- A cute rolling robot that follows you around,
an alien supercar that you're never gonna be able to buy,
and tech for everything from your wrist to your lap.
Hey, it must be CES.
(upbeat music)
CES might stand for Consumer Electronics Show,
but as someone on twitter said to me,
"Maybe the better title for 2020 is Concept Expo Show."
That's because of all the cool things I saw
in Las Vegas this year,
a little less that half of them,
might never come out at all.
The most egregious example of that
is the Mercedes VISION AVTR,
Mercedes actually flew me out
to CES this year specifically to see this,
but understand that this is what's known as a show car,
or a concept car,
it's never coming to market and that's not the point,
the point is to provide a vessel
that a manufacturer can use to explore futuristic concepts,
and of course push a marketing message.
In this case Mercedes wants everyone
to know it's thinking about the future, naturally,
the wheels let it crab walk side ways,
the entire console is a display,
and instead of a steering wheel and buttons,
you control the car using a haptic hump,
and air gestures with your hands,
but more importantly Mercedes seems
to want everyone to know it's thinking
about environmental impact.
Hmm, wonder why?
The car is names after the film Avatar,
and James Cameron was actually on stage here
in Vegas to talk about it,
and while the parallels to the message
of that film are maybe as on the nose as the message itself,
there are also more practical advances,
like organic battery technology made
from recyclable materials
and I'm sure we'll see some
of the cockpit interface concepts come
to production cars in the coming years as well,
mostly though, I'm just here for the scales.
Car companies aren't the only ones getting
in on the concept fun,
though this next one does have automotive DNA.
Oneplus was here showing off it's Concept One smartphone,
it's basically a redressed Oneplus 7 Pro,
with the same papaya leather McLaren uses in it's cars,
it's also got a new gold PVD coating
and camera lenses that hide away when you're not using them.
I don't think it's a big deal
to see exposed camera lenses,
but the science of how the company achieved it is cool.
There's a special electrochromic glass placed
over the camera array,
glass that changes it's opacity
when an electric current is passed through it,
besides looks there's one practical advantage here,
the glass can act as an ND filter,
which is a piece of camera gear
that helps when you're shooting outside in harsh sunlight,
and it's one of the remaining photo features
that hasn't yet come over to smartphones in a big way,
so that's really cool!
Oneplus says it has no plans to release this phone,
but I wouldn't be surprised to see this E-C glass
coming to a future model.
This footage is courtesy Android Central,
check out their full video on the phone to learn more.
And to round out the list
of things that might never get made, this is Ballie,
and it's meant to help out around the house
while it rolls around.
Samsung says that it can communicate
with your other appliances so if Ballie notices a mess
on the floor it can send your robot vacuum cleaner
to come take care of it,
or turn on the outside light if it hears you coming home,
honestly, all that stuff sounds way too far out to me,
you'd need compatible tech and all that,
but it's the social angle that interests me the most.
Ballie responds to voice commands,
it has it's own electric voice of sorts,
and it can follow you around.
Yes, like all the poor dead
or dying social robots that came before it,
Ballie's usefulness is limited,
it might never see the light of day,
but if it does come to market,
having a company the size of Samsung behind it,
might ensure it doesn't meet the same sad fate as,
yeah, Jibo.
I mean if Sony can make it work with Aibo
then why can't we have our own little BB-8
around the house, right?
Okay, so what is coming to market from this circus?
Well, Lenovo's Thinkpad X1 Fold
might look too futuristic to exist,
but it is absolutely coming out later in the year.
I covered this in depth in a dedicated video,
check out the channel for it
and if you missed it,
please subscribe so you don't miss the full review.
But what I didn't know when I made that video,
is that I would give it,
my best in-show award. (applause)
Look, I've said it a million times,
I think foldable screens are the future,
I bought a Galaxy Fold
and it's been my trade show phone this year
and the X1 Fold made me realize that,
that foldable future might be even more useful on PCs.
Oh, speaking of folding phones though,
TCL was on site with a prototype to demo,
the company stressed to me
that it won't be building this particular model,
but I am expecting a foldable
of some kind from TCL at some point, stay tuned.
We saw other more practical laptops here,
Asus showcased a smaller version
of that ZenBook Pro Duo I fell for back in the summer,
LG brought it's latest generation of gram laptops,
and they're just as durable
and impossibly light weight as ever,
and Samsung showcased the most exciting Chromebook I've seen
in a while.
The Chromebook Pixel looks so similar
to the Google Pixelbook from 2017
that I'm basically just gonna call it a sequel,
and like all great sequels,
it packs some awesome improvements.
The 4K OLED display, shockingly beautiful,
the Micro SD card slot, very useful,
tenth generation Intel processor,
up to a terabyte of storage and yeah,
the red option is somehow even more striking in person.
The problem, it's gonna be pricey
when it drops sometime in the first quarter,
it'll start at 999.
And finishing off with another familiar name,
the Fossil group was here,
with updates for almost all of it's smart watches.
Some of these are just style upgrades,
like the new color ways of Fossil Sport,
and new casing options on Hybrid HR.
Others are genuinely new models,
like the Skagen Falster 3,
which updates one of the most beautiful smartwatches
of 2018 with the new specs common
to all Fossil Gen 5 smartwatches.
There's also a new Diesel On Fadelite,
I cannot wait to get a hold
of a transparent casing and band,
and there's a new Gen 5 companion
for the Carlyle called the Garrett,
and yes, with the exception of the Hybrid HR,
these all run Google's WearOS for better or worse.
I'm gonna try and get a hold
of some of these for a full review,
let me know in the comments
which ones you'd most like to see me take for a test drive.
Was there more to see at CES,
god, so much,
from the Westworld dinner,
to Impossible's new meatless pork,
to the Future Tech Awards,
it was an utter avalanche of tech,
and it was a lot of fun.
If you wanna read more about it,
check out the coverage from my friends
at iMore and Windows Central
and if you want to hear us talk about it
for, I don't know, eight hours,
listen to the Android Central podcast,
I will link all of that in the description below.
Disclosure, MrMobile was flown
to Las Vegas for CES by Mercedes,
but the company had no editorial input into my coverage,
and they did not receive a copy
in advance of publication,
they're seeing it for the first time right alongside you.
Please subscribe to theMrMobile on YouTube
if you'd like to see more videos like this,
be sure to follow me on Instagram
to see a lot more of the tech
from the show that I didn't fit into this video
and a lot of behind the scenes craziness as well,
and stay tuned for the next big tech show
coming just next month,
Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Until next time, thanks for watching
and stay mobile my friends.