Smart TVs, Windows phones and ultabooks invade CES day 1
By ANDY IHNATKO ai@andyi.com January 10, 2012 4:02PM
The Nokia Lumia 900.
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Updated: January 10, 2012 7:59PM
Day One of CES is actually Day Zero; technically it didn’t kick off until Microsoft’s post-dinner keynote but who has time to delay their demos and announcement? There are hungry bloggers out there waiting to be fed!
Smart TV
LG, Lenovo and Samsung were quick to announce new Internet-enabled Smart TVs. What’s a Smart TV? Unknown; it’s still a buzzword. Suffice to say that it’s “any TV that can offer you alternatives to watching “The Bachelor” on Monday night, above and beyond the other 400 other channels on your cable box.”
LG is the latest company to jump on the Google TV bandwagon. They had little difficulty catching it of course: the vehicle in question is in the same parking spot where it’s been idling since last year’s Consumer Electronics Show.
Sony, Samsung and other early adopters are releasing new models. Samsung’s integrates face, voice, and gesture recognition functions. So perhaps the next time a Kardashian pops up on another talk should and you react as any rational human would, your TV will react swiftly and surgically to prevent such a thing from ever happening again.
Lenovo seems to be going off on a slightly different trajectory with their K91 Smart TV. It’s powered by Google . . . but not Google TV. It runs Android 4.0, the very latest version of Google’s free OS. In the abstract, that seems like a smart play. TV and cable networks have already expressed concerns about Google TV and they’re unlikely to offer it much support. Their whole business is built on advertising. And here’s Google -- the world’s most powerful ad network -- trying to shimmy itself in between the viewers and the programming.
A TV that works more like a conventional PC sounds less threatening. Plus, if it presents itself to the Android Marketplace as a conventional Android device, then creating an app that works on the K91 (and Android sets like it) is a linear, progressive step. Networks are already building Android apps to deliver their content directly to phone and tablet users.
Or maybe this choice had more to do with the fact that (as yet) Lenovo will only sell the K91 in China. Well, a true Android-powered TV is still an interesting idea.
Meanwhile, Ubuntu is presenting their first wide demo of their new OS for smart TVs. Ubuntu is The People’s Linux, the easy and accessible Linux . . . it’s the Linux for people who have no opinions whatsoever about the merits of GNOME versus KDE and are certainly not willing to get so worked up about it that they’re willing to break the head off of your Boba Fett minibust. Now they’re building an OS for the easiest, most popular, and most opiate-like screen in the house. That’s great news and adds an interesting twist to a new and uncertain market. For now, Smart TV is more like a gold map than a gold rush. Everybody’s certain that there must be millions of dollars here . . . but nobody’s found it yet.
So there’s still lots of room for new ideas and new players. Ubuntu isn’t shipping anything for consumers. Instead, they’re reaching out to TV makers and hoping to displace Google smart TV systems (Google TV and Android) before either one can get a foothold.
Ultrabooks
Ultrabooks, as predicted, represent the major cluster of new product announcements. As I leaf through just what’s been shown off so far, the challenge facing ultrabook makers is pretty clear. An Ultrabook is simply a super-thin, super-light notebook. How does any one maker distinguish themselves, with so many similar designs?
HP and Samsung’s notebooks were spotlighted during Microsoft’s big kickoff keynote. Clearly, both companies are still feeling their way around the concept. Is the HP Envy 14 Spectre even an ultrabook? It’s about as heavy as a MacBook Pro and barely more than a tenth of an inch thinner. Its 14-inch screen fails to make the Spectre any more waiflike. The $1,499 sticker price is the cost of most midrange Windows notebooks . . . plus an iPad. It looks nice enough, but why bother? It’s no wonder that the ultrabook category is already getting blurred into two classes: “ultrabooks” and “ultraportables.”
Samsung’s Series 9 machine seems more like a fastball down the middle. It’s big -- a 15-inch display in a frame closer to the size of a 14-inch notebook -- and pricey ($1,499) but those are the the only gargantuan dimensions. The Series 9 is super-thin, it’s super-light, and it’s got a 10-hour battery . . . all in all, it feels like a sneak preview of what a 15-inch MacBook Air might look like.
Doing Yoga
You want something truly different? Check out Lenovo’s new Yoga. It’s a conventional laptop whose 13-inch screen turns almost a full 360 degrees. Once you’ve bent the screen past 180, the Yoga disables its mechanical keyboard and it becomes a tablet device.
It seems like a smart idea, given the upcoming release of Windows 8. The Yoga is a true hybrid. Type on it like a notebook, or fold it around and tap on it like a tablet. When its screen is turned 330 degrees, it stands as its own easel for hands-free reading, movie-watching, or even just occasional deskside or bedside use. Neat.
The Yoga coming in “late 2012.” (makes sense; that’s when Windows 8 is expected) to “selected markets” (uh-oh . . . will the US be Selected or not?). We’ll have to wait and find out how practical the design is . . . or how well that magical hinge will stand up to repeated twisting.
The phones
Phones, yes, they litter CES like the cigarette butts and tears of once-reasonable conventioneers who gambled away their homes in one barely-remembered evening. The big phone story of 2012 is Windows Phone. And HTC’s Titan II looks like it’s probably the most hysterically funny phone to be released in quite some time.
The Titan II seems to have taken most of its design ideas from the signature burgers at Carl’s Jr. Whatever McDonalds or Wendys or Burger King is selling, give ‘em more, more more. Seven patties. A half a pound each! Two . . . no, three layers of bacon! Four kinds of cheese! And a military grade of hot peppers that’s only recently been de-classified for civilian use.
So. The HTC Titan II. It has a 4.7-inch screen. It has a 16 megapixel camera. Those are very high numbers. Let’s put those numbers next to other numbers from other phones. Good heavens! Yes! 4.7 is a larger number than 4.5 or 3.5. How much bigger is 16 than 8? I can’t even imagine!
Yay! big numbers!
The folks at HTC are probably still celebrating so let’s just be quiet here while we talk about how silly those numbers are. The beauty of the Windows Phone OS is that it’s a clean, uncluttered, and elegant design. Unlike an Android phone, a Windows Phone doesn’t need a lot of real estate. So if anything, a large screen is a disadvantage; it makes it hard for people with smaller hands (like, I dunno . . . women) to operate the Titan. It’s a shame, because I reckon I can do more with just one outstretched thumb on a Windows Phone than I can with two hands holding Android.
And the 16 megapixel camera? Keep in mind that they’re packed on an image sensor the size of a grasshopper’s driver’s license. CNET shot and posted some photos they took with the Titan II and they’re as crummy as the current standard for smartphone cameras. The only difference is that the crummy photos are 16 megapixels instead of just 8.
Oh, and it’s 4G/LTE. Good. Faster is faster, and faster is better if you’re also able to switch off the LTE and drop down to 3G speed to conserve battery life.
In more sensible Windows Phone news, Nokia showed off the Lumia 900, which will soon become available from AT&T. The Lumia 800 (its international predecessor) has won high marks for its superior design and build. The 900 has a larger screen (4.3 inches; worrisome, but it doesn’t sound as immediately crazy as the Titan’s 4.7-inch display) and 4G data speed. If it’s anything like the 800, it’ll truly show off Windows Phone to its greatest advantage.
Which leads us nicely to Microsoft’s CES kickoff keynote. A few weeks ago, Microsoft quietly announced that they’re abandoning the slot they’ve held since 1995. Monday night’s presentation demonstrates why that was such a good move. They showed off very little that they hadn’t seen before. Microsoft’s new Windows app store will open in about a month, and Kinect is coming to Windows this year).
Some observers were actually kind of snarky about the lack of news. Why? Microsoft showed off plenty at their own developer conference a couple of months ago. Apple stopped appearing at major trade shows because scheduling their own events allowed them to announce things when they were ready, dammit, and not because their CEO was expected to show something shiny.
It’s actually the reason why I found Microsoft’s CES keynotes a little exasperating. Every new product or service that Steve Ballmer announced should have been preceded by the phrase “Wouldn’t it be awesome if some day we went ahead and did this?” and followed by “. . . Who knows, we might actually ship that.” Steve would hold up a spiffy Windows tablet, or demonstrate a near field communications device that looked interesting. Maybe we’d see it later. Maybe not. Who could say?
So Monday night’s keynote was actually refreshing, and in a way, it was more impressive: it was a parade of things that Microsoft had actually built and were readily available. The meat of the presentation was how well Windows Phone and Windows 8 and Xbox worked together. For the first time, Microsoft presented themselves as the curators of a suite of complementary products, all made by the same hands and which support and enhance each other. It’s by far the most valuable idea that anybody could possibly steal from Apple.
They’ve got Windows Phone. It hasn’t made much of an commercial impact yet but its siege machines appear to be nearly ready for an assault on iPhone and Android. Windows 8 has been built on the belief that owning an expensive tablet and an expensive notebook instead of a single, agile device is ludicrous. And there’s the Xbox, a game console that’s slowly and sneakily morphed into a multipurpose domestic computer over the past ten years. Windows Phone makes you want to have a Windows 8 tablet, which gets you interested in Xbox even if you’ve no real interest in gaming. The common theme is the Metro UI, which has already impressed me on Windows Phone and the developer build of Windows 8, and will hopefully continue to do so in the coming year.
I must offer one helpful note to Microsoft: I’m a fan of Windows Phone and the Metro interface but, um, “1+1=3” isn’t a great slogan for a computing device. We really hope for our computers to know that 1+1+1 is 3. Even John Lennon knew that, and he was stoned pretty much 24/7 while recording Abbey Road.
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