The Best of CES 2012

World’s largest conference, CES, connecting the Global market with Consumer Electronics is back this January in Las Vegas Representing 2000 industry members. Consumer Electronics Show or famously known as CES is a legendary show that has started 40 years ago in June 1960 in New York. It is run by Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), a trade association promoting growth in $ 186 billion US Consumer Electronics Industry.

The most awaiting tech show was conducted on Monday January 9 which, though it was a week later than usual but it has left its impressions behind.

Covering more than 1.8 million square feet and, it has made Las Vegas the city of techies with more than 140,000 attendees fall across the globe until Thursday, where the biggest and renowned names are there to talk about their technology plans for 2012

Lytro Cameras 
(https://www.lytro.com/camera)

Lytro cameras have already made big news in 2011 as the biggest innovation in cameras seen in decades. It is a focus free camera which means that you can shoot the scene and focus later. Unlike the conventional cameras which captures single plane of light Lytro captures the entire light field which enables to focus or refocus anywhere in the picture after the photo is taken.

This is available on pre order and cost you from $399 (8GB) to $499/- (16GB). Lytro camera is selected as the best Gadget by visitors of CES 2012.

Swivl
(http://www.swivl.com/)

Swivl is a mobile accessory which helps you to video shoot yourself using a smart phone like iPhone. This may look really trivial to most of you but needs a second look since this won as the best gadget showed in CES2012 in online polls. The reason is simple. This is an elegant solution to satisfy the need to shoot yourself in a video using your smart phone which you come across very often.

It has a sensor enabled and motorized base for your iPhone (or any other mobile video) with a paired marker. You can hold the marker like a remote control or wear it and forget it. The sensor connection allows the base to “follow you” and keeps you in the camera field of view. The photo reproduced above shows the marker which is clipped into his shirt pocket. This technology combination is ideal for capturing video of yourself for vlogging, making education videos etc. Currently it works with all iOS devices and support for Android is promised.

Samsung 15” Notebook

After Apple introduced MacBook Air in 2008 and most of the laptop manufacturers tried to copy the design for their own Wintel machines. And Intel came out with Ultrabooks specification where they closely match ultra-light and high performance MacBook Air but running Windows. Samsung deviated from the specified 11”/13” screen to bring out larger 15” screen but still resembles an Ultrabook in every other aspect. It is interesting to know that Samsung wants to be ahead of Apple since it was rumored for longtime that Apple is going to introduce an Ultrathin MacBook Pro (with 15” screen of course) in 2012.

Lenovo Idea Pad Yoga

Lenovo Idea Pad Yoga is Ultrabook with a touch screen which can be converted to a Tablet using a hinge which allows the keyboard to be folded back. This is different from the Asus Transformer solution which we have discussed earlier where it uses a dock to transform the tablet to an Ultrabook.


This uses an IPS panel like iPad and the display looks great. This will be running Widows 8 unlike Asus transformer which runs Android. So this is going to be a hit from Lenovo. Read the link http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/01/lenovos-ideapad-yoga-can-do-downward-dog.ars for more details

Nokia Lumia 900

Lumia 800 is one of the popular Windows Mobile phone introduced by Nokia recently which was figured in this column earlier. Last week Nokia introduced a successor to it is 800 series, Lumia 900. It is little bigger phone compared to 800 with LTE support and a bigger 4.3 display and a Quad Core processor CPU. Mostly the rest of the specification is almost same as Lumia 800.

Sony Crystal Line LED TV

You must be knowing that the current set of LED TVs are not exactly use LED display but comes with LCD display with LED backlight. But in CES 2012 Sony showed industry's first 55-inch Full HD self-emitting display using LEDs as the light source. This is different from OLED TVs too and is called the Crystal LED Display; it uses Sony’s "unique methods" to mount ultrafine LEDs in each of the Red-Green-Blue (RGB) colors, equivalent to the number of pixels -- meaning the company uses approximately six-million LEDs to create a Full HD display

"The RGB LED light source is mounted directly on the front of the display, dramatically improving the light use efficiency," Sony said. "This results in images with strikingly higher contrast (in both light and dark environments), wider color gamut, superb video image response time, and wider viewing angles when compared to existing LCD and plasma displays, with low power consumption. Furthermore, due to the display’s structure, the “Crystal LED Display” is also ideal for large screens."

This LED TV has best contrast ratio ever (3.5 times) found in a TV with dark scenes are perfect dark. It has a viewing angle of 180 and 10 times faster video response. Hope it will hit the market by next year.

Samsung Super OLED 55” TV

Samsung showed a 55” OLED TV which is 7mm thick (!!) with very high contrast ratio and supports voice control as well as motion control for navigation similar to a Kinect controlled TV expecting from Microsoft. OLED TVs are known for very high contrast ratio, vivid colors, fast response, ultra-thin profile and eye popping picture quality. Those who have seen this TV are all very impressed to add that our conventional LED TVs do not look same again.


Favi Pico Pocket Projector 
(http://www.favientertainment.com/Pico-Pocket-Projector-p/a3-wifi.htm)

Favi Pico Pocket projector is a Wi-Fi enabled projector running Android OS and an integrated touch pad mouse. It has a Chrome browser coupled with integrated Wi-Fi enables to you connect to internet and bring up any video or ppt to project on your wall up to 100” size with a resolution of 800X 600 and a contrast ratio of 1:100. It has a built in media player too to play your videos.