Team Pocket-lint takes an educated guess at what's in store
January is fast approaching and that can only mean two things. Firstly, New Year's resolutions that you'll never keep and secondly, the biggest tech show in the world - CES. Gadget fever will soon be sweeping the globe as the international techie press gathers in Las Vegas to get their mitts on all the hottest gizmos. But what can we expect to see unveiled at the show?
Here's what Team Pocket-lint thinks...
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Stuart Miles:
What will happen
Here at Pocket-lint, we already know about a lot of things that are being lauched at CES that we're not allowed to tell you about just yet. Suffice to say, they'll be plenty of exciting new gadgets on show, including a slew of tablets, not least the latest offering from Mororola. Other than that, there'll be hundreds of TVs with built-in 3D capability along with all the weird and wonderful gadgets that have no real place in your life other than in the halls of CES. Sadly, I think that the show is in danger of being slightly mediocre this year as more and more big corporations are launching their products on their own time frames,? rather than risking them getting lost among thousands of other gadgets on the CES show floor (a prime example being Apple).
What I wish would happen
As always, I want to see gadgets that work and that make my life better.
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Rik Henderson:
What will happen
For good or bad, 3D will yet again be a major talking point of a consumer electronics show with many of the larger manufacturers (and some of the small ones) implementing the technology into a majority of their new television ranges – rather than just their high-end offerings like in 2010. We may see further proof of concept glasses-free, autostereoscopic screens, but they’ll still be far from consumer-friendly.
In addition, one or two of the big TV manufacturers will join LG with larger screen-sized OLED panels, although the economic climate is still not healthy enough for them to become viable for mass production.
What I wish would happen
It is interesting that games are being reintroduced to the CES floorspace for the first time in many years, with Nintendo exhibiting and a thousand and one apps vying for the attention of visitors. However, it’d be great if there was a far greater presence still, with all the hot new games titles for 2011 being shown before E3 rolls along.
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Dan Sung:
What will happen
Tablets. It's all going to be about the tablets. There'll be more tablets on offer than in an old people's home. There'll also largely be junk. That said, three or four of them will be "iPad killers" and, of those, perhaps 50 per cent will deliver by which time Apple will has launched the iPad 2. Some manufacturers might get really creative and stir in last year's trend to make a 3D tablet. There'll also be a smattering of colour eBook readers using Qualcomm's Mirasol technology at which point the line between them an tablets is going to get awfully blurry.There's bound to be another crack at glassesless 3D with a TV turning up with more autostereoscopic sweet spots than ever before - up to 40 perhaps. I don't think anyone will bother with the world's thinnest or largest TV any more. Instead that race is going to move to computers where we start hearing about the world's most powerful laptop. Beyond that lot, we'll see plenty of iPad accessories as well as 30-pin dock audio products getting much more high end and stylish.
What I wish would happen
I'd like to see a lot more OLED TVs to the point where they actually look like they're going to be affordable one day and, yes, tablets will be welcome but particularly from HTC and Palm provided that they work with Android and webOS 2.0 software respectively. More connected cameras and camcorders would go down nicely too. Ultimately, we want to shoot stills and footage and not have to worry about transferring them by hand. Further out of left field, some really quite crackpot inventions would go down well - self-untangling cables, headphone buds that mould to whatever ear canals they're placed in and some top notch AR contact lenses would be fantastic but perhaps that's more the stuff of CES 2021.
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Chris Hall:
What will happen
I think we'll continue to see a lot of movement in the tablet space, as the world tries to come up with something that delivers the experience of Apple's iPad. I think there will be a lot of posturing, a lot of marketing spin and a lot of criticism aimed at the iPad's failings. I think there will be a lot of talk of content, but no one who really throws their weight behind delivering it simply and easily.
I think we'll see more people jumping on the 3D bandwagon, I think we'll see more 3D capture devices and more innovative and approachable ways of consuming 3D content. I'm not certain that everyone is going to want so many avenues to 3D whilst they are still getting to grips with plain old HD.
What I wish would happen
I wish for the pieces would fall into the puzzle. I want autofocus, external mic sockets, microSD card slots, I want IPS displays, I want 3D glasses to be more comfortable, I want 100% viewfinders, I want people to think about the design of the underside of their device, I want it to support all video formats, I want less downtime, easier updates, and realistic launch prices.
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Paul Lamkin:
What will happen
I think that it will be dominated by Android tablets. And not Froyo (or worse, even earlier versions) botched onto the tablet form, but fully fledged Android tablets, boasting Honeycomb and running just as good old Uncle Goog intended. Obviously, there will be the Toshiba effort that we've already had a sneaky peak at, but I'd expect to see the likes of HTC, Acer and LG getting involved too.
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What I wish would happen
I wish that Apple would either attend CES or keep quiet during it. You can almost guarantee that Jobs and the gang will have something up their sleeves for the week the extravaganza is on. The Mac App Store launch is already scheduled for 6 January and I wouldn't be surprised to see more announcements coming out of Infinite Loop.
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Ben Crompton:
What will happen
CES is clearly going to see a whole lot of tablets being launched, as well as Internet and 3D-enabled TVs. There should also be plenty of motion-control gaming action, which will also highlight the growing trend for DLC in order to bolster the physical copy.
What I wish would happen
I also hope to see plenty of robots.
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Libby Plummer:
What will happen
We're expecting to see more tablets than the local chemists, with HTC, RIM, Motorola and LG all rumoured to be launching new devices. Likewise, there are also bound to be plenty of new e-readers making their debut including some with colour displays. There should also be lots of 3D TV action to keep us on our toes and it wouldn't be a great suprise if one of the big boys of AV comes up with a new version of the biggest plasma panel in the world. Again. We also expect to see more motion-controlled tech than you can shake a, er, motion controller at.
What I wish would happen
I would've liked to have seen the new Google TVs from the likes of Toshiba, LG and Sharp but it seems that the search engine giant has postponed showing off its new service until the software has been refined. And I'd like to see some new ideas in terms of 3D glasses. A lot of the models that we've previously seen are pretty uncomfortable so it would be good to see some of the brands looking at this a little more closely and maybe even offering a choice of designs. It would also be handy to get a sneaky glimpse at the Sony Ericsson PlayStation phone before it's official unveiling at Mobile World Congress in February.
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Predictions for CES 2011 originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 22 Dec 2010 17:46:00 +0000
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