Smartphone holsters and belt clips are a dime a dozen these days, but few are flexible enough to work on everything from t-shirts to car dashboards. Clipless does – with the magic of magnets. The Kickstarter-funded magnetic mounting system secures your phone without the usual (and unsightly) pouches, hooks and armbands. Instead, your phone looks like it’s frozen onto a surface, or your clothes, in suspended animation.

You’re charging your phone in another room and you hear the notification alert that new messages are coming in. You want to check — but you’re lazy, or you’ve got something else taking up your time, maybe on your tablet or laptop right in front of you. The messages might be important, or they might not be. You’ll never know until you get up to find out. Or maybe not.

There are many ways to integrate a smartphone with a vehicle, although a lack of industry standardization has led auto makers and the aftermarket to experiment with different inputs.

Home automation tools have grown in sophistication and choice yet use different wireless protocols to communicate. Quirky’s Wink Hub is a connected device designed to aggregate them for control via one smartphone or tablet app.

The idea of 4K Ultra HD resolution is usually reserved for the highest-end TVs, but Apple has packed in a huge number of pixels into its latest 27-inch iMac. The quality of the display is fairly clear, but whether or not there’s enough of a viewable difference to justify spending the money depends on what you plan to use it for.

Nexus devices are, by and large, collaborations of Google’s latest version of Android, and the hardware design of a leading manufacturer, which is HTC in the case of the Nexus 9. The debut of Android 5.0 Lollipop on a device that is good enough to compete with the elite of the tablet category makes for one of the most intriguing Android devices to launch this year. Its performance and user experience only serve to justify the attention its received so far.

It’s arguable that Sony doesn’t get the credit it deserves for crafting solid, durable phones that tend to also look better than what some competitors are coming out with. The Xperia Z3 continues the trend of looking good in a way that doesn’t shake things up, but does manage to trim the edges just enough to make it a wieldier handset. Outside of that, there isn’t a great deal that’s different compared to its predecessor, making this a more iterative update to the company’s flagship.

Rogers announced a new roaming initiative called “Roam Like Home” that would allow its customers to roam freely in the United States at a cap of $5 per day. The one catch is that it is only available to those on Share Everything plans.

The MagicJack is back, and with a moniker like “GO” attached to it, there is a mobile element that expands on maintaining a home phone number that you can take with you. 

Apple’s update to iOS 8 opened up Siri’s virtual ears to listen for voice commands without touching the iPhone when plugged into a power source. That may have limited the ubiquity of the feature, but it fit in perfectly with using it hands-free while driving a vehicle. Upon testing it since the update went live on Sept. 17, it has become clear that in spite of Siri’s readiness in the car, it also needs its hand held to do what it’s told.

It’s unsettling to see the “check engine” light pop up on the dash when the car seems to be running fine. With the increased computerization of vehicles, the right smartphone accessories and apps can tap into the diagnostics to determine what’s wrong.

Amazon has generally made its Kindle eReaders and Fire tablets easy to use and understand, and the company has narrowed things down even further with the latest batch to arrive in Canada.

Whether you have a Mac desktop or laptop, take a look at the ports it offers. There are a bunch of them, and it’s not always practical to have cables sticking out of them all the time, especially if you care about portability and clutter. Belkin’s Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD uses the ultra-fast Thunderbolt port standard on Macs and some PCs to pipe in multiple connected devices all at once, making it possible to be plugged in a number of ways with only one Thunderbolt cable.

What is obvious about the design of the Samsung Galaxy Alpha is the metal in the body. Brushed aluminum sides fuse the textured back panel with the 4.7-inch screen on the front. It’s light, refined and looks good, even if overall performance can’t quite compete with Samsung’s two main flagships — the Galaxy S5 and Galaxy Note 4. This doesn’t make it entirely a case of style over substance, but it does make the device appealing just the same if you can accept the trade-offs.

It's rare to find a gadget that's more about serenity and concentration than it is about entertainment or productivity, but the Muse headband very much falls in that camp as a brainwave scanner to exercise your mind.

Apple released its latest version of Mac OS X, called Yosemite, the second version named after a place in California. It also marks a particular synergy between OS X and iOS — not a merging of the two — but rather an easier way to get them working with one another. It also marks a new look, one that flattens the visuals to fall more in line with the current graphics seen in iOS. There are plenty of new features, and a straightforward upgrade process to get to them.

Flagship smartphones are typically the best on the market, and the cost of entry is high for some, regardless of whether you go on contract or purchase outright. That may make it hard for the budget-conscious to get a high-end device, but there are some affordable options in the mid-range that won’t necessarily break the bank.

Android is a mobile operating system that takes on several different forms. On a TV, there isn’t any one defining standard, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t existing ways to use it. The MyGica ATV 1200 is a set top box running on Android 4.1 and 4.2.2 Jelly Bean with a unique interface and launcher, plus access to Google Play, XBMC and Web browsers with Flash support. Coupled with other media player support, this box should be up for consideration in your home theatre setup.

Samsung makes several different smartphones, but if there’s one that stands out above the others for the company, it’s probably the Galaxy Note 4. The latest in the line that arguably kicked off the “phablet” era, the Note 4 isn’t a huge leap forward from the previous model, yet it still benefits from some of the tinkering Samsung has done with it. The company would like the S Pen stylus to stand out more, and it might with its improved performance here, but the real gem is the big sharp 5.7-inch display.

Adobe's Elements software programs have traditionally been pared-down versions of their professional counterparts, yet the level of sophistication in features has increased to the point where the gap between them isn't as high for the average user.