Laptops. Love them or hate them. They are the workhorse of mobile computing, despite the popularity of cutting-edge smartphones. Compared to predictable desktops, laptops have been keeping with the times with Bluetooth and cellular connectivity and sizes or form factours to please many.
Some very cool laptop designs and functionality are showing at CES 2018 expanding lifestyle, work and gaming needs.
IFA 2017 attracted more than 253,000 visitors to Berlin, a global trade show for consumer electronics and home appliances. With more than half of all trade visitors coming from abroad, IFA Berlin provided a huge boost for both manufacturers and retailers in the crucial run-up to the holiday period, which runs from Thanksgiving in the United States all the way to Christmas and the New Year. Once again, IFA was operating at full capacity, with 1,805 exhibitors showing their latest products and services on 159,000 square meters of fully booked show floor at Messe Berlin. The mood among exhibitors was highly optimistic, not least given the expected order volume of 4.7 billion euro achieved during the six days of the event.
The Annual 2017 IFA tradeshow in Berlin ends today with a slew of smart and sometimes crazy technology. Much was about the newest wearables, laptops, phones or speakers which are basically incrementally better than older models. But exciting technology is about how to do or experience things, in a new way.
Here are some of my favourites.
BIG AND SMALL HOME APPLIANCES The Smart Home appliance category ruled. German high end Miele’s Dialog oven uses a combination of electromagnetic waves (like microwaves) a convection fan and traditional radiant heating elements to cook food, precisely.
IFA Berlin 2015, one of the largest annual global tech shows, is again the launch base for the world’s coolest technologies.
Although IFA covers a broad spectrum of technologies and trends at home, work and play, the first two days are particularly exciting as global tech giants announce their newest technologies.
One hot item showing at IFA, are smart watches, with some 40 million to be sold this year. Half of that is expected to be Apple Watches. That still pales in comparison with the 1.5 billion smartphones that will ship this year.
Last week I attended the much anticipated New York launch of the ASUS ZenFone 2, a new flagship phone that is heating up the competition between Chinese-made contract-free smartphones with all the bells and whistles and leading edge performance.
The Zenfone 2 features a 13 MP camera with ASUS-exclusive PixelMaster camera technology, a much improved ZenUI user interface, Dual-SIM (well yes but only one will take 4G SIMS) ) Dual-Active (DSDA) capability, and a new performance level against ANY phone.
Why? Under the hood of the Hull HD 5.5 IPS + screen is a 64-bit four-core Intel Atom Z3580 (‘Moorefield’) processor with up to 4GB RAM and an Intel LTE-Advanced XMM 7260 modem. ASUS convincingly showed how the world’s first 4 GB RAM smartphone could juggle between four memory intensive games, pausing between all four and not missing a beat when switching between them.
How do you say I love you for Valentine’s Day with technology?
For a range of affordable new personal tech gift suggestions check out my globalnews.ca/techuntangled and Edmonton Global News Sunday Morning News Tech Talk segment.
If your love has no limit, here are a few items, costing more, that have a lot of tech love to give back for the next few Valentine’s years.
E-READERS
The Kobo WiFi Aura H20, $169.99, is an all-weather E Ink eReader with enough internal memory to carry 3,000 books. The 6.8 – inch antiglare 265 dpi screen features adjustable ComfortLight backlight technology for reading in brighter places.
The New Kindle eReader, $79, is winner in many ways. It’s small, light, with weeks of battery life, 20 per cent faster processing and twice the storage capability as the previous model. The new touch interface is simple and the new Word Wise feature makes it easier for readers learning English to understand new words.