GADGET GURU’S MAGIC BOX

GaGu just had to take time out of his day and use up precious self-promotion space from the Magic Box to tell you about the GoBone. It’s the world’s first SmartBone. Isn’t that just fantastic? $180 worth of rubbery electronics that you control with your smartphone to befuddle your hound. You don’t even have to be there – you can set it to annoy your dog on a schedule. But that doesn’t matter, because the fun will only last until your dog destroys it. Judging by the Amazon comments, this will happen within minutes of the Kickstarted nonsensemachine entering its enthusiastic jaws.

You may have noticed that Ol’ Lovable Uncle Guru is a tad angry this issue. It’s not you, reader (well, it probably is a bit) but a combination of tech-related hangups. The Man took back GaGu’s long-on-loan and absolutely tremendous Linksys Velop ($649) mesh networking setup, forcing your favourite curmudgeon to either cough up and buy one for himself or put up with internet black spots. He has chosen the latter option, mainly because his trusty Android handset has fallen victim to an obviously completely unrelated accident whereby it is now in two distinct pieces.

But what to get? Guru’s cash allowance is relatively small given the circumstances, so he’s leaning towards China for his next Android – the Huawei Nova Nova 2 lite ($299) is unbelievably cheap and, it seems, reasonable in terms of specs. With the camera muscle of the Huawei P20 Pro (p80) out of financial reach, do we look at the Honor 10 (price unknown as press time)? Perhaps the Nova 3e, to take advantage of about as much power as GaGu’s likely to get for $400? Who knows. You’ll know, when Guru makes his mind up.