The Biggest Tech Show of the Year will kick off from January 9. The Convention formerly known as the Consumer Electronic Show basically functions as the Tech Universe’s annual meeting. Various Companies brag about what they have done over the past year and they also show off their products that they plan to bring to the market over the next year.
So, Let’s look at what can one expect at this year’s Show.
Televisions again
In the Modern world there are constant Technological innovations. So, TV sets are a regular show at CES for quite a few years due to those innovations. One can get ready for a big showcase of 4K HDR TV’s at this year’s CES. High dynamic range (HDR) video will continue to evolve at the show.
So far we have already seen a report that LG will bring an 88-inch 8K Television to this year’s event. Also, LG display will be demonstrating the new 65-inch rollable OLED prototype which also happens to have a UHD (i.e 4K) resolution.
Also, at CES 2018 Samsung is also not far behind. They have come to the show with an enormous 4K TV called The Wall and they are also claiming that its “the worlds first modular TV”. The Wall measures 146 inches and uses MicroLED technology to produce its picture.
MicroLED shares many benefits with OLED; each microscopic LED can emit its own light — no backlight is required — and that creates the deep blacks and lush colors normally reserved for OLED sets. It also gets incredibly bright.
The wall has a bezel-less design that Samsung describes as “module-based.” Samsung says this approach will ultimately allow customers to create a TV sized just for their needs. The company isn’t yet revealing many specifics on how that will work, however, only saying ”the modular screen can be used to create a wall-sized display, or simply let consumers increase their traditional screen size to suit a new room in the home.” For now The Wall falls into concept territory, but Samsung has very real plans to commercialize it.
Smart Homes/Devices
This is least surprising category to look forward to in this year’s CES. The Smart-home category dominated last year’s event, and it’s showing no signs of slowing down. Now, with advancements in smart home speakers like Amazon Echo, Google Home, have made home automation an even larger focus.
The past few years, we’ve seen smart home tech take on the basics — traditional light bulbs, power outlets, speakers, door knobs, and so on. This year, expect to see companies continuing to expand the smart home’s reach to new types of devices and diversifying their offerings within existing categories.
And so continuing with that LG and Samsung are both introducing refrigerators at CES 2018 with capabilities or features that can will call them Smart Devices.
LG is introducing a new Instaview Thin Q Smart refrigerator which features a 29-inch touchscreen that becomes transparent if users knock on it twice.
This version uses the touchscreen to manage your food using LG’s webOS software and Amazon’s Alexa, which will let you tag food with virtual stickers and expiration dates and get automatic reminders when things are running low or about to go bad. There’s also a wide-angle panoramic camera on the inside of the fridge that will let you remotely view your fridge while you’re out and about to check and see if you’re actually out of milk or not.
Samsung announced the 2018 version of its Family Hub Smart Refrigerator. This year’s model adds deeper support for Samsung’s Bixby voice assistant and even adds SmartThings integration and AKG speakers.
The new Family Hub can connect to and control third-party devices that are part of the SmartThings smart home ecosystem such as lights, thermostats, home video cameras, and more. So from this fridge’s screen, you can adjust a SmartThings-compatible thermostat or view what’s happening outside your front door or in another room of the house with a SmartThings-compatible camera. (There’s still a camera built into the inside of the fridge so you can get a quick peek at what you need from your smartphone at the grocery store.)
Smart Cars
Automotive has become an increasing focus for the CES in recent years. Once again, a lot of top car companies will be present, including Ford and Toyota. And also, one can expect quite some self-driving car demos at CES 2018.
Ford new CEO Jim Hackett will deliver a keynote address on Tuesday, January 9th. He was chosen for his deeper relationship with Silicon Valley (he previously ran Ford’s Smart Mobility division), so its expected to see whats the future of one of the biggest carmakers in the world.
Ford and its competitors are focused on the future, because the auto industry is filled with Electric and smart mobility startups these days. Tesla is still the most sound competitor to any of the big automakers. Many of them will be at CES showing off autonomous shuttles, self-driving technologies, electric scooters, and other futuristic transportation ideas — all things that companies like Ford (or Google, Intel, GM, etc) are also working on in different capacities.
One of those companies is Byton, a Chinese automaker founded by BMW and Infiniti. Byton will be at CES showing off its first car, an all-electric SUV that it’s referring to as a “Smart Intuitive Vehicle.” A fully-charged base model of this all-electric SUV will get you an estimated 250 miles, and the single rear-mounted motor packs a respectable 272 horsepower. The high-performance dual-motor version will hop along at 476 horsepower for 325 miles, according to Byton.
From the exterior this car doesn’t look like much. But when you open the doors and look inside. On the inside of this vehicle, where the car’s dashboard usually goes, is just one gigantic screen that stretches from pillar to pillar. It is simply massive.
Basically it’ll be upto Byton to prove to everyone why it’s not headed for a similar fate like Faraday Future which debuted a fast, flashy, super smart electric car last year and since then the company has come close to crashing and burning.
Another thing to keep an eye out in this category will be the continued escalation in the competition between Uber and Lyft.
All the other major automakers will be at CES in some form or another. And it’s possible that some of them could surprise us. And of course, the show floor (and the convention center parking lots) will be full of smart scooters, weird skateboards, and other ways to move.
Wearables/Health
Another CES favorite in recent years. Wearables is a very broad category at CES that can have everything from GPS watches to AR Glasses to more. In recent times, the wearable category has a trend emerging and that’s health. The Health category with the wearable is looking to be new trend for companies and is expected to be a new trend in CES 2018.
There will be two areas of the CES show floor dedicated to health and fitness tech. The number of wearable exhibitors is down: 51 exhibitors in 2018 compared with 82 in 2017 but there’s a small increase in the number of health and wellness exhibitors and one can expect to see more things like connected blood pressure monitors, medical alert devices designed for seniors, gluten sensors, fertility monitors, and sleep trackers.
So, that’s just the taste of what to come in CES 2018. Apart from the categories mentioned above, as its CES expect to see some strange smart gadgets you can’t ever imagine needing. So, Watch out for this space for more interesting tech stuff.
Source: [Verge][Techcrunch]