Is CES 2009 The Beginning of the End?

I received an e-mail from CEA this morning with this subject line: “CES Electrifies the Global Economy.” Honestly, I ignored it, initially. First of all, I’m pretty much done talking about the show for another year. And second, after working in technology journalism for years, I’ve grown accustomed to this kind of unprovoked self-congratulation.

I wouldn’t suggest that CES 2009 wasn’t a monster of a show. It was huge. I managed to walk every inch of the showroom floor and almost killed myself in the process. Still, now that the smoke has cleared, it’s hard not to raise an eyebrow at that subject header.

I had to scramble when asked by some colleagues to cull together a list of the show’s biggest hits. The floor is always largely occupied by minor products–I spotted a ton of iPod, Wii, and Guitar Hero knockoffs trying to pass themselves off as innovations. That’s nothing new. However, coming out of last year’s show, I remember a lot more clear winners. At the moment, I’m struggling to name many beyond a few obvious choices–like, say, the Palm Pre.

Roundup: The Best of CES/Macworld 2009, All In One Place

The biggest news week of the year in gadgets is now over. Here’s a full guide to our coverage of both Macworld and CES 2009 with everything you need to know.

If we learned one thing this last week, it’s that neither one had enough news to live up to its previous reputations as king of the gadget shows, which is especially clear when you take it all in at once. Click each image for the full post, and for all the coverage from each, see our tag pages: Macworld 2009, CES 2009

Macworld 2009:

iLife 2009: Everything got touched, from facial recognition in iPhoto to piano lessons from Sting in Garage Band.

17-inch MacBook Pro: It got its expected Unibody makeover, complete with a long-lasting and non-removeable battery; here’s how it works.

iTunes dropped DRM for good (but with a revamped pricing structure), and now allows iPhones to download tracks over 3G and EDGE. which we immediately tested.

The final Macworld keynote was without Steve Jobs; We were there to liveblog the hell out of it, of course, and you can watch Apple’s broadcast of it here.

CES 2009 Day One Top Ten:
If we told you three months ago that Palm would own CES, would you have believed us? Find out how Palm did it in our full hands-on.

Samsung BD-4600 Blu-ray Player: Wall-mountable, networked, 1.5-inches thick, and really, really nice looking.

Samsung Luxia LED TV Lineup: Samsung loosed a whole series of ultra-thin, LED-backlit, network-connected LCDs, winning the Battle of the TV Announcements hands down. We got a close look in photos.

Vizio Connected HDTVs: These Vizios stream just about everything possible over wireless-N: Amazon, Blockbuster and Netflix VOD, Pandora and more.

Sony Vaio P: Sony’s Vaio P is something we haven’t seen before: a 2.08:1 aspect ratio (1600×768) on a 1-inch thick portable. Something different in the very, very generic netbook field.

Casio 1,000fps Point and Shoot Cameras: Both the EX-FC100 and the EX-FS10 bring the EX-F1’s slo-mo capture goodness to a point and shoot. Casio’s still the only folks in the super slo-mo field, and they’re continuing to kill.

LG’s GD910 Watch Phone: It was a non-working, behind-the-glass prototype last year, but one of every gadget head’s boyish dreams will come true later this year: A watch that’s a phone.

Eee Keyboard: Asus took the crazy cake with their still-shadowy home theater keyboard. With an onboard processor (of some kind), a touchscreen and keyboard and wireless HDMI, it makes perfect sense as a unique home-theater machine.

Sony Cyber-shot G3: We’re all about putting web browsers on as many things as possible, and Sony’s found another way to get one into our pants: A super-slim wi-fi-equipped Cyber-shot G3 that’s the world’s first to surf the web.

Panasonic Portable Blu-ray Player: Panasonic’s DMP-B15 is the world’s first portable Blu-ray deck. Your laptop probably doesn’t have a BD drive, but this will ensure you can watch hi-def 1080p on a tiny, tiny screen on your next flight.

And there you have it. Good stuff you may or may not be able to afford in ’09? Disappointment of disappointments? Discuss.

CES 2009 Day Two: The Best Of The Rest

FyreTV Porn Streamer: A quick jump over to AVN yielded juicy fruit: Jason “Roku What?” Chen’s favorite porno streamer now does it without wires. Discerning adult cinema fans need their AV center CLEAN and CLUTTER FREE.

HDi Dune Blu-ray Players With BitTorrent : Toss your torrents into this Blu-ray deck’s client over the network, then play back your pirated catch with its crazy extensive codec support. Brilliant.

The Hunter Concert Breeze Ceiling Fan Experience: Speakers + ceiling fan. Sometimes, a headline says it all.

Dell Mini 10: A 720p screen and a TV tuner is a nice bump for one of our favorite netbook series.

Cell Mate Hands-Free Cellphone Holder: Bluetooth is for the moneyed d-bag elite; real mobile gangstas clamp their iPhones to their heads.

For our full coverage of each event, see our CES 2009 and Macworld 2009 tagpages.

Video: Hands delOn/del Off With the Palm Pre

The one gadget that impressed even the crustiest curmudgeon (save Om Malick) at CES 2009 was the Palm Pre. The handset, announced amid much pomp and fanfare by the floundering company, contains a built from scratch OS, built from scratch hardware, and some very innovative features under that multi-gesture touchscreen. Organizing all your open applications with little square representations called "cards"? Check. Coallescing all of your online calendars (Google, Entourage, iCal) into one place on the phone? Double check. All applications web based? Triple check.

Pricing? Unavailable. Release date? Sometime in the first half of 2009. Carrier? Sprint. When will Wired have a fully baked review unit? Before everyone else.





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Samsung Q1EX tablet shows itself, gets detailed

This unassuming little tablet somehow managed to slip under our radar at CES, but the folks at UMPC Portal did thankfully manage to snap a few pics of it, and dig up a few details. Dubbed the Q1EX, this followup / compliment to Samsung’s Q1 series of UMPCs ditches the usual QWERTY keypad in favor of a full-on 7-inch touchscreen, and gets backed up by a VIA Nano processor, along with built-in Bluetooth, GPS, and WiMAX, among other standard tablet PC features. Unfortunately, there’s no word on a price or release date just yet, but if Samsung’s past track record with the Q1 is any indication, you can expect to see a whole slew of different incarnations before all is said and done.

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Samsung Q1EX tablet shows itself, gets detailed originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Jan 2009 16:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Olidata Conte ultraportable makes its shiny debut

It doesn’t look like this one was actually on display at CES, but Italy’s Olidata does seem to have taken the opportunity to announce its shiny new Conte ultraportable, which takes square aim at the growing ranks of 13.3-inch ultra-thin laptops out there. From the looks of it, this one will be available in two different versions: one with a 16:10, 1280×800 display, and one with a 16:9, 1366×768 display, each of which will come equipped with a small form factor Core 2 Duo processor, optional built-in 3G or WiMAX, and a promised battery life of more than four hours (or seven with an extended battery). The 16:10 model will also add a few bonuses like Intel Turbo Memory, a fingerprint reader, a backlit keyboard, and 3GB of RAM as standard. Sadly, there’s no indication of a release’ round these parts just yet, but both models will supposedly be hitting Europe in May for “less than €1,000” (or somewhere under $1,300).

[Thanks, Faber]

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Olidata Conte ultraportable makes its shiny debut originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iCEphone makes trip to CES, remains unwieldy

So, there’s good news and bad news. Being that we enjoy handing out the former first, we’ll point out the fact that the Windows Mobile-powered iCEphone made the trip to Vegas in order to be showcased at CES. The bad? There’s still no pricing nor US availability to take into consideration. Granted, the phone is designed to be used primarily during emergencies, but that doesn’t make patience any easier to come by.

[Via OnlyGizmos]

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iCEphone makes trip to CES, remains unwieldy originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung shows off OLED display collection at CES

OLED displays were out in full force this year, with Samsung bringing plenty of its own to showcase to CES onlookers. We already had a chance to check out a snazzy folding OLED late last week, but CNET was able to capture a few more for good measure. The most notable were the 3.3-inch “3D” AMOLED display (with a WQVGA resolution) and the 7.01-inch AMOLED panel, which was seen sporting a 1,024 x 600 resolution and a 30,000:1 contrast ratio. Flip through the gallery below for a few more looks, but don’t get your hopes up too high for any near-term release dates.

[Via OLED-Display]

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Samsung shows off OLED display collection at CES originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sharp does the unthinkable, intros slotMusic-friendly sound systems

Whoa, Sharp — wait just a minute. Did you really just introduce a pair of music systems that get down with slotMusic players? Though it’s practically impossible for us to believe that such an occurrence has just, um, occurred, the 160-watt XL-DH258NH and 64-watt XL-DH228NH micro-audio systems actually do include a USB port for syncing up with SanDisk slotMusic players (along with any other USB-enabled PMP, we presume). Of course, Sharp did hedge its bets by including an iPod dock along with a universal auxiliary input, so we suppose we can’t harsh on ’em too much. Both units arrive in any color you like so long as it’s glossy black, and there’s even an AM / FM radio, six-band equalizer and alarm clock tossed in for good measure. Catch the XL-DH258NH this June for $199.99 or the XL-DH228NH in July for $179.99.

[Via iTechNews]

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Sharp does the unthinkable, intros slotMusic-friendly sound systems originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony’s flexible OLED mockups

Sony hasn’t gotten very far along with these units — they’re really just plastic shells — but we like we’re they’re headed with it. They showed off a full-screen laptop (pictured), bendable e-reader, and Walkman bracelet concepts, all based around flexible OLED technology and built with “flexible bioplastics,” along with the flexible display that going to power them all when they hit the market… in the year 2000.

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Sony’s flexible OLED mockups originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Phoenix Technologies HyperSpace instant-on OS review

Here at Engadget, we don’t spend an awful lot of time dabbling in operating systems, but when Phoenix Technologies offered us the chance to check out its HyperSpace instant-on OS, we just couldn’t resist. After all, it’s hard to ignore the allure of reported sub-10 second bootup times on portable-by-nature machines (often referred to as “netbooks,” for those camped under rocks). Considering that HyperSpace is well on its way to a netbook near you (we’re told that undisclosed partnerships should be completely hammered out within the next few months), why not follow us past the break to see if the system really is all it’s cracked up to be.

Continue reading Phoenix Technologies HyperSpace instant-on OS review

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Phoenix Technologies HyperSpace instant-on OS review originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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