As you all know, the International
CES is the world's largest consumer technology tradeshow.
Here's a round up of all the top stories. Feel free to add any that I may have missed.
Qualcomm's Dual-Core 1.5GHz Snapdragon: Smartphones Are About to Go Hyperspeed
Qualcomm's current 1GHz Snapdragon is the muscle that makes the
Nexus One so fantastically speedy, but Qualcomm isn't sitting on their laurels—they just announced two new chips that are going to power the next great mobile devices.
First up is the single-core Snapdragon 8X50A, a 45nm chip that's essentially the next version of the 1GHz chip in the Nexus One. It's clocked at 1.3GHz. But what we're really excited about is the dual-core 8X72, which uses two Scorpion cores to achieve 1.5GHz. Luis Pineda, Senior VP at Qualcomm, assures that the 8X72 is suitable for smartphones (not just smartbooks or netbooks) and can handle 1080p video. Both the 8X50A and 8X72 will be out this year, going head to head with the
Tegra 2. [
Hexus via
Slashgear]
http://gizmodo.com/5...o-go-hyperspeed
E-Ink Is Dead, Pixel Qi's Amazing Transflective LCD Just Killed It
Pixel Qi's
magic transforming displays seemed too good to be true: One screen that's both a bright, full color LCD and a reflective, E-Ink quality display for reading in light. It is pretty damn incredible.
It's not hard to see the overall trend with gadgets: They're being reduced almost entirely to the display. Which is why, in this near-future vision of a single tablet thing that does everything—computer, video screen, reader—what Pixel Qi's doing simply
makes sense. If you're carrying something that's basically just a screen, and expect it to do lots of different things, a screen that adapts to precisely what you're doing is how it has to be.
http://gizmodo.com/5...-just-killed-it
Hands-on: Dell Mini 3

Dell is bringing
their Android cellphone to the US and calling it the
Mini 3. I got to grope it for a few moments amongst other media-folk.
In the hand, it doesn't feel nearly as solid as the Nexus One—it's more like a hollow-feeling plastic than most of the smartphones on the market.
Dell, of course, has their own UI for Android. We didn't get to see much of it, other than the main icon screen you'll note in our lead shot. I just don't know why anyone would want the Mini 3. Nothing about the hardware immediately grabbed me like the Nexus One did, and it's stuck on AT&T.
http://gizmodo.com/5...+on-dell-mini-3
First Hands-On and Video: Dell Mini 5 Android Slate
Yesterday, we saw
Dell's Slate concept for the first time. Today, we got to actually play with it. And it's called the Mini 5.
Specs that we know: custom Android, SIM (it makes calls), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth. And the 5-inch screen supports full multitouch.
In your hand, it's very light and comfortable to use. The screen is responsive, and Dell's icon interface makes for intuitive presentation of Android.
It feels a bit more like plastic than, say, the iPod touch. But it was perfectly solid from what we could tell. Making a phone call turns the Mini 5 into a gigantic phone, almost like a handset out of a Carrot Top routine, but Dell expects most consumers will opt to use a headset.
The unexpectedly awesome feature? The 5MP camera. The
Dell Mini 5 has a 5-inch screen, and your subject fills the
entire frame. It's an oddly satisfying implementation of a camera, in a super sizing kind of way.
My model wasn't connected to the web, so I didn't get to test the browser. And my hands-on time was more than limited (and frankly, a bit frantic), so I can't really speak sincerely on much else.
But let me say this: I like the Mini 5. And I dare say that Dell's software—their version of Android onboard—may be equally or more impressive than the hardware itself.
http://gizmodo.com/5...5-android-slate
Hands On With Compal's Tegra 2 Android Tablet
No major companies are
quite ready to bring a proper Android tablet to market, but they're edging closer. When they do, they could do worse than turn out something like this 7-inch, Tegra 2 design from Compal.
Under the hood is Nvidia's newest Tegra, which guarantees snappy interface, video and graphics performance
in theory. In practice, at least on this early device which can't leverage the new graphics acceleration in Android 2.1, menu transitions are still a little slow, browser scrolling isn't instant, and the responsiveness of the touch keyboard poor enough to make typing a genuine pain.
The Archos 5 Android tablet, had its issues, from lack of 3G support to inability to play Flash content, both of which have been remedied here—this Compal has a SIM tray as well as Flash 10.1 support. A shipped product would be faster than the Archos, and the extra two inches of screen are just enough to make this feel like a
tablet, not an oversized smartphone. And to be honest, I could get into this.
It's a sofa tablet, a toilet tablet, a Skype tablet, whatever—there's a market for this, at the right price. The only serious issue now is that typing on the onscreen keyboard is almost impossible on a 7-inch screen, unless your thumbs are freakishly long. I have no idea how Google—or Apple, for that matter—could solve this problem. But someone might! And that would be great.
http://gizmodo.com/5...-android-tablet
Lenovo Skylight Hands On: The Frisbee Smartbook
The Skylight is part netbook, part smartphone, and I'm pretty sure I could throw it 50 yards. The real question is if that makes it a game-changer or a novelty act.
The look and feel are certainly novel, if not novelty. The Skylight has an ultrathin clamshell design and weighs less than two pounds—it feels like a frisbee in your hand. It's a sturdy build, though, and seems like it could handle being jostled around in your bag.
When you open the Skylight, you're greeted by a screen of six "web gadgets" (apps, basically), that give you immediate access to services like photos, Firefox, YouTube, Gmail, etc. You can scroll through these, but there's also a row of minimized web gadget icons at the bottom of the screen for easy, instant navigation.
Once you select the app you want to work in, it maximizes to two-thirds of the screen, keeping two other gadgets open to its right. The 10.1-inch hi-def display is more crisp and clear than most netbooks, and 720p video looks great. Unfortunately, the model we saw was running off of 3G, which made the playback hiccupy and the file slow to load.
The Skylight also comes equipped with a full island-style keyboard, which is a relief. Typing was smooth, and the trackpad was plenty big. Although it's not multitouch, it does support two-finger scrolling.
The Skylight has its own 8GB memory kernel to keep things running, and a 4GB USB stick (upgradeable up to 16GB) on which you can store your content. The way they've integrated the stick is clever and unassuming; it sits flat above the keyboad, and can be easily lifted up and removed from the rest of the unit.
There's not much in the way of ports, but the Skylight does have HDMI-out, which is great if you plan on storing movies on it. The Snapdragon processor is said to get 8 hours of battery life, but even if it's half of that with HD playback (which is often the differential between listed battery life and actual), that's more than enough to watch a movie or two on a long flight.
So what's the hitch? Well, at the moment there are only a limited number of Skylight apps available to you, and most of those don't gain anything by being on your smartbook instead of a smartphone or netbook. Lenovo's going to open up the SDK soon, but until developers get a crack at maximizing the Skylight's functionality, it won't have much. It'll have built-in Wi-Fi, but it also will rely on AT&T's 3G network, which even in our demonstration wasn't up to the challenge of streaming the type of hi-def video you're going to want to.
http://gizmodo.com/5...isbee-smartbook
Haier's Completely Wireless TV Hands On: No Cables For Video...or Power
Wireless power has gone from lab prototype to working product in a little over 18 months, and Haier stuck MIT's WiTricity into a TV along with WHDI wireless video for complete wirelessness. Complete. Wireless. Ness.
Sure, there's a big power unit on the wall, radiating (totally harmless) RF into the back of the TV, which has a coil inside to receive the juice. It only delivers full strength if it's parallel, so you have to plan ahead and somehow setup the TV in front of the wall that has the power module. Because of all the hocus pocus, the TV itself is a chunkster, and that power transmitter is no slim jim either. Still, the idea is a good one, and the promise—as both MIT and Intel work their asses off getting wireless power up to snuff—is real.
WHDI is a lot further along in development.
Wireless HDMI isn't exactly household, but the tech is now supported by basically
all of the biggest CE companies except Panasonic. I'm not going to buy this Haier TV—it might not even be for sale this year—but it's a concrete sign of what's to come.
http://gizmodo.com/5...-video-or-power
New Polaroid PIC-1000 Models Shown Off, And Good News—They'll Work With 1000 Instant Film
Ask any Polaroid fan about their mood swings in the past 12 months, and I bet it'd go something like this: oh no, Polaroid is doomed. Oh yay, it got bought. Oh no, that fell through. And so on. Thankfully all looks good again—except for the fact that Lady Gaga has been hired as their creative director. They've even got a brand new product being shown off at CES, the PIC-1000. It'll come in either metallic plastic, or a '70s wooden throw-back, and while pricing and availability hasn't been announced, it's enough to get my heart fluttering again.
The new model has a self-timer, flash and even red-eye reduction. And, thanks to the Impossible Project, it'll work with Polaroid 1000
instant film. Gotta love them apples.
http://gizmodo.com/5...00-instant-film
Intel's Double-HD MultiTouch Wall Is Incredible

Here's a sight to behold: two gigantic, 2x HD screens in the Intel booth showing hundreds of realtime web stories in undulating 3D (see vid in
here).
The entire setup is apparently powered by a single i7 processor, and it's easy to see how you could shrink an application like this down for use on oh, say, a tablet of some sort. Is it an efficient way to sort through information? No, no it is not. But it sure is engaging, and that's gotta count for something.
http://gizmodo.com/5...l-is-incredible