Ten stars of CES 2013: Who made the biggest splash? As the 2013 Consumer Electronics Shows (CES) wraps up in Las Vegas, we’re left to ponder whether it as was a good show this time round. In 2012, IT vendors, buoyed by Intel encouragement and marketing money, were keen to show off their first Ultrabooks. A year on, and the chip giant’s skinny laptop brand has largely failed to …
2013 marks 20 years of mobile ownership for me. In that time I've had over a dozen devices from Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, HTC and Apple, and yet I've *never* had to replace a mobile phone battery, despite having owned some phones for well over the realistic nominal phone lifespan of two years.
I'm amazed that people are still hung up on the fact that batteries need to be user-replaceable.
Sure, failure etc. (thanksfully rare) will necessitate a service call, but to me the convenience, packaging and cost advantages hugely outweigh this.
Apple and their iPhones have their faults, but chief among the things they're got right is proving the fact that factory-sealed batteries are not an impediment to adoption by most users. Before the iPhone there were few if any phones that didn't have replaceable batteries. It was just one of those accepted norms that were blown away.
Yes, there will be some users that demand flexibility (and I'm sure people will pipe up to say they absolutely definitely cannot live without n batteries to run their always-on,mission-critical cellular lifestyle), but much like rugged or dual-SIM devices, time has proved these are not really concerns that the majority share.
I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of people only take the battery out when they get the phone to install the SIM, or to do a hard reset if advised by mobile forum/customer service rep, not mentioning any names... /cough/Blackberry/cough/
The rise of practically onmipresent chargers (thanks to standardisation of connectors to two types- Micro USB and Apple) means that judidious topping up at home, work and in the car is all that is required for most people.
Flame away, desperately important multi-battery types :)
Ever thought of a portable USB charger - they come in various sizes and can charge the device without having to power it off (better) and be used for more than that device. You also usually just charge them with micro-USB whereas an external battery usually needs to be put back on the phone to charge it (unless you spend even more on a charging dock).
@ribosome
Wasteful it may be, but the subsidy market that has developed in the UK and elsewhere tends to drive people to a biannual upgrade, and the pace of technological change in such a mature market drives this as devices from even three years ago can start to feel very limiting.
Hence, very few keep phones for more than about 2 years.
We may not like it but there's little that will affect this result of marketing/technology in the short to medium term.
Two batteries and a wall charger has long been my preference with modern smartphones. Just replace the battery when getting low on juice - no need to remember to fish the phone from the wash bin to charge or find the dammed lead which you were sure was in the bedroom, but is now nowhere to be found.
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But you can get an external USB battery pack that has four advantages.
1. You don't need to power down the phone.
2. It is a lot safer than carrying around a spare battery. If you are stupid enough to put a mobile battery in your pocket and a coin shorts it out then you'll have a very warm leg (probably with chunks of battery shrapnel).
3. It can charge multiple devices, not just your phone. You buy one unit and you can carry on using it when you upgrade phones.
4. It can be recharged using your computer at home/work in parallel with your phone.
But of course, you've not thought about this.
Dual SIM isn't important? I'll just go tell the billions of people in Africa, India and other similar locations that they don't need their 2 and 3 SIM phones.
Just because you don't need a replaceable battery or dual SIM phone doesn't mean the rest of the world doesn't either.
@Irongut
I'm aware of the need for multi-SIM devices elsewhere, but we're talking high-end 1st world smartphones here, not low-end emerging market devices.
I'll happily admit that this market demands multi-SIM capability, but that's not really relevant to this device or to our market. How many multi-SIM devices are sold in the UK each year? <10,000?
Horses for courses.
I come from south armagh, which due to it's proximity to the border means i pick up southern irish mobile networks as often as not (Telcos don't bother with a mast for a tiny town when most of the signal will be covering another country)
Most people in my town (that actually need their phone more than casually) will either have 2 handsets or a dual-sim
I've once had to replace a battery on a 5 or 6-year old Nokia 3310. Other than that I have had a variety of Samsung, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, HTC, and some french brand I can't recall. Most of these continue to work after I've stopped using them, and in all cases the batteries are still good (if with reduced capacity). The S-E that I still use as a secondary phone, I've had for about 10 years and it's still fine on it's original battery.
So largely I agree with Lunatik, for most phone owners, changing the battery will never be required in normal circumstances (ie the battery isn't itself faulty), and while a swappable battery is a 'good-to-have' feature, it will rank fairly low on the priorities of the 99%.
Re chargers, I thought the EU was mandating the micro-usb charger, maybe it was only a recommendation (that Apple ignored), or it hasn't come into force yet? (and inany case, Apple would probably prefer to package a uUSB-to-Apple converter for free in phones sold in the EU rather than change the whole design)
I used to buy spare batteries when they were removable but typically never / very rarely used them - mostly they would sit in my desk at work. Since everything like this charged off USB I have carried a small battery pack with a USB port and recharged on the go. It's far better that replacing the battery - you don't have to power the device off for a start and it can recharge multiple devices.
"despite having owned some phones for well over the realistic nominal phone lifespan of two years."
2 years realistic? That's not a realistic lifespan for a phone. It's how often the telco what you to renew your contract (3 in Canada) and how often Apple want you to buy a new phone. I've only ever had one phone less then three years and that was because it was a steaming pile of crap the day my boss bought it.
I've had 5 cell phones starting with an original Motorola flip phone. I have replaced the battery in 3 of them.
I've been tempted to buy a Nexus 4 but don't like the idea that I can't replace the battery and that it will likely not run for a full day if I use it as more then a phone (I have a Nexus 7 for that). The battery on my current dumb phone (a Razr V3 on it's 2nd battery) is starting to go, only 3 days on a charge now. Don't know if I'll still be able to find a new battery for it.
I;m not sure why people are so concerned about removable batteries - just because it is not removable does not mean it is not replaceable when ultimately it fails but my iPhone 3GS has been used every day for the last 3.5 years - fully charged to nearly fully discharged every day and still works fine.
So by my reckoning it's probably had well over 1000 full cycles and although I can't be totally scientific it still lasts a full day - even it it's lot 10-20% of it's initial capacity it's not noticeable and by the time it does need changing it will either be time for a new phone or for relatively little I can get it replaced.
It just won't happen!
I have a phone and tablet that runs on exactly the same chipset. Why would I need another device just to play games?
They would have been better of developing a system that enabled the tablet/phone to act a console with wireless controller and wireless HDMI to the TV.
No mention of Piston either. I'm wondering if the Reg's man actually went to CES or spent his time in the pub after having written all the articles beforehand based on what he expected would be shown.
Beer icon because he clearly had the right idea. It was mostly just incremental tablet upgrades and 4k TVs.
>No mention of NVIDIA Project Shield? The one device absolutely everyone else has been raving about?
No, but the article did mention the guts of Project Shield, i.e the new version of Tegra.
>No mention of Piston either.
No, but sites that have mentioned it have scant details on its innards. It does seem to have a lot of USB ports, though.
Tegra 4 "Wayne" gives me a very big nerdboner... Sod putting it in tablets or phones though, I want to see desktop SBC computers built around it.
The Sony phone does look rather purdy, but I'd be a bit worried about this "freezing" of background applications though; what if I *want* background background apps running, so they can provide notifications? Bet the screen looks damn fine though, even if you really don't get the benefit of 1080p on a screen so small...
Sony's recent phones have had terrible battery life. It's the power sucking LCD displays that are the problem.
I have the Note II and the battery is pretty good (2 days with moderate use) but I bet the Xperia Z is dead before the end of the day.
Add to that the battery is non-replaceable and it's a dead duck. No use having all those features if the bloody thing is dead in a matter of hours ......
Haven't really found too much of an issue with my Xperia S on the battery front, if I start turning stuff off I can get 2-3 days out of a charge, However I cannot be bothered with that and am a heavy user, and it works fine with a charge every night. Small price to pay for a screen that doesn't give the horrible blue/green tinge you get from AMOLED.
No great issues here with the Xperia P, though that may be because I use the ICS battery saver feature that selectively disables data traffic- the side effect is that you won't receive emails, Whatsapp or Facebook messages etc until you take the phone out of standby. Whether this is a plus or a minus is up to you.
The additional white pixels on the Sony phones can be turned off very easily, and a shortcut created to do just that.
"And watches are jewellery".
Actually no, at least not for myself or any of my friends. Watches are functional devices. Something worn to provide information, not something worn to looks nice.
Not saying they can't be used as jewellery, but it's not their primary purpose. Unlike say a ring or necklace.
Totally agree. I see no reason why a watch should not be both functional AND look nice. I'm very pleased with the watch my wife bought me for my 40th birthday which I've now had for nearly twenty years. And it keeps excellent time. (Unlike my phone, which yesterday decided to magically decide I was in the Albania time zone...!)
And who wants to dig into their pocket to pull a phone out and switch it on to find out what time it is, when you can glance at your wrist?
The possibilities that bendy OLED opens up makes this the coolest and most amazing tech of CES 2013. Samsung are so close to something truly groundbreaking here. If the prototypes are anything to go by, Samsung is not far off from a consumer product. A GS4 with double the battery hours thanks to a thinner screen and larger battery would be most welcome.
"Portal Access Keys™ (PAKs™) are downloaded to a cellphone, pc, laptop or tablet to unlock a quantum portal that then allows data to be teleported from a quantum computer to a human or animal brain programming it for desired benefits."
I think they might be angering GlaDOS here. Not to mention the state's Data Protection Agencies and Public Health Safety Bureaucrats.
the Transformer AiO, a Intel Core i3-based all-in-one desktop running Windows 8 on an 18.4-inch, 1920 x 1080 IPS LCD touchscreen. The novel part: said screen slips out of a dock to become an independently operating Android 4.1 Jelly Bean tablet.
Hey, can leave Windows on the desk ! Idea comes only about 20 years too late ....
My thought exactly! Communication and teleport lock-on wrist band. I remember Blue Peter showing how to make one using a segment of a plastic cordial bottle as the basis of the band (black paper and other bits stuck nderneath to make the electronics). That was the COOLest piece of recycling I ever wore on my arm!
PS My Pebble should be posted in the next couple of months :)
quote: "What is so hard in manufacturing another 32/64/128MB of memory actually into a device?"
The extra £80ish per memory step, for one (new iPad, £399 for 16GB, £479 for 32GB, £559 for 64GB) when a 32GB microSD will set you back less than £20. Sure, built-in memory needs more redundancy (it needs to last as long as the device), but that looks like a shameless profit opportunity when you have the same "cost" for the +16GB as the +32GB steps. It's obviously not the extra memory that is the bulk of the costing there... I'd easily believe that a 128GB iPad (if they make one) would come in at £639, using the same magic memory pricing voodoo.
I bought the small memory variant of my phone for that very reason; the phone memory has the OS, the cheap(er) SD card has the high churn data (audio, video) so that's the one that fails first. It's £20 and a minute to replace, instead of sending it back to the manufacturer.
The concave monitors are the big deal from the show. They're the must-have design feature for your new evil lair's command center. No longer will your evil henchmen have to roll chairs from side to side while pretending to manage an evil plot, now they'll be able to easily survey multiple monitors from a stationary position while awaiting their inevitable doom.
Nothing to port if you want Civ on a Windows 8 system with a touchscreen, and the chances the touchscreen will be running anything else?
After installing Civ through Stream on my Win8 Laptop, I got a 3rd option to run a Windows 8 touch optimised version as well as the usual DX9 DX10/11 options. I never use the keyboard or mouse to play Civ anymore.
D- for research.
Ultra HD is "8K" (7680 × 4320).
This 4K format is a total waste of time, in my opinion, and doesn't excite me all that much, because it makes me think for 3-4 years we will be waiting for 8K projectors in cinemas and so on, while thinking 4K is "the shit".
We've had 15perf/70mm 1.44 ratio horizontal run film in the form of IMAX for decades, yet we have literally nothing to compete with it yet, but somehow people are sucked in by 4K? Ugh.
At least 8K offers a similar resolution but with digital clarity and the fact you can't get physical impurities on the film. 4K is nothing but a timewaster.
Really, we need more resolution, but I'd be happy with 8K to some extent, but I wish aspect ratios could be settled on. 1.44 is probably too tall for most cinemas to be satisfied with, and 2.39 is way too wide for me to be happy. 1.6 is probably about perfect.
Anyway, just a rant.
Yes, I'm drinking. Hello Friday evening!
On IBC 2011 NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) had a demo of their Super Hi-Vision system (7680x4350 pixels, intended horizontal viewing angle 100°).
I was impressed and thought I saw the future of TV.
However when I compared the image on the 85 inch LCD with the lady in front of the camera, I noticed that the colour reproduction, especially of skincolour, was very poor.
If you light something with White or RGB LED, it is seen completely differently by the eye and the camera, as the sensors are very different - the camera "blue" saturates a very, very long time before the eye when objects are lit with Blue or White LEDs.
Thus reality and screen image differ greatly - for a really extreme example, try taking a photo of Hogwarts at "night" at the Harry Potter Experience thingy.
Piro, if you find that a 1.6 aspect ratio is probably about perfect, then you’re probably searching for the Golden Section, φ = (√5̅ + 1) ÷ 2 [a bit above 1.618]. On Ultra HD, that would come in at about 6990 × 4320; a closer match to φ could be derived from the Fibonacci sequence, e.g. 6765 × 4181.
The Nvidia Project Shield has to be one of the most interesting devices of the show.
It's not a tablet. It's not a console game. It's close to a hand-held game, but is way more than that.
The graphics and compute power of a game console, all fit into the controller. 4K video output. When (if?) Miracast becomes common, complete wireless freedom.
The ability to play generic Android games, special TegraZone games, streaming output from a local PC, and potentially cloud games. We'll see if the latency issues are addressed for the latter two.
If it's under $200, we can be pretty certain that 10M+ of the 25M hard-core games will buy one the first week. If it works well, it will be on every Christmas list.
Pesonally CES is all a bit 'so what' this year - most of the big boys are not there anyway and reckon they are waiting to see what Apple will do. Samsung have been showing those flexi screens for years (not new), curved screens (niche / poinless as I assume it reduces viewing angle which is more important for most applications), iWatches which we have seen for years (Pebble is fugly - can't believe people paid for than about $50 for it).
For starters:
"The TV industry is still waiting nervously to see whether the Cupertino company will indeed have spotted something they missed and shake up the telly business as it did with the phone industry."
Oh come on. Reg is under the impression there wasn't a vibrant mobile telephone industry before 'the Cupertino company' designed one; pretty though it is (WAS [like the iMac's and clamshell-laptop's industry shaking designs]).
Suggestion:
Instead of the usual Reg-blah-blah-pay-me-by-the-word-bs make the article informative and so useful.
A bullet point list of last years' innovations, things that were believed to be contenders for this year's industry shaking stuff. I.e.
* 3D television :: thisCompany, thatCompany, anotherCompany, etc
* Thin laptops :: andThisCom, aUkCom, aKoreanCom
* Tablets :: Google, Samsung, aChineseCom, MicroWhatsItCom
Discussion of what never shook the industry and lots of pay-me-by-the-word stuff.
A bullet point list of this years' hopeful next year's industry shakers.
* Toilet proof mobile telephones :: Sony
* More televisions :: themCom, thoseCome, koreaCom
* Wearables :: Google, Samsung, aChineseCom
* More tablets :: blah, blah
* Even some under the hood Linux stuff :: Valve, nVidia, OUYA, Google, Samsung, HTC, Sony ...
Discussion and more pay-me-by-the-word stuff.
Reg, another suggestion: 2013 = Information-quality not quantity.
"upscaling video doesn’t improve it"
Not just upscaling. but with techniques like fractal computations you can make them look better. Agreed, you are just "guessing" the added "details", you will not be able to turn that fuzzy white dot in the backgound back in the seagull it really was, but it can make bigger details look less pixelated as the magnification increases (thus preventing the scale-up from mangling the perception of the image). That way you can have a large display showing lo-res content without looking like you're playing an old Commodore game.
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