CES 2011: What’s Hot And What’s Not!!!

Consumer Electronic Show 2011

Put a large number of gadgets, an equal number of reporters and some really tech-hungry geeks in one place and this is what you get: Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2011. This year CES was held in Las Vegas Convention Centre. The event itself was quite the usual; lots of high tech cool stuff to be unveiled and lots of people eagerly waiting for it to start. What you witness at CES is equivalent to organized chaos, and within this chaos, people find the things that they love, ogle at them, compare them, and then leave with open mouths and gaping eyes, arguing with their friends which gadget was the coolest, which innovation deserved the most praise.

This year, in Las Vegas, the CES was a mixture of bitter-sweet feelings for all the attendees; journalists, tech lovers, professional analysts. There were things that they loved and hated; Form a disappointing performance of one of the most hype-creating gadgets to the PC that served ice cold beer (Yes! There was one).

After a few days of pushy crowds and noisy show floors, here are some of the highlights of the show: some were the biggest falls and some were the biggest hits.

This year’s event came with a complete change of mode-of-data-transfer, and what a way to ditch those slow CDs. A large number of the digital press kits used by the organizers and brands were in the form of USBs and some of the companies had their data travelers made in the form of their products like Olympus’s looked like a tiny DLSR and Casio’s looked like their recently announced Tryx camera. Apart from this the celebrities also made appearances in one form or another; Lady Gaga with her poloroid glasses, 50 Cent’s new really cool headphones and, parents beware for this is their worst nightmare, T-Pain’s new microphone that makes a person’s voice just like him .I guess the days when CES looked more like a tech show and less like the Grammys.

Let me ask you guys one question. Where did all the cool robotic innovations that we usually see at CES go?? I mean, it is the biggest technology and an excellent platform for someone to show the world a few cool robotic innovations. The robotics were totally missing from this year’s CES. Apart from the few weird looking window-washing robots and a Pleo Dino Bot that looked out of place. Also, what was up the cyborg suited guys selling the custom skins for gaming consoles?? I do hope for mankind’s sake that this will not turn into reality where our robotic buddies would be selling skins for our devices.

Tablets; what a disappointment they turned out to be. A large number of the “plastic slates” were to be seen at the show however few stood out. After a day of watching these devices, it can be said that the iPad will not be feeling its position of the first really ‘good’ tablet threatened by much. There will not be a mrket for such the tablets shown at the CES. Of a few that did stood out, one of them that caught my attention was Motorola’s Xoom. With its 10.1 inch screen, a Verizon LTE 4G wireless, an SD card slot, a USB port and 32GB HardDisk storage space, I do feel that the Xoom has what it takes to challenge iPad. in addition to Motorola’s Xoom, another tablet that a lot of people’s attention was RIM’s Playbook Tablet. Believe me people, the looks of the QNX operating system’s user interface was really impressive. Sprints 4G Playbook tablet also looked good with its streaming Playbook playback and WiMax radio. He tablet will be available for sale in this summer.
Before this year’s CES had commenced, there was some strong hype building around Android 3.0 or “Honeycomb”, an Operating System designed for Android tablets. However, these tablets were nowhere to be seen. Most of the tablet makers displayed tablets running on older versions of the OS and an in-depth analysis of these tablets would have been a complete waste of time.

The most encouraging response at the CES was perhaps shown mobile phones. A lot of android phones were at the show, and do they have some big gaming potential, or what? Well, LGs Optimus 2X and its gorgeous display is perfect and playing games like Fruit Ninjas was actually fun. However, LG Optimus Black was actually quite disappointing. With its ultra thin 9.2 mm thickness, the phone feels quite vulnerable and it feels as it would break in ones hand. The phones new NOVA screen, which was supposed to makes the black parts more dark and the whites more light, was not good at all as some images looked hazy and distorted.

Sony Ericsson came back with a bang! The Xperia X10, an outdated cell phone was shown at the CES, nobody knew that the company would show one of the coolest smart phones; the Xperia Arc. With the latest version of the Android OS, the ultrathin screen and HDMI, the phone will be an immediate hit. Apart from this Sony Ericsson, a small number of phones incorporated the Android 2.3 aka “Gingerbread”, but a large portion of the Androids did not contain the new operating system, which was quite disappointing. During the last few years, attendees were not allowed to touch the gadgets on display. However, at CES in Las Vegas this year, touching the phones was allowed and the people went cell-phone-touch crazy and everyone went home happy.

Who said that green tech is not practical? Whoever said that had better eat their words. The new Eton Soulra XL is boom boxes in the form of shoulder bag. They run 4 hours on a wall charge and with a classy solar panel unhooked at the back, the gadget can go twice that long.

If you are into spy stuff or if you are really serious about your house’ security, then you have got to love TP Link’s Wireless Cam/ Till Surveillance Camera. The device provides remote control service that we usually see only in the movies. You can pan, zoom, tilt the lens and preset viewing angles. Cool, huh?

At the CES, there were a fair number of TVs connected by the web. But here is the funny part; the TVs had no Wi-Fi. The first Wi-Fi enabled PCs came in 1999 and the companies are still stuck with cable connectivity for TVs.

With Intel’s new WiDi 2, one can stream a 1080p video directly from ones PC (with an Intel chip, of course) to a HDTV with a WiDi adaptor connected to an input. This is good compensation for buying Intel notebooks with higher price for you can then have fun by watching your videos on your HDTV.

So, this CES 2011 was full of ups and downs, with more downs than ups, I think. From the absence of good tablets and Android 2.3 phones to the cool Xoom Tablet and robotics failure at the show and celebrities trying to show off their gadgets, I think the that the standards fallen. But hey, that’s just me and maybe I am wrong.

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Tags: ces, consumer electronics, consumer electronics show, consumer electronics show 2011, gadget, sony ericsson, Tablet, technology