Continuing with our brain dump from the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, we take a visit over to the Las Vegas Convention Center. CES occupies pretty well the entirety of the Las Vegas strip for almost a week, but the meat and potatoes of the trade show takes place at the convention center. There, you’ll find the biggest booths from companies like Microsoft, Samsung, and LG, among countless other big names like those from the gaming community.
While perusing through the many halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Futurelooks crew came across some rather interesting products. Here are some of the highlights from our trip.
iLuv Decides to Get All Wet and Bothered
There are a lot of premium headphones available on the market today, but many of them are designed for everyday use and not for when you’re going to go swimming or hit an overly sweaty session at the gym. The new i303 waterproof headphones from iLuv counter this way of thought, because it is said to be quite waterproof and sweatproof. Go ahead and hit the treadmill, because your sweat will just cascade away.
The iLuv i303 features a lightweight design that pushes the sound inside your ear while still offering the stability and security of an ear-clip design. The in-line volume control will obviously come in very handy as well and the high-performance speakers will keep your head bouncing to everything from Lil Jon to John Mayer. The fashion-conscious will enjoy that it comes in a range of colors as well.
Complete Home Audio Solution Too
Also from iLuv is the i9500 Hi-Fi audio system. If you’re looking to have a one-stop shop for all of your music collection, this intense beast will probably serve your pretty well. It’s got four vertical bays to handle your CDs, an SD card slot for digital tunes, a USB port for flash drives, and a dock on top to handle your iPhone or iPod. That’s a lot of connectivity folks.
The iLuv i9500 Hi-Fi Audio System rocks two stereo speakers and a pounding subwoofer, as well as a digital clock display (with sleep function) and a Time Sync function that automatically updates the aforementioned clock to your iPhone or iPod. If you’re looking for serious tunes, this thing would be sick. Look for it to hit shelves in May.
Mobinnova Ice Points Toward Xperia X2
Some people may say that Windows Mobile is falling behind in the smartphone race, getting overshadowed by the iPhone, Google Android, and the recently revealed Palm Pre. Don’t tell that to the people at Mobinnova, because they’ve got one of the best looking WinMo phones on the market today, even if you’ve never heard of it. The Mobinnova ICE is the company’s flagship phone and it features a 3-inch touch sensitive display. Haptic feedback comes by way of what they call mobiFeel and you’ll be using the touchscreen for just about everything: there’s no physical keypad here, just like the iPhone and HTC Touch Diamond.
Interestingly, there is a second touchscreen display located where the five-way navigator would normally be. Dubbed the mobiShift touch panel, this morphs according to your current tasks and needs. Rounding out the specs are GPS, 3 megapixel autofocus camera, HSDPA/HSUPA, WiFi, microSD slot, and TV-out. On a side note, the current Sony Xperia X1 is built by HTC, but there is word that its successor (the Xperia X2) is being sourced to Mobinnova instead. Keep an eye out for that.
Motorola QA30 Slides Out for Fun
Oh, didn’t you know? Motorola has a little more up its sleeve than just the latest version of the RAZR. If you go over to the smartphone and messaging side of things, you’ll find that old Moto is actually doing a couple of nifty things.
The Motorola “Hint” QA30 is one such example. It’s not a smartphone, but it’s got a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. This makes it a perfect handset for people who send a lot of emails and type up a lot of text messages, because it’s a little more intuitive to do QWERTY than it is to use a touchscreen or T9.
Available through US Cellular and Alltel Wireless in the United States, the super compact Motorola QA30 gets high-speed EVDO, a 2 megapixel camera with video, MP3 player, stereo Bluetooth, and threaded text messaging. Why can’t they make more phones like this on the GSM side of things? QWERTY “dumbphones” are great.
Robotic Einstein Totally Creeps Me Out
While quickly strolling my way through the LVCC, my eyes couldn’t help but to be drawn to this crazy contraption. I was on my way to another appointment, so I didn’t get nearly as much information as I normally would try to get, but this animatronic Albert Einstein totally creeped me out. Just check out the video below.
It’s a robotic version of the world famous physicist and his entire face can move. He talks (through a speaker), his eyes move from side to side, and the rest of the muscles on his face move around to express emotion. From the little bit of speech that I heard, he can even play chess. There was also a smaller version (pictured at the beginning of this article), but he wasn’t animated at the time.
Ohmetric Digital Lifestyle Bags
I wouldn’t say that I travel a lot, but I do bring my laptop with me just about everywhere I go. Such is the nature of being a freelance writer, I suppose, because I can work anywhere that I have an Internet connection. My current laptop bag is fine, I suppose, but it could always be more useful.
Ohmetric is taking a creative spin on the laptop accessory market by creating a series of bags that serve more than one purpose. Their 3-in-1 Workstations combine a larger bag, a hardcase, and a travel bag into one convenient package.
Available in Backpack, Shoulder Case, and Briefcase forms, these bags give you a mobile platform for laptop use on the go, while still offering other pockets and places to store the rest of your stuff. If Ohmetric made a bag that adhered to the TSA standards, they could have a huge winner.
SmartParts Goes Big and Small in Picture Frames
Let’s start with big…
SmartParts was showing off this huge 32 inch LCD picture frame. Nope, it doesn’t work as a monitor, and no you can’t use it as a TV, but it is WiFi enabled and works with Microsoft’s new Live Frame It service. It also comes with 256MB of memory onboard, compact flash and SDHC card slots, a USB port for mass storage expansion and an RF remote vs. an IR one so you can operate it around the corner. As nice as the picture is, at $999, I have a hard time spending that on something that only shows me pictures. Maybe if you’re bawlin’ and have enough regular monitors and TVs, you could give this a try.
The company also showed off a series of smaller frames that you can take with you. From ones that seem well suited to the small confines of your cubicle to ones that would be great for your locker at work, it seems that SmartParts is pushing hard into this space. We’ll definitely be looking forward to putting their products through the grind.
What Was Seagate Up To?
It was interesting to see Seagate branching out into a couple of different product areas. Both of which are related to your TV set…
First up was this little box called the FreeAgent Theater. This device is for those poor souls that don’t have a Media Center PC or a game system, but still want to view their pictures, videos and music on their HDTV. The device is outfitted with one of Seagate’s portable hard drives and does a pretty good job with the material on the screen. You can even hot swap the drive with another one of Segate’s FreeAgent Go portable drives. I can’t recall the price, but I remember remarking that you were basically buying the drive so it was pretty inexpensive. The only weird thing was that it only contained component video and no HDMI. Expect it to hit the shelves sometime in February.
One thing that might be interesting to those with storage challenged PVR’s is the Seagate Showcase external hard drive. This device was made specifically to work with PVRs provided by your service provider. Anyone that has ever failed at adding external storage to augment their piddly PVR drive will love this. The devices is built well and comes with it’s own active cooling system while the drive inside is optimized for quiet. ETA was not available.
Too Many Gadgets, Too Little Time
The Las Vegas Convention Center was bustling with geeks, nerds, and dweebs as they congregated toward the most incredible technology available on the planet today. We got to see the latest chips from Intel, the emerging powerhouse of Windows 7, and massive HDTVs that even entered the third dimension. During CES week, the LVCC is clearly the place to be. Not that you should ignore the Sands Convention Center, but the LVCC is just so much bigger and has so much more to offer. Like animatronic Albert Einstein figures. *Shudder*
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Photo Gallery – CES 2009 – It Came From the Las Vegas Convention Center!
