The good old Polaroid brand isn’t dead yet — with the Polaroid Socialmatic, the concept has now become a product. It has a camera with a 14-megapixel camera, a 4.5” touchscreen LCD display that runs Android, a Zero Ink printer, and wi-fi and Bluetooth capabilities. At $299, it will be a tough sell for those who already have a smartphone in their pockets.

The two main features that differentiate the camera from a smartphone are the printing and sharing aspects. After taking a picture with the back camera or the 2-megapixel front camera, you can share it on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest using the built-in software on a Wi-Fi network. At the same time, you can print a 2×3 little photo.

In a corner of your printed photo, there is a QR code so that other Socialmatic users can scan it, get the digital version from Polaroid’s servers, and reprint it. While it’s a good idea, a QR code doesn’t look good on your photo.

As the camera runs Android, many users will install Instagram right away. The Socialmatic will become a dedicated Instagram camera. That’s why the QR code integration feels weird.

On this camera, you will also find 4GB of internal storage and a Micro SD slot. If you want to share photos on the go, you will have two options: you can either send your photos to your phone, or tether your phone.

PLR IP Holdings, C&A Licensing, Socialmatic and ZINK Imaging are the four companies behind the Instagram Socialmatic. This is what remains from Polaroid Corporation. The companies count on the popular Polaroid name and the iconic look to sell this new camera — but will it be enough?

We’re pleased to announce the 2014 Hardware Battlefield finalists, a group of international hardware startups from eleven countries that are about to take the world by storm with some amazing technology, great ideas, and unique business models. Up for grabs is a $50,000 prize, the first ever Hardware Battlefield trophy, a wealth of press exposure and new open doors.

We’ll be running three straight days of exciting presentations live from the CES parking lot. You can watch the event – and all of our live coverage of CES 2014 – live on our special live coverage page and, if you’re in Las Vegas, you’re invited to visit us at our tent out on the LVCC parking lot. You don’t need a show pass to watch the proceedings in the tent and we’ll have giveaways, interviews, and other fun stuff all day.

That said, let’s welcome our fourteen Hardware Battlefield finalists:

Tuesday 11AM

Atlas [CrunchBase] – Atlas is a wearable device that tracks and identifies specific activity. Where existing products can only track a single metric, steps, Atlas is smart enough to identify pushups, squats, dead lifts and everything else.

Team:
Peter Li, CEO
Mike Kasparian, CTO
Alex Hsieh, Lead Software Developer
Mehdi Mirza, Data Scientist

Health2Sync – Health2Sync takes legacy medical devices and transforms your smartphone into a smart health monitoring machine; connecting users, loved ones, and clinicians. Our first product comes in the form of an app and accessory for smart blood glucose monitoring.

Team:
Ed Deng, CEO
Erin Chung, Product Marketing

Adheretech [CrunchBase] – AdhereTech makes smart patented pill bottles, designed to improve medication adherence. These bottles measure the amount of medication in the bottle in real-time. If a dose is missed, AdhereTech reminds the patient via automated phone call or text message – as well as on-bottle lights and chimes.

Team:
Josh Stein, CEO
John Langhauser, CTO
Mike Morena, COO

Tuesday 3pm

CubeSensors [CrunchBase] – CubeSensors are small, stylish and connected devices that help you understand how every room in your home or office is affecting your health, comfort and productivity. The Cubes monitor everything that can be measured about indoors, like temperature, humidity, air quality, noise, light and barometric pressure. They are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and can easily blend in any room you want to optimize for leisure, sleep or work.

Team:
Ales Spetic, CEO
Marko Mrdjenovic, CTO

Livemap [CrunchBase] – Livemap is a unique high-tech motorbike helmet with built-in navigation system and voice controlled interface. It is a heads-up display for motorcyclists.

Team:
Andrew Artishchev, CEO

Sentry Scientific Smart Walker [CrunchBase] Sentry Scientific is building smart assistive technologies to make the future safer. Their Smart Walker aims to increase safety, independence, and mobility for seniors by reducing the risk of walker-related fall injuries.

Team:
Wilfrid Ngo, CEO
Parth Dave, Hardware Engineer
Ray Zhou, Hardware Engineer

Blaze Laserlight [CrunchBase] – Blaze are an intelligent biking brand. Launching with the Laserlight, a radical innovation tackling the greatest cause of cyclist fatality – being caught in the ‘blind spot’ and vehicles turning across an unseen bike.

Team:
Emily Brooke, CEO + Founder

RHLVision Fin [CrunchBase] – RHLvision Technologies Pvt. Ltd. is a group of passionate individuals dreaming of a world where technology is in the palms of your hands, where a mere finger-swipe can bring you resources and functions never imagined.

Team:
Rohildev.N, CEO

Adheretech [CrunchBase] – AdhereTech makes smart patented pill bottles, designed to improve medication adherence. These bottles measure the amount of medication in the bottle in real-time. If a dose is missed, AdhereTech reminds the patient via automated phone call or text message – as well as on-bottle lights and chimes.

Team:
Josh Stein, CEO
John Langhauser, CTO
Mike Morena, COO

The Eye Tribe [CrunchBase] – The Eye Tribe software enables eye control on mobile devices and computers, allowing hands-free navigation of websites and apps, eye activated log in, enhanced gaming experiences, and cloud-based user engagement analytics. We utilize standard low-cost hardware components that can be integrated into the next generation of smartphones and tablets.

Team:
Sune Alstrup Johansen, CEO
Martin Tall, CTO
Javier San Agustin
Henrik Skovsgaard

AirDroids [CrunchBase] – AirDroids designs and manufactures drone hardware and software for consumers and commercial applications. Our mission is to make advanced drone technology simple and accessible for everyone.

Team:
Chance Roth, Co-Founder and CEO
Timothy Reuter, Co-Founder and President
TJ Johnson, Co-Founder and CTO

Owlet [CrunchBase] – Owlet provides parents with peace of mind by implementing new technologies to monitor, track, and alert on changes in their infant’s health. Owlet helps parents prevent SIDS and other early infant issues.

Team:
Jordan Monroe, CMO
Zack Bomsta, CTO
Kurt Workman, CEO
Tanor Hodges, CFO
Jake Colvin, COO

Driblet.io [CrunchBase] – The smart way to conserve water. Driblet its an innovative smart water consumption management solution that tracks water related variables to empower and encourage people, businesses, organizations and governments to save water and money.

Team:
Rodolfo P Ruiz, CEO & CTO
Mario García, COO
Carlos Mosqueda, Chief Designer

Alima [CrunchBase] – Airboxlab is taking Quantified Self to another level by implementing Quantified Home with alima, the alarm system for your indoor environment.
Embedding high tech sensors, alima is a standalone device monitoring your indoor air pollution and providing warnings and recommendations for action to keep your living spaces safe.

Team:
Jacques Touillon, CEO
Inouk Bourgon, CTO
Olivier Vonet, CFO

Modbot [CrunchBase] – Modbot brings industrial precision and power to consumer assembled robots. Imagine automated manufacturing and consumer robots within reach of everybody, assembled like Lego. Modbot is a system of affordable and re-usable modules that snap together, filling the gap between $100 hobby and $20,000 industrial motion equipment.

Team:
Adam Ellison, CEO
Daniel Pizzata, COO

LG played up its push into wearable tech earlier this morning, and now it looks like Sony’s turn to do the same. Sony Mobile president and CEO Kuni Suzuki took the stage at the tail end of Sony’s CES press conference to show off what he called “the tiniest gadget Sony has ever made” — the life-tracking Sony Core.

Yes, life-tracking. A considerable chunk of the wearable gizmos currently floating around on the market are centered solely on tracking user activity in a bid to make them more health-conscious. That’s nothing if not a noble goal (not to mention an awfully lucrative one) but Sony’s approach is meant to also fold into your social and entertainment into the mix as well. The Core is indeed capable of tracking your motion in addition how long you sleep, and the ability to keep tabs on the photos you’ve taken, the music you’re listening to, and how often you interact with particular friends. All of that data gets folded into a (presumably non-final) grid-centric app view for easy perusal, though at this point it’s not clear if Sony means to make that companion app available solely for its own devices.

And how does the Core connect to your phone? Bluetooth, naturally. It seems that the Core will occasionally send sensor data updates to the phone at which point it gets mashed together with all that social and entertainment information to complete Sony’s complete lifelogging package. In the event that the connection between the two is lost, the Core will continue to record that data and it’ll vibrate on your wrist as long as you’re within a certain range.

If this all sounds a little vague, know that it’s by design. Suzuki himself admitted that the Core’s time on stage today was little more than a teaser designed to whet wearable nerds’ appetites. And, as if he couldn’t resist the urge to paint a picture of an ambitious wearable future, Suzuki noted that Sony was engaging in talks with other hardware manufacturers so Core adopters will have a sizable array of accessories (like Sony’s own color wristbands) to pair with their tiny trackers.

You’ll have to forgive me for being just a little skeptical, as Sony hasn’t exactly had the best track record with its recent wearable forays. Its original SmartWatch was either ahead of its time or fundamentally flawed depending on who you ask, and the the jury is still out on whether or not that device’s successor will have any real staying power in a market that will soon be flooded with wrist-mounted displays. The Core is perhaps one of the more thoughtful takes on wearable tracker formula I’ve seen in recent months, but we’ll soon see if Sony’s clout and resources will be enough to convince the masses of Core’s value.

This is a developing story, please refresh for updates.

This year at Samsung’s CES special pre-conference press conference, the tone was somewhat different from years past: CEO and Chairman Kwon Oh Hyun started things off with an explanation of the market opportunity that stands before Samsung for the future. In some ways, it felt like a do-over of the special conference Samsung held last year for investors and analysts, which was designed to allay fears that the company has nowhere left to grow.

Samsung essentially argued that its growth will come from a deepening desire for innovation and technological change from consumers. Hyun noted that during the past 10 years consumers have embraced change faster than ever before, and that during the next decade they’ll embrace new tech even faster. The innovation will take place in 4 key areas that Hyun said will “change our world.”

Connectivity is the first of the four. Reach of smartphones and internet is growing, and adoption of these devices and services is skyrocketing around the world. It’s no secret that this is the case, of course, but it paves the way for Samsung’s vision of a broadly defined connected home.

A second pillar is urbanization. Half the world population lives in cities, Hyun noted, and that will be 60 percent by 2030. As populations grow, cities need to get smarter, Hyun says, and Samsung will help them do that. Plus, populations are aging, and in 10 years 1 billion people will be over 60. Hyun asked how tech make the lives of an aging population more comfortable.

Finally, there’s an opportunity to address changing climate and the challenges that brings up. Extreme weather events such as hurricanes have increased by 200 percent since 1990, he says. the home becomes the important place in everyone’s life in times of dramatic weather changes. So what tech will consumers need in their home/shelter of the future? It has to protect, be flexible and be responsive, and those are the guiding values Samsung is using to form its overall market strategy.

To protect means keeping people safe from outside threats including diseases, pollution and crime, so it’s likely we’ll see more connected security and home air quality/health monitoring gadgets. To be flexible means adapting to the changing nature of the average person’s work/life balance. Hyun noted that 11 million Americans now bring their work home and that number is always growing. As a result, our home spaces need to be open and multifunctional, with the ability to create and consume content anywhere, and any time.

Finally, our homes need to be responsive, which means according to Hyun that we want homes that understand our needs and show us key information and put us in control of our lives. Combined, Hyun says these three trends will shape the future home and provide Samsung with a huge opportunity for growth. Part of why is because the company makes chips, display panels and other parts, as well as devices, services and more.

The company pointed to its new Smart Home product on display at CES as a sign of where it’s seeing opportunity. This features things like remote doctor’s visits via TV for health and safety, as well as simultaneous TV viewing in the living room and on screens built into appliances for a more flexible living space that makes spending time with family easier. There are also new control interfaces, like using your Galaxy Gear to tell your home you’re going out and having it turn off air conditioning and lights as you exit.

From this big picture perspective, Samsung then brought out other executives to look at the various parts of its business in more detail, but arguably the most important message was this first one delivered from the helm about where Samsung sees its opportunity lying in the years to come. Sure, they trotted out Mark Cuban and Michael Bay (who choked massively, getting out barely a sentence before walking off stage thanks to a teleprompter fail). They drew a lot of eager photographers close to the stage with a totally useless “Bendable TV” that can go from standard flat to gimmicky curved screen with a button press. They introduced new tablets that actually do seem to do a lot more with Android than most company’s light skinning has done thus far.

Across all of this, though, the main message was clearly one of reassurance. Samsung ended last year and started this one-off with some significant drops in share value, and it needs to communicate more than just a continued commitment to making top-tier smartphones and tablets. The big picture vision of a connected future does posit a lot of growth potential for the right company, but it remains to be seen whether the parts demoed on stage today will add up to Hyun’s rosy picture of a tomorrow when Samsung makes your everything.

Hours after LG unveiled its webOS-powered smart TV interface at CES, Panasonic has spilled the beans on its own mobile-inspired TV plans — announcing a partnership with Mozilla to use the latter’s Firefox OS (FFOS) and open Web standards ethos to open up the living room’s primary screen.

Firefox OS can currently be found cooling its heels on some low-end phone hardware — mostly in Europe and developing markets in South America. The HTML5-based mobile OS has a mountain to climb in competing with the dominance — and reach — of Google’s Android OS. So Mozilla seeking to push it beyond mobile hardware to expand the ecosystem’s reach makes some sense.

Whether the FFOS interface is going to be compelling enough to bag Panasonic smart TV buyers at the expense of other offerings, or for developers to rally behind an open platform banner for building TV apps and integration remains to be seen.