Gadgets

Adventure is out there and, while you're out in the wild finding it, Samsung wants you to take your smartphone along for the ride. The South Korean company announced a more rugged, waterproof version of its latest Galaxy phone, the Galaxy S4 Active, last week.

On Thursday, AT&T said the phone will be available for preorder starting June 14. Head over att.com/galaxys4active (the page won't be live until June 14) to purchase the phone in Urban Gray or Dive Blue for $200 with a two-year contract.

With dust-proof casing, the ability to be submerged in water up to three feet deep for 30 minutes, and a water-resistant headphone jack, the Galaxy S4 Active was built specifically with rugged, outdoors-types — and clumsy fingers — in mind.

The Active shares many of the futuristic features of the original Galaxy S4, including air-gesture recognition, eye-scrolling, and touch sensitivity, even if the user is wearing gloves, but with the added bonus of water protection. Like the S4 Active, the flagship Galaxy S4 costs $200 with two-year contract on AT&T.

Water-resistant tech is having a moment this year: Sony's H20-friendly Xperia Z made a splash at CES, and is due to hit shelves any day now. When the Galaxy S4 Active arrives on June 21, it'll directly compete with the large display, Android-powered Xperia.

Looks like Samsung's new waterproof phone will arrive just in time for this season's beach-bound techies. If you're considering the Galaxy S4 Active, see all the color options and technical specifications after the break.

Samsung claims that the Galaxy S4 Zoom, which launched on Wednesday, is a smartphone with a powerful camera — but we think it should be the other way around. All it takes is one quick glance at the South Korean tech conglomerate's latest device to realize that it's much more camera than smartphone.

The 4.3-inch, Android Jelly Bean 4.2-powered Zoom, which boasts 10x optical zoom, 16MP CMOS sensor, and Xenon flash, is the most photo-forward of the Galaxy S4 bunch. The original Galaxy S4 takes 13MP images with its rear camera, while the waterproof S4 Active captures a mere 8MP.

Added features like the Zoom Ring, which surrounds the camera's lens, acts as a shortcut button to the phone's marquee features. Twist the Zoom Ring to activate the In-Call Photo Share feature, which takes a photo and immediately sends the image to whoever you are speaking to. An Optical Image Stabilizer prevents shaky photos, keeping the camera still and reducing blur while zoomed in.

Samsung's new cameraphone is more on par with the tablet/camera hybrid Galaxy Camera, an Android-powered point-and-shoot with 16x optical zoom and a 4.8-inch touch display. At $500 plus AT&T DataConnect, the Galaxy Camera isn't exactly affordable. Samsung hasn't released pricing or availability for the Zoom just yet, but we're hoping that the Zoom will be available at a lower price point than the Galaxy Camera.

See all of the Galaxy S4 Zoom's specs after the break.

Shipping today is Apple's latest version of the MacBook Air, packed with a heavy-duty battery that may finally last you all day even with the streaming movies and music that often drive battery life down. The 11-inch MacBook Air is now touted to have nine hours of battery life, and the 13-inch is going from seven to 12 hours of battery life.

The updated laptops have a fourth generation Intel core processor known as Haswell, along with faster AMD graphics and Flash memory. The 128GB 11-inch MacBook Air is priced at $999 and the 256GB model is $1199; the 13-inch MacBook Air starts at $1099 for 128GB and $1299 for 256GB.

Apple's biggest development to the hardware line came with a preview of the Mac Pro (the first image), a completely redesigned computer for power users like video editors and multimedia artists. Gone is the rectangular, silver chassis, and in its place is a glossy black cylinder. It will be able to support 4K video, the super hi-def display we saw a lot of at CES, and dual AMD FirePro graphics. Expect availability of the Mac Pro later this year along with pricing details.

Get another look at the Mac Pro after the jump.

Hey butter fingers, the Apple Store is now your destination for damaged, cracked, and dented iPhone 5 screens. Apple retail stores are now offering iPhone display replacements for $149, down from $229. It's a competitive price coupled with convenience. The part itself, without the cost of installation, is about $150 on Amazon.

All Apple retail customers pay the $150 display replacement price, regardless of whether or not they've purchased AppleCare ($99, plus $49 for each additional replacement).

The Apple Store's in-house services will become even more comprehensive in July, adding à la carte iPhone camera, sleep/wake button, and logic board repair according to MacRumors.

The added repair offerings for iPhone 5 arrives just as the original iPhone is deemed obsolete. Bona fide iPhonians with the original 2007 device will no longer be able to service their phones at Apple retail stores come June 11, but they can turn to one of these worthy repair alternatives.

Could the latest tablet-desktop-laptop offering from ASUS be the hardest working gadget in the biz? It very well may be. The ASUS Transformer Book Trio, unveiled at Computex 2013 in Taiwan on Monday, is a 3-in-1 device that can run, not one, but two different operating systems.

No transfiguration spells necessary: the 11.6-inch Transformer Book Trio can switch between Android tablet and Windows 8 desktop PC environments seamlessly, offering mobile mavens access to apps on both platforms.

Multifunction devices are not new — Intel has been working on ultrabook-tablet hybrids for a while — but the concept of a multi-platform hybrid device is.

Windows 8 was specifically designed to take users from tablet to desktop and back again, but with just over 50,000 apps in the Windows Store, the platform is certainly no match for the Google Play Store, which boasts over 700,000 apps. One device that can run both systems is ideal for the user who needs a desktop environment for more processor-intensive applications and a touchscreen environment that's more conducive to mobile apps.

The Transformer Book Trio features a detachable display that switches the device between tablet and laptop modes. The touch-enabled tablet has a 2.0 GHz Intel Atom processor, 64GB of local storage, and a 1920 x 1090 full HD display. Running on Android, the Transformer can last up to 15 hours on one charge.

Get the Transformer's specs after the break.

Showing off photos on a phone can be so cold and, well, electronic. There was a certain charm to a classroom history lecture based on the click-click-click of a turning slide projector tour of ancient Greece. Meet nostalgia digitized with the Projecteo ($26), a tiny Instagram projector funded as a Kickstarter project.

Created by Mint Digital, the creative minds behind Foldable.me and Stickygram, the itty-bitty projector is made up of an LED light and three watch-size batteries to make sharing photos an analog snap. From the Projecteo website, users pick nine Instagram images to develop onto a piece of 35mm film, which is then cut into a perfect circle to fit inside the projector's corresponding mini reel, each of which is $9.

Like a classic slide projector, images are focused with a slight turn of the lens barrel, and the product's tiny size has no bearing on the quality of the projected photo since no digital worries like pixels are involved.

Watch the story behind Projecteo after the break.