Hasta La Gadget!

Ditch your Omega and get with the high-tech watch times, granddad: Futaba is hoping the well-dressed wrist of tomorrow will be sporting its flexible OLED, the company’s thinnest yet. Just 0.22mm thick, and easily capable of being bent around your arm – such as in the watch concept Futaba is showing at CEATEC this week – the 3.5-inch display makes current smartwatches look clunky in comparison.

The display is an odd aspect ratio – long and narrow, to wrap around your wrist – and so the resolution is atypical at 256 x 64. Brightness is 100 cd/m2, and of course there’s full color support; if you’ve ever wanted to watch video of very tall, narrow buildings as well as tell the time, this could be the concept for you.

What we don’t know is power consumption. Recent smartwatches have used e-paper or transflective panels so as to minimize energy requirements, on the assumption that a compact device will only have minimal space for a battery but still be expected to deliver all-day runtimes. Futaba wasn’t saying exactly what sort of power draw the 0.22mm OLED demanded, though the display technology has generally been more frugal than traditional LCD.

Of course, this watch itself won’t be hitting the market, as it’s just a way for Futaba to show off what its flexible OLED is capable of. Still, the screen technology is production-ready – the company had a 0.29mm version back in June – and is just waiting on a vendor with a suitable application to snap it up.

Futaba 0.22mm flexible OLED watch concept wants your wrist is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Forget Retina display: Sharp’s new 5-inch, 1080p LCD panels have come out to wow at CEATEC, and at 443ppi they already have us looking at our current phones with disappointment and disgust. Announced yesterday, and set to hit mass production imminently, the new smartphone screens also use advanced CG-Silicon technology to cut down on how many layers are involved in the display sandwich.

Fewer layers mean the image appears closer to the top level of glass. There’s no touch layer in place yet – this is display-only right now – but we can already picture just how vivid and bright the Sharp panels will be when paired with advanced optical lamination touchscreen bonding technology.

Sharp is keeping its customer details close to its chest, and the company wouldn’t say who it was talking with regarding actually putting the new 5-inch display into products. Although the company is already an Apple supplier, right now the Cupertino firm doesn’t have a 5-inch device in its range (and the much-rumored iPad mini is expected to be larger than that).

Still, whoever ends up with this new LCD is getting an impressive screen indeed. Just running through some demos of video playback and mapping showed how useful high-resolution graphics can be on a mobile device.

Sharp 5-inch 1080p display eyes-on: You want this in your next phone is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Anyone remember the Disney Channel Original Movie Smart House? We’re thinking that some of the executives at Sharp watched that movie and then decided we needed something like that in real life, as Sharp unveiled a new virtual management system called Cocorobo @ Home at Ceatec 2012 in Japan. The best way to describe Cocorobo @ Home is as a system that allows you to control all of your Sharp appliances from one simple interface.

We’re talking the whole kit and kaboodle – air conditioning, fans, kitchen appliances, outdoor lights, indoor lamps. All of it can be controlled remotely through Cocorobo @ Home. You can even link your family’s phones, televisions, and tablets to the Cocorobo @ Home, which will show you where in the house everyone is.

Need to get a little vacuuming done? You’ll be pleased to know that Sharp has a new vacuum designed to work with Cocorobo @ Home to. Rather confusingly, the vacuum itself is called Cocorobo, and in addition to being controlled through the Cocorobo @ Home app, you can also control the Cocorobo vacuum through simple voice commands. For instance, you can ask Cocorobo – which looks similar to an iRobot Roomba vacuum and features a Sharp plasmacluster air purifier – how much battery it has remaining, or how much space is left in the dust bin.

It seems that Cocoboro @ Home will work with other non-Sharp products as well, as users can hook up their TANITA scale with Cocorobo @ Home to track their weight loss. You can also set up Cocorobo @ Home to remind you when you forget to weigh in. All of this sounds really awesome, but don’t expect it to arrive in your household for a long time – Cocorobo @ Home is still a concept product, and it sounds like it might be a while before it makes it to market. Still, we’ll be following it throughout the development process, so keep it here at SlashGear for more information.

Sharp unveils Cocorobo @ Home virtual management system is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Sure, cars that look like bugs are cool and all, but what we’re really interested in seeing at Ceatec 2012 are robots. With that in mind, NEC did not disappoint, introducing us to its PaPeRo telecommunications robot. This isn’t the first telecommunications robot we’ve laid eyes on, but it stands a pretty good chance at being the cutest (and/or creepiest).

For those of you who aren’t in the know, telecommunications robots are used for, well, telecommunications. PaPeRo, for instance, is controlled by a remote user, who sees the images PaPeRo is capturing with its camera eyes on his or her own screen. In broad sense, telecommunications robots like PaPeRo allow you to attend important meetings, visit with family, or do some good old fashioned recon without actually being there.

As you can see in our video posted below, PaPeRo is controlled using an app – in this case, on a tablet. This isn’t anything new for telecommunications robots, but with PaPeRo, it does seem like users have more control over the movement of the head. The video we have for you is quite short, but it should give a pretty good idea as to how PaPeRo is controlled remotely.

Of course, there are also speakers and a mic present for recording and playing back sound, so conversation between the two parties is possible, no matter the distance between them. NEC has actually been licensing PaPeRo to companies since 2009 (you’ve probably seen it in videos before today), but what we’re seeing here at Ceatec is the first non-enterprise application of the robot, meaning it should be available commercially relatively soon. We’ll be on the lookout for more details, so keep it right here at SlashGear for additional information!

NEC shows off PaPeRo telecommunications robot is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The last few months have been absolutely jam packed with events, and though things are beginning to wind down, there’s one particularly major event left for us to tackle: Ceatec 2012. We’re on the ground in Japan to take in all of the sights Ceatec will have to offer over the next four days. Ceatec is entering its 13th year with the event that’s about to kick off, and it promises to be a big one for the trade show.

The theme of this year’s Ceatec is “Smart Innovation – Creating a prosperous lifestyle and society.” Ahead of today’s ribbon-cutting ceremony that will officially kick off Ceatec 2012, a number of companies will be holding press conferences, including the likes of Pioneer, KDDI, and Huawei. After the chaos that accompanies the beginning of most trade shows (Ceatec is no different in that respect), it’ll be time to hit the exhibition floor, where we’ll spend four days straight checking out what the exhibitors have to show off.

Even though Ceatec doesn’t enjoy as much press attention as some other shows here in the west, it’s still one of the biggest trade shows in the world, and it should provide us with plenty to talk about over the coming days. We’re definitely excited to be here, and you can bet that we’ll be letting you know about all of the cool stuff on display, whether we see it during a press conference or on the show floor.

Stay tuned folks – we’ve only just arrived, after all, and there should plenty to see, ranging from concept devices and televisions to smartphones and cars. Keep checking back with us here at SlashGear for the latest straight from Ceatec 2012!

Ceatec 2012: We’re here! is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.