In this new episode of the Big Time Show, we have the privilege to talk about and award the Best Gadgets Of 2012. Yes folks, this is our First Annual #BTSAwards! And in it, we give honors to the best tech products of the past year. In this inaugural year, our categories include Best Budget Smartphone, Best Flagship Phone, Best Alternative Phone, Chef’s Special NFC Award, Tablet Of The Year, and finally Smartphone Of The Year. (Our upcoming BTS BlackBerry Raffle was also announced!) Of course since this is part of the #BigTimeShow you’ll be able to watch (or listen) to us deliberate which one wins; how we feel about the devices; and find out why we give them our highest honors. As usual you can check out the show via our embedded video or download the mp3 version in the form of the iTunes / RSS / direct download formats below. So without further ado, hop on over the jump to check out #BTSAwards2012!

 

 

MP3 Streaming Player & Download Link Here

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:39:54 — 45.7MB)

 

Have you watched the video above and/or listened to the show? Then you can check out the [spoilers] awardees below!

 

 

Twenty-twelve was indeed an amazing year for technology – and it was an even more amazing year for budget smartphones. In the past few months, the local mobile phone scene was set-aFlare (see what I did there?) by very inexpensive Dual-Core, Dual-SIM devices which would eventually influence and put to shame, most of the foreign competition. And in light of that, we gladly award the Best Budget Smartphone award to the Cherry Mobile Flare! We’d also like to congratulate the Cherry Mobile Titan (and Cherry Mobile in general) for a valiant effort and a very very close second Best Budget Smartphone of 2012.

 

 

The Best Flagship Phone is – in a sense – a phone that carries all the newest technologies; has the highest specs; and is of course easy to use and powerful to behold. Our winner this year is the Samsung Galaxy Note 2. There may be new phablets in the horizon today, but in 2012 it was THE phablet to own. Not to be outdone, LG’s Nexus 4 lands a close second to the crown but is muddled by supply issues; lack of removable battery; and the small storage capacity aggravated by the fact that it doesn’t have a MicroSD expansion port. So Congratulations to both Samsung and LG for coming out with this year’s best Flagships!

 

 

To simplify our awards for 2012, we’ve set aside a category for phones that run on other ecosystems or OSes. While we don’t call it Best Alternative Phone to mean “second best”, its our pick of the phones that definitely differentiate themselves from everybody else. This year, Windows Phone has come around and introduced us to their new OS version 8 and with it comes the excellent Nokia Lumia 920. It’s a little too bad that it hasn’t reached our shores yet, but we look forward to seeing it soon. That said, if you’re a BBM user or planning to be one, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry 9790 is your best bet. Congratulations to Nokia & RiM!

 

 

We personally thought that Raf would pick BPI’s new NFC-capable online banking system here, but instead he chose Samsung’s NFC ad. The one that goes *wink wink nudge nudge* in the whole Mom-sends-Dad-a-video-through-NFC that-isn’t-safe-to-watch-on-the-plane thing. (Read: a nudie video of Mrs. Samsung.) Maybe its an indication of what Raf sends through his NFC chip every evening, we’ll never know. (Don’t want to know) Either way, congratulations Samsung for promoting the use of NFC (with implied sex) for 2012!

 

 

Tablet of the year, as everyone would have probably expected, turned out to be a bloodbath between the ASUS / Google Nexus 7 3G and the Apple iPad Mini. While we’re fans of the Apple tablet ecosystem and industrial design, we just couldn’t give it to the Mini on account of it being a rehashed Apple iPad 2. That and of course Apple Maps. The Nexus 7, on the other hand, excels at pretty much everything you throw at it and is something we’d call a perfect 7” tablet. Not to mention it packs the latest technology that set the standard for tablets in 2012. So congrats to Asus and Google for finally putting an end to expensive PHP 30K+ tablets. Also thank Apple for putting a camera on the iPad 2. (Zing!)

 

 

Who knew the Smartphone Of The Year category would have been a tossup between a local brand budget smartphone and the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer? Nobody. That’s why its so surprising that the Cherry Mobile Flare even ended up as the runner up for this year’s Smartphone Of The Year. Of course the winner, the Samsung Galaxy S3, is no slouch and dominated the phone market for the better part of the year. It’s got all of the features you wanted, except for maybe on-time Android updates.

 

And there you have it guys, you now know the best gadgets of 2012! (And knowing is half the battle?) We will of course have another #BTSAwards around the same time next year for 2013, but that’s still a ways away. In the meantime, you should check out our regular weekly #BigTimeShow! We’re live every Saturday at 10PM and you can easily get in the video stream via our link bit.ly/watchbts to watch live!

 

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