plethora of flashy features like its AMOLED 4″ display, the 5MP camera and all the goodies you’d want for a phone costing $600 or so. It runs Android so you can find tons of free apps off the Android Market. Yes, even those addictive games you like. Yes, even the fart application. Probably.

Despite being released in February 2010, the HTC Desire is still a great device now that it has Android 2.2 Froyo support. It has a 3.7″ AMOLED screen, WiFi, 5MP camera and a lot of other goodies for a good price point of $450.

For a cheaper device, maybe the Nokia C6-01 or the newer C7 will be good for you at $300, but you get surprisingly good hardware, including a 8MP camera, WiFi and 4″ AMOLED capacitive touchscreens. The only letdown is the Symbian ^3 OS which is not on par with the iOS and Android OS.

Other interesting choices are: The expensive, but high-spec Nokia N8, the CDMA-only Motorola Droid X and the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and the HTC HD7 running Windows. Or maybe the Google Nexus S?

Do note that apart from the iPhones, all the other devices can play Flash videos (as from Android 2.2).

2. Ereaders / Ebook Readers

Ebook Readers, shortened as eReaders promise to give the look of paper through their eInk displays. While the traditional book lovers cry for murder saying the paperback is being murdered, technophiles crave for one, just for being able to pack their whole collection of Sci-fi in it, while the weight remains constant. If you think of offering one as gift, here are some choices:

The Amazon Kindle, as from $150 off Amazon exclusively, is the most famous eReader, with a 6″ screen, 16 levels of grayscale, WiFi among other features. Using eInk displays, the battery is only used when you turn pages, so with the Kindle, you have an estimated 8000 page-turns before the device demands its charger. Add to those features, a 700,000-large ebook library, and you have a pretty good deal there.

The downside? DRM. And Amazon can sometimes decide it can delete books from your Archives. Not very good. So check out alternatives too:

The Cybook Opus doesn’t have the shiny specs of the Kindle. It has simple 4 levels of grayscale and no audio, wifi or other non-eReader capabilities. But you do gain in portability as the Opus is a small device that can fit in loose jeans pocket. It is priced around $200, and reads more formats than the Kindle, such as ePub. It’s a simple device, so it’s good for people who are not too friendly with buttons and technology. You can also check out the Cybook Gen3, a more advanced eReader than the Opus.

If you want a touch-screen ereader, you may want to check the Sony PRS-650 reader. Priced at around $230, you’ll get a 16-levels grayscale eReader, an audio player in-built, as as well as a wide variety of format support, including PDF and Epub, both DRM-protected and free ones. The Sony PRS-600 is a good device too, but it’s no longer in production. It’s similar to the PRS-650, except there is no touch screen.

Otherwise, the Hanlin/BeBook eReaders are worth a check if you want support for many formats, including PDF, Txt, CHM, HTML and lots more.

3. Slate / Tablet PC / Media Players

The Apple iPad. Period. Is there anything left to say on this oversized iPhone without calling capabilities? I don’t think so, and you probably know all that there is to know about iPads. For $500, you get a 10″ slab weighting 600″ with WiFi, 3G (optional), 16/32/64 GB depending on how much you want to pay and 1024×768 resolution. The battery will last around 9 hours or so, but that’s just theoretical.

Don’t like the way Apple says you can’t see lolcat videos on Youtube due to Flash missing? Look at the iPad’s main rival, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and its price tag of $600. It runs Android 2.2 Froyo, 16/32GB of internal memory – extensible to 32GB via memory slot (which the iPad doesn’t have), front/rear facing cameras and depending on market, an oversized phone with calling capabilities.

Archos has $99 to $300 devices running Android with varying screen sizes from 4.3″ to 10.1″, with cameras, HDMI output, Wifi and other goodies. The price is very reasonable, so if you want a good Android tablet, but fairly priced, do check out the Android 70 and Archos 101 for example.

Dell wanted its piece of the market too, and released its own oversized phone, the Dell Streak. Priced at $500, you get a large 5.0″ capacitive touchscreen made of Gorilla Glass, 16GB internal memory extensible via MicroSD memory up to another 32GB, Wifi and a 5MP camera. A good tablet/phone hybrid I’d say. At least no one’s running naked…

Other possible considerations: Notion Ink Adam (if it decides to come out), the overly-expensive HP Slate running Windows 7 and some cheap Android devices from China (e.g. Eken M001), available as from $100 off Ebay.

Again, apart from the iPad, the rest has Flash support if you use Android 2.2 Froyo.

4. (Computer) Hardware

People always seem to need more Hard Drive space nowadays, so gift them a 1TB HD and ease their pain. If you want to offer one as gift, do check out the Western Digital Elements 1TB for around $115, the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 2TB for $140 or some Western Digital MyBook which start around $100 depending on price.

For those a bit more knowledgeable in hardware, you may consider gifting a Solid-State Drive (SSD). Small size, but big speeds are offered by SSDs. Check your local computer-parts shop for the latest and best deals, but you can also see those as recommendations: Crucial RealSSD 64 GB ($140), Kingston SSDNow 128GB ($300) and GSkill Phoenix Series 60GB ($130).

If you are offering a gift to a media-aficionado, you can give them a Media Box, such as the D-Link Boxee ($200) – love the way it looks like it’s rising out of the surface, the Western Digital LiveTV ($150) and the Seagate GoFlex TV ($100). March is also a good time to buy a new TV and ceiling tv wall mount, as well as DVD and BluRay players. You can get the best deal on digital cameras too.

Bluray movies are very prevalent these days, and you could offer them a Bluray Drive like those from HP or Samsung. Or you can offer them pricier living-room DVD/Bluray players. Want to transfer home movies to DVD? Check out services like EverPresent.

For gamers, anything made from the big names Razer, Saitek and others, such as the Razer Megalodon headset or the Razer Orochi mouse is a real treat without needing to know the configuration of their machines!

5. Console / Accessories

If you know a gamer owning an Xbox 360, the best gift you can give them this year is the Kinect at $150. The only problem? There are not a lot of games making use of your body-as-controller out there except that one game where you have to move like a log to orient a rubber dinghy around a river. Not really gaming if you ask me… But hey, considering the amoung of hacking being done with the Kindle, maybe we’ll have good games next year. I’m not getting it. Gaming is done by couch potatoes, and couch potatoes don’t move their bodies. Yes, I am lazy. 😀

Everyone wants to copy the Wii’s success. Sony PS3 Move is an obvious copy. It even looks like the Wiimote. Granted, glowing Wiimotes. But it does the same function! So if you know what a Wiimote does, you know what the Move does. Only, with higher sensitivity. You can get a few more games than for Kindle for the Move, so it may make a good gift for $100 + a game.

Personally, if I had to offer a console to someone as gift, I’d give them either a standalone Xbox 360 or PS3 with their hard drives, leaving out those fancy gadgets for now.

BONUS: Cheap Gifts / Non-tech

If you don’t want to spend large amounts of money on gadgetry, but still want to gift someone a techy gift, you can check the variety of gift-for-geeks available online such as wifi locators, memory card readers and the like. Check resellers DealExtreme and ThinkGeek shops for ideas.

Do you watch The Big Bang Theory? Yes? Then you must know the geeky shirts Sheldon wear, correct? Get them here: SheldonShirts. For other geeky tshirts and other apparel, you can see SnorgTees and SplitReason – the ultimate in geek Tshirtery.

Toys. ‘Nuff said. Check these.

Well, that’s it for this year’s gift list. You’re free to suggest what you think would make fine tech gifts, and of course you are free to gift me any of the gifts I mentioned above! 🙂