CES - looking forward

Though we’re a little late off the mark (Ally’s been on holiday, lucky little...), let’s talk about CES. This January saw the annual tech conference where the big companies all unveiled their innovations for the year to come and a couple of show pieces too. I’m not going to go into massive detail; no doubt if you’re reading a tech blog you’re up to date on the issues and announcements. Instead, using our savvy, yes we do have some) we’re each going to offer up what we each think are the most exciting announcements and trends.



 

 
First up, ultrabooks. These are blurring the line between laptops and netbooks, with the portability of a small laptop, yet the power and spec of something much larger. They are also encroaching on the newly developed 'tablet' market. It seems 'slim is the new in' (that sounded better in my head). I'd imagine the trend for this year will be thinner, lighter, smaller ultrabooks (though Intel owns the name Ultrabook and sets standards for what can call itself one) all having equivalent CULV i5 chips and larger SSD until the traditional laptop becomes a thing of the past! Expect the biggest releases to be in Q2 this year with Q3 being the best time to buy (just call me Mystic Meg)

The new Samsung 55" - wow!

The other highlight of CES was in the TV department. OLED televisions have risen the bar in quality of picture and innovation (rollable screens anyone?) whilst the gimmicks of 2011 (apps and internet tvs) have been dropped in favour of pure viewing pleasure! This being said, we’re not going to dismiss SMART TVs entirely, and glassessless 3D does sound promising. It will be interesting to see how long that holds out with Google TV due to be launched and (surely) Apple will enhance what it already offers. Steve Jobs reportedly phoned ITV to try and buy their name, so that’s some indication of where Apple might be heading.

Could this be the future of mobile gaming?

The new Razer gaming tablet is massive: brand new and full HD games on a tablet sized device – running directly off it not streamed from a cloud service. While Onlive is incredible, the service isn’t quite there yet, and arises from the need for gaming on the go. This could be cut out if the tech didn’t necessitate it. The big questions are how the controllers will feel, in what format will games be offered, and what sort of battery can be expected. We won’t get to know this until the reviews come in, but the scheduled release is the coming November – I for one cannot wait! Not long now until GDC either.

As for my predictions for this year? I'd imagine that phones will get bigger screens, thinner bodies and (fingers crossed) better batteries, or at least more efficient power usage (we’re looking for companies to learn from the companion core CPU the Transformer Prime features as they way to go)! The Samsung S3 should be announced officially at the MWC (mobile world congress) in February whilst the iPhone 5 will surely be arriving by around June-ish. I've a feeling that by the end of the year mobile OS will be a two horse race between Apple and Google, with Blackberry and Windows loosing market share.

Instead of virtual reality which is old hat, we’re going to be having Augmented Reality, and pretty soon too. Glasses are already in the works to overlay images directly onto the lenses. Smart phones and tablets already offer AR, but one can hardly view the world like this. These glasses are going to have built in motion sensors, so images can be scrolled simply by moving your hands. We’ll have something that’ll look like to computers in Minority Control except the screen will travel with us at all times, displayed to our eyes personally. I'm not sure how it will look to others: just standing waving your hands in mid-air while browsing the web, bit like a tool I suspect. This is something to definitely keep the eyes on.