Apple's iPhone looks like mobile technology's killer app, but could brand-new cellphones from Samsung—featuring music, video, touchscreen and Internet—combine for a more affordable alternative? Inside, a video breakdown of the secret weapon to bring down Steve Jobs.
Glenn Reynolds think that hardware and software companies need to pay more attention to a simple truth: People buy these gadgets to be empowered to do new things—not to be forced to dance to big companies' tunes.
We weigh in on the best in show—two shows, to be exact: the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas and the Detroit Auto Show. It's all here, from the Chevy Volt (guess who resurrected the electric car) to wirelessly networked television to... yes, the iPhone.
Virtual high-speed driving becomes a step less virtual with the new D-Box GP-100 gaming platform, a chair that transmits every high-speed turn, collision, and sway to the gamer behind the wheel. It rocks. It rolls. It costs $15,000.
For its lineup here at CES, iRobot has taken the vacuum out of the Roomba and turned it into an open-source robot called Create. After hearing about a lot of Roomba hacking, the folks at iRobot now want you to use this as the skeleton for you own unique robot.
Nokia hasn't unveiled any interesting phones here for the U.S. market, but the most interesting release from this powerhouse phone-maker is actually a computer—one that can get online by joining a Wi-Fi network or by synching up with a Bluetooth cellphone.
We took a bus ride with Samsung for a hands-on demo of their proposed A-VSB standard, a technology that permits crystal-clear reception of digital television on mobile and interference-prone locations. Get ready for hand-held television on your morning commute.
Magellan's new GPS units include a model that does a decent job as both an automotive unit and as an outdoorsy handheld GPS unit. Compromises? Sure. Good value? We say yes. Also new is a GPS option open only to members of the AAA.
This new phone is nice and thin—a bit thicker than the RAZR—but what really stands out is the dual-hinge design that lets you open it vertically like a standard flip-phone, or sideways to use use the qwerty-keyboard.
We play with the first radio-controlled flying ornithopter; that's kind of a mouthful, but basically it flies by flapping instead of using propellers as a main thrust. It's remarkably easy to use — and even more fun to watch fly around CES.
Apple's CEO to address faithful, and the rest of the electronics industry takes a listen for a phone announcement. In fact, the biggest surprise at Macworld would be if Jobs
didn’t introduce an Apple phone.
So I've heard some press grumblings that this CES is, well... boring. But if you're excited by innovation and by products that let you do fun and interesting things that you couldn't do on your own before, then there's lots of exciting stuff out there.
One thing I've learned this week has been the importance of having in Internet connection. For a conference on technology where everyone is emphasizing connectivity, this one has had connectivity problems of its own.
These earphones can switch from a standard Bluetooth headset to a pair of wireless stereo earphones. Okay, not completely wireless, but there are no wires between you and your iPod. So if you're heading out the door and need a Bluetooth set, you only need one earpiece.
So far, the best consumer-level hi-def camcorder we've seen at CES is Panasonic's HDC-SD1, which has a 3-CCD sensor, and it can output 1080i video directly to a TV through an HDMI port. Possibly its coolest feature is the way its integrated surround-sound 5.1 microphone can ...
This motion-sensing, Nintendo Wii-esque remote has inertial sensors that allow you to gesture your way through your connected media. With just two buttons, the Loop may be the simplest — yet most powerful — user interface we've seen since the iPod.
Aesthetics will be increasingly important in product design and marketing. I talked to a guy at the Microsoft Windows Mobile booth about handheld gadgets, and he told me that making devices fondleable and caressable is a big deal now, and it should be.
The car-electronics folks are here, and they're pushing all sorts of gadgets—GPS navigation systems are big, and people are starting to integrate them with other systems. But the coolest-looking stuff is the car audio and car video.
After testing the Sanyo massage chair, I felt guilty: Sure, it was a nice chair, but wouldn't a proper evaluation include a comparison to a real massage? Of course it would!
So if there's a single Big Thing here, it's clearly big-screen HDTV. But to make money off of that, you don't have to be on the cutting edge of technology—in fact, you don't have to be in the electronics business at all
Tying together Intel's emphasis on personal empowerment was Wi-Max, a long-range version of wi-fi. Sprint and Intel are cooperating on this. I talked to the Intel and Sprint representatives, and they told me that things are moving a lot faster than I had realized.
This is the Sanyo Zero-Gravity Massage Chair. If you're familiar with the zero-gravity chair, this puts you in the same on-your-back posture, but adds massage. It has thumb-shaped rollers, a "stiffness detection sensor," and it even adds a foot massage.
I thought this Yamaha Disklavier Mark IV (pictured at right) was cool. It's a $50,000 concert grand piano, but with the addition of the ability to record and play keystrokes. That's been around a while, but this new model adds video synchronization and more.
This year at the Consumer Electronics Show, the hi-def camcorder category has exploded, with Panasonic and Sony both announcing multiple HD camcorders—and the show hasn’t even officially started yet.
There are two audiences for what's said at the Consumer Electronics Show. One is obvious: Consumers. But the other audience is the business/investment community. Companies want shareholders, the investment community and the like to think that they're doing well.
The Ted Baxter rules no longer apply. Glenn Reynolds remembers Baxter—the vain and pompous anchor from The Mary Tyler Moore Show—explaining proper television apparel in one episode along these lines: "stripes strobe, checks bleed, and plaid's even worse."
Bill has done his yearly parody video thing: It is essentially a fancy networked backup drive that allows people to centralize their movies, music and all sorts of documents, and it makes a lot of sense.
Sony President Stan Glasgow, saying "consumer electronics without compelling content is rubbish," announced that the new Sony Bravia S televisions will stream HD content via the Internet. Glenn Reynolds chimes in with a video report for Popular Mechanics.
Watch more video as Samsung changes the face of television broadcasts—and introduces a zillion products, from HDTVs to MP3 players, and new cell phones to revolutionary TV technology.
I'm at the Sony event now, waiting for things to get started. Everything is blue, as a not-so-subliminal Blu-Ray promotion. It's a bewildering array of cameras, televisions and all sorts of other gadgets. The PlayStation 3 and the Sony Reader are getting a lot of attention.
The press events are still going on, but I escaped and wandered around the CES floor, where they're still frantically getting ready for tomorrow. Walls of big-screen TVs, lots of digital cameras, car audio galore—even a Batmobile (pictured at bottom right) to demonstrate it.
RCA offers attractive cables for flat panel TVs, but doesn't bring much else to the CES 2007 party.
The improvements that the Toshiba people were pushing with TV are real ones, but they're generational improvements of the sort we've come to expect. We take steady, consistent, and significant improvement in most of the stuff we use for granted.
Sharp's new 108-in. LCD TV takes the title away from plasma, for now. It's the biggest TV in the world, and we've got more video from the showroom floor.
PM contributing editor and Instapundit blogger Glenn Reynolds offers first impressions from his first Consumer Electronics show in his first post for his Popular Mechanics CES blog.
CES 2007 press conferences should really come with popcorn because it’s all 1080p TVs with surround sound, all the time. Philips showed off its home-entertainment offerings, including 30 new ambilight LCD models, which have improved image processing.
After making history last year by releasing the first HD-DVD players, Toshiba offered a slightly perplexing third one today. The HD-A20 is basically the same as the HD-A1, but pulls off full 1080p resolution, and costs $100 more.
With around two conferences happening every hour during the press day at CES, every presenting company needs bring its best game. For Pioneer, that amounted to a lengthy assurance that its new plasma HDTVs are truly excellent.
PM's senior tech editor goes hands-on at CES with Netgear's new HD-streaming settop box, which seems to have beaten the Apple TV announcement by three days.
At the first conference of CES, LG launched the Super Multi Blue Player, the world's first concession to the fact that the movie-loving public doesn't want a format war—they want an easy way to get HD movies onto their new HDTVs.
We expected bizarre robots at CES, and so far, we haven’t been disappointed. The floor-cleaning Ubot is Korea’s answer to both the Roomba and the Scooba. Watch hands-on video live from the showroom floor.
Hey, you got GPS in my car stereo. You got car stereo in my GPS nav system. It’s two great technologies that work great together. Watch it in action with video from CES.
We’ve spotted Elvis! His head and shoulders, that is, singing his resurrected heart out at a CES preview event here in Vegas. To follow up their wildly successful Robosapien and Roboraptor, Hong-Kong-based WowWee Ltd. is releasing an animatronic Elvis bust, and we've got ...
In a pre-CES announcement Friday, Hitachi revealed its plans to build the first consumer terabyte hard drive—which would offer a full 250 more gigabytes of storage than the current largest capacity drive.
The Consumer Electronics Show is rolling into town. And so are we. Beginning Saturday night, Popular Mechanics will be following all the technology action from the show floor with video, awards and constant blogging — including roving reports from Instapundit Glenn ...
