Until seeing the Xperia Arc up close, I’ d never been excited about a Sony Ericsson phone. (I’d describe my mood about the rumored Playstation Phone as cautiously optimistic.)
To my surprise, the Xperia Arc was impressive in both hardware and software. It’s as if Sony took the missteps of the Xperia X10 — outdated Android, unremarkable specs — and learned.
For some reason, I have a silly infatuation with projector phones, even though no phone makers have attempted to put one into a modern smartphone handset.
At a pre-CES event Wednesday, pico projector maker Microvision was hoping to plant the idea in manufacturers’ heads. They’ve cobbled together a prototype Android “tablet” — a phone, really, minus the phone guts — with a laser projector. The device is unlikely to be released as it appeared at the show, but it served its purpose of throwing videos and photos onto a wall in a well-lit room.
The projector phone is a bit chunky, measuring 0.67 inches thick, and when I picked it up, it was warm to the touch. When the projector is running, the device lasts for about two hours.
Bulk and power consumption aside, Microvision’s biggest hurdle is price. The company won’t say how much it expects to charge manufacturers for its embedded projectors, but Microvision’s standalone ShowWX projector costs $400 at retail. My guess is that we’re still a couple years away from seeing laser projection as a feature in any widely-available smartphones. I wonder if Android will still be the reference device du jour then.
Samsung's TX100 Slider PC
With so many mobile PCs hitting the market, hardware makers are doing all they can to differentiate their products, a trend particularly evident right now among tablets vying to unseat Apple’s iPad. Samsung is differentiating to the hilt with two Windows 7 mobile PCs unveiled on the eve of CES: a new “slider” tablet PC, and a slimline ultraportable notebook.
Samsung previewed both the TX100 — also referred to as the Slider PC 7–and the Notebook PC 9 at a news conference during CES Press Day on Wednesday in Las Vegas, amid a flurry of Samsung TV announcements.
Wednesday is Press Day here at CES, a day when major consumer electronics players like LG, Netgear and Intel traditionally make big announcements in advance of the full show that starts tomorrow. If there’s an underlying message here in Las Vegas so far, it’s that companies are getting the word that consumers want to view more content–whether Hollywood- or user-generated–from and over the Internet, on devices ranging from TVs to PCs and smartphones.
In delivering a roadmap of LG’s TV plans for 2011 today, Tim Alessi, LG’s director of new product development for home electronics, listed “more content to watch” – together with connectivity to home networks and easier-to-use 3D TV – as the three key linchpins for the year ahead.
Of all the CES 2010 tablets that turned to vapor, Lenovo’s IdeaPad U1 Hybrid was my favorite. So I was delighted to see the dual-processor, dual-OS tablet-laptop back at CES 2011 on Tuesday, in the same pre-show event at which it debuted last year.
Lenovo likes to say that the U1 has “two brains.” Underneath the keyboard, there’s an Intel ultra-low voltage processor powering Windows 7. The screen is actually a removable 10-inch tablet (known as the “LePad” on its own) with an ARM-based Snapdragon processor that switches to a customized version of Android when removed from the base. While the tablet is removed, you can still use Windows by plugging the base into an external monitor.
Microsoft has released a teaser video for Steve Ballmer’s CES keynote tomorrow that it presumably hopes will go viral–and hey, I just helped it do so!
Speaking of teasing, here’s a little shameless self-promotion for our coverage tomorrow…
My TIME.com Technologizer column for this week is a CES preview of sorts: I explain why it’s dangerous to accept the show’s big news at face value until products have reached stores and consumers have had the chance to give them a yay or nay. And then I list a few products and categories which I’ll be on the lookout for.
I head to the show on Tuesday afternoon–the show floor doesn’t open until Thursday, but stay tuned for news as I encounter it throughout the week…
For tech journalists, there’s no such thing as a new year’s holiday. We’re all too busy getting ready for next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The show floor doesn’t open until Thursday, but the festivities get rolling on Tuesday–and on Wednesday evening, Steve Ballmer will give Microsoft’s traditional keynote address. At last year’s event, he announced iPad-esque “Slate PCs” that went pretty much nowhere; this year, he’s expected to talk about another iteration of the concept and maybe even provide an early look at Windows 8.
I’ll be covering the show all week, and will liveblog the Ballmer keynote as it happens. You can join me at www.technologizer.com/ces2011–and if you head there right now, you can even sign up to get a reminder by e-mail.
Normally the electronics industry is about as mum about what they’ve been up to as Lindsay Lohan on a Saturday night, but this year seems very top secret. We’ve already received 6 requests for non-disclosed products to be part of CES’s Last Gadget Standing. That means that we won’t be able to tell you anything about them until the bitter end… the day that CES opens. What to do? What to do? All I can say is … stay tuned from some very different kinds of gadget beasts at the show this year. Maybe they’ve all taken a class in Apple Mystique 101?
For ten years we’ve been firm in the belief that the consumer always knows best. Trends come and go, but good products stand the test of time. And since consumers vote with their pocketbooks, they know what it takes to make a product succeed.
In 2011, for the tenth time we’ll gather at International CES in Las Vegas to present ten finalists who have the right stuff.
How do we get from here to there? It’s all happening at LastGadgetStanding.com. We’re inviting the best of the best tech experts to join us for this gala year. Harry McCracken of Technologizer will be cohosting the events. His insights and good taste will set a new bar.
