Another oddity in our biggest hits of the week was an early tip we received from an intrepid early-entrant to the convention. The Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 was photographed on a large screen standing proud at the massive Samsung booth that was opened early the next day. Even though Samsung really only “revealed” one new piece of hardware at the show, that single piece of hardware – and subsequent posts about that device’s power – ended up being more popular than many of our other hands-on and up-to-the-minute news posts.

From Brand New to Brand Reinforcement

While this year’s convention in Barcelona was larger than past years – at a new, larger venue with more floor space than ever – it ended up being commented on as more “dry” than shows in past years. That’s a rather subjecting thing to say, of course, but take note of massive releases at Mobile World Congress in the past, and you’ll see the trend. Instead of revealing brand new never-before-seen lines of devices and unique services at the convention, companies now appear to be showing more “here’s another from our already successful line” items – or no new hardware or software at all.

2010: The HTC Desire, Samsung Wave S8500 (with Bada!), Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10, Toshiba TG02 and K01, Acer Liquid e, and a whole lot more. [MWC 2010 tag portal]

2011: NVIDIA shows their Tegra roadmap and the superhero-themed code-names for processors we’re still seeing revealed today. Samsung reveals the Galaxy S II and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. LG shows the LG Optimus Pad (aka G-Slate) and the LG Optimus 3D. HTC shows a collection of smartphones and a tablet, as well as the Facebook phones Salsa and ChaCha. Google shows up with Eric Schmidt to speak at a main keynote while the Google Pod exploded unto the collective minds of attendees. [MWC 2011 tag portal]

2012: HTC revealed their HTC One series with the HTC One X, S, and V. ASUS shows a full line of Android-powered beastly tablets. The LG Optimus Vu, Sony XPERIA P, and game-changing Nokia Lumia 808 with 41-megapixel camera were all revealed – see more Nokia action in our 2012 MWC Nokia wrap-up specifically. Samsung seems to have started the trend of revealing their hero devices outside of MWC here with just two reveals at the event, one of them being the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1. Qualcomm brought the Snapdragon S4 dual-core SoC, Texas Instruments showed the OMAP 5, and oddly, Microsoft showed up to bring on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Google again brought Eric Schmidt and another Google Pod. [MWC 2012 tag portal]

This year we saw ASUS show a new version of a concept they’ve released before in the ASUS PadFone Infinity and a re-skinned but perfectly recognizable 7-inch tablet called the FonePad – look like the Nexus 7 to you? (Incase you did not know, they made that too, revealing it in an early iteration back at CES 2012 at the NVIDIA keynote then re-revealing it at Google I/O 2012 as the Nexus 7.)

We also saw Nokia reveal two new smartphones that apply what they’ve learned with the Lumia Windows Phone 8 devices they’ve had on the market for several months to two new sizes: Lumia 720 and Lumia 520. Groups like HTC and Motorola decided against revealing anything new at all, with the HTC One having been revealed one week earlier than the conference and the Motorola RAZR lineup being the center of a rather low-traffic Motorola presence.

The folks at HP decided to take a swipe at creating a real-deal Android tablet (quite likely because of the odd success the HP TouchPad had after it was essentially given away post-WebOS cut) – have a peek at the HP Slate 7 and see the Beats grab hold again.

ZTE revealed a new rather large smartphone in the Grand Memo, here showing for the first time the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC – but the actual hardware won’t be in stores until the third quarter of this year. LG brought on a relatively impressive selection of devices including the LG Optimus G Pro – but that device was revealed well before the conference started as well. The only things LG actually revealed during the conference were items like the “world’s smallest wireless charger” and a bit of some (admittedly rather impressive) HD wireless transmission technology.

If you’ll have a look at each of the several hands-on posts we’ve got from LG, you’ll see that they’ve really only confirmed that they’re sticking with the design language they wrote with the still-popular LG Optimus G. These devices are going to be winners, but as far as LG revealing their biggest beasts of the year at MWC – that simply didn’t happen. A “true” replacement for the LG Optimus G will come later this year in an LG-run event separate from a press conference, we estimate – you can count on it. The most interested news this week touching LG was, without a doubt, their purchase of WebOS from HP – the repercussions of this have not yet begun to ripple!

Where are the heroes?

So you’ve got Google who, for the past two years, had set up a playland of Android bits and pieces throughout the convention, deciding here to continue to command like a sigil guardian. There was no official Google stand, but they were there – and they did hold one heck of a yearly party. You’ll see more of the Google Head Space action in our LG Optimus G Pro Photo Tour of MWC 2013 – complete with Tinie Tempah, Florence and the Machine, and one massive amount of bright lights and dancing Androids – and a Google Play lounge as well.

Samsung remained a magnificently massive force on the floor, even with but one new device – again, an expansion of a line they’ve been building for a while now. Samsung continued to drop massive amounts of cash on advertising around the city during the week (and beyond, we’re sure), and had what very well may have been the largest hands-on-centric booth at the convention. There’s some contention amongst analysts (and would-be analysts) who cannot decide whether Samsung has “abandoned” the show by only revealing one device or are supporting it more than ever with such a hearty floor presence – with devices, to be fair, not everyone there had seen before.

HTC had for the past several years used Mobile World Congress as their big blast-off point for the whole year. This year they – perhaps rather wisely – decided to have a launch a week before the Spain-based show. This way they were able to capture several days of press on technology news sites for themselves AND offer hands-on looks at the device – the HTC One – to convention-goers too.

The NVIDIA crew did indeed bring some fire to the show with hands-on looks at both a Tegra 4-toting developer tablet and the Phoenix Developer Platform smartphone, made specifically for Tegra 4i. I don’t know if I can drive this point home enough times, but here it goes again: while the Phoenix device was new, the main subject remained the Tegra 4i (and the Tegra 4), with NVIDIA letting the news about everything they had at MWC 2013 – more or less – out well before the convention started so as to keep more press time to themselves – more than they’d get on convention week.

Qualcomm also had a rather large presence on the floor with their vast array of demonstrations of both devices running their hardware and showings of what’s possible in the near future with services such as AllJoyn. Qualcomm’s biggest push this past week was, indeed, for AllJoyn and the “Internet of Everything” as it appears that we’re getting really, really close to the beginning of that connectivity hitting the market. As AllJoyn gets closer to real announcements of hardware manufacturer and developers being on-board, the AllJoyn Alliance begins its switch from just OeM/Developer outreach to public outreach so users know what it’s all about. See our features with both the President of the Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. Rob Chandhok and Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs as well as our Qualcomm tag portal for the full story.

But again, most announcements made were not for a brand new product or service, but for expansions of services and the strengthening of bonds – with the occasional smartphone or tablet reveal mixed in.

It’s the function of the convention that’s changing

While we’ve heard more than just a few people suggesting that this is the year the tech convention dies, I’d like to suggest a different possibility. The function of the tech convention is morphing. It’s the collection of reasons that hardware companies, software companies, developers, and the press head to these conventions and present themselves that’s changing.

In the past – for a while – a company would come to a large convention such as Mobile World Congress to reveal their newest products. Very recently, it’s become clear to many large companies that they’re able to get more attention – and prolonged attention – if they host their own separate event for each product they launch during the year.

The method of creating separate non-convention events held by manufacturers of hardware (and sometimes software) will soon be the unquestionably dominant expected way of things. They’ll also be the “reveal” point for any truly important product. For the press that’s able to travel to each of these events during the year, the larger conventions will grow less and less important to attend.

For everyone else, conventions like Mobile World Congress will continue to represent an opportunity to get hands-on time with products they might otherwise have to wait to see in stores – and they’ll continue to be great for networking person-to-person as well.

Evolution

For someone like you, the reader, this all means that you’ll get your hands-on looks at brand new devices spread out further throughout the year as opposed to having them all bunched up at CES, CTIA, MWC, and the like. And that’s fine with us!

Spread the announcement love more evenly across the year and we expect we’ll have a more tasty experience. Maintaining interest in the consumer technology universe through releases spread out over the year means a healthier – and less predictable – industry as a whole.

Or so we hope!

Have a peek at our [Mobile World Congress 2013 tag portal] to see everything we saw this year at the convention, and stay tuned to SlashGear for more. We’re expecting big releases from companies like Samsung, Motorola, and Google relatively soon – and that they’ll be breaking out the release love more frequently than restricting themselves to conventions such as these would otherwise allow. Excitement on the horizon!

The original selection for best of show for CES 2013 by the staff at CNET was DISH’s Hopper with Sling Whole-Home HD DVR. When they announced this, CBS essentially swatted them down, telling them that they’d have to re-select the best because of an ongoing legal battle between CBS and DISH. The staff re-selected the best of show as the Razer Edge gaming tablet and that was that. Except that wasn’t that, and a massive fallout began to unfold.

In addition to bad blood and some jobs being self-terminated due to “journalistic integrity”, essentially, the largest result appears to be the Consumer Electronica Association taking back sole control of the CES awards. The CEA runs CES, if you did not know, and CEA President and CEO Gary Shapiro has let loose some harsh words for the likes of CBS and CNET, including, but not limited to: “We are shocked that the ‘Tiffany’ network which is known for its high journalistic standards would bar all its reporters from favorably describing classes of technology the network does not like.”

This set of words included in the note released today also brought forth the fact that the CEA will soon be looking for new help. The CEA has announced that they’ll be issuing a request for proposal (RFP) aimed at identifying a new partner to run the Best of CES awards program from this point forward.

This request is joined by assurances that “CES has enjoyed a long and productive partnership with CNET and the Best of CES awards” but that “the new review policy will have a negative impact on our brand should we continue the awards relationship as currently constructed.” This is of course in reference to the CBS edict that no reviews will be posted by CNET if they include products or technology currently included in litigation involving the company.

What do you think about this whole situation? Are you on one side of the argument or the other, or do you simply not know where you stand on everything at once?

[via CES]

The video essentially acted as the countdown timer to the start of the press conference, but it provides five minutes of soothing and relaxing gadget goodness that shows Sony engineers assembling the company’s products. Think of it as a reverse teardown of sorts, where they start with all the parts neatly laid out in front of them, and they finish with a completely assembled product.

It definitely gives you an idea of the complexity of circuitry that goes on inside Sony’s phones and cameras, and while their products probably aren’t assembled by hand like this (but rather in a factory by an assembly line), the video does a great job at showing you how these products get put together.

While five minutes does seem extremely quick to put together something as intricate as a smartphone or camera, there doesn’t seem to be any fast-forwarding of the assembly process going on in the video, proving that these engineers know what they’re doing, and we’re guessing that they’ve put together devices like this before on several occasions.

We’ll start right off with Vizio‘s 7-inch tablet, which is obviously the company’s answer to the wildly popular Nexus 7. Its specs aren’t all that different from those of the Nexus 7 either, sporting 1200 x 800 resolution, 16GB of internal memory, and a NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor. Users will also have WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity at their disposal, and for a 7-inch tablet, this one looks pretty good. The tablet itself looks sleek and the visuals are sharp thanks to the 1200×800 resolution. It also feels pretty good in the hand, as most 7-inch tablets seem to.

Moving right along to the 10-inch tablet, we’ll have 2560 x 1600 resolution, so starting right off, we can already see similarities between it and Samsung’s Nexus 10. With that kind of resolution, I’d typically be worried that the processor would struggle a bit, but this tablet is running a brand new Tegra 4 under the hood. Add to that 32GB of internal storage with the option to expand thanks to the microSD slot, Bluetooth 4.0 functionality, and a microHDMI port, and you’ve got a tablet worth getting excited about.

The screen on the 10-inch tablet looks absolutely great, and if you’ve seen the display on the Nexus 10 in person, then you should have a relatively good idea of what to expect. The only downside is that 7-inch tablets seem to have spoiled me and 10-inch tablets now feel weird to hold. That’s more likely a personal hang up than a negative mark against Vizio, but in any case, this tablet certainly isn’t without heft. What’s more, swiping through screens on the tablet seemed very smooth, and there were only a few dropped frames that I noticed during HD video playback. There’s no word on when this bad boy will launch, but expect to be waiting awhile considering that Vizio wants to put a Tegra 4 in it.

All in all, I was pretty impressed by what I saw from Vizio. These tablets may not being anything incredibly new, but they’re still both solid pieces of equipment. Now we wait for release dates to be announced, which could be some time away in the case of the 10-inch tablet. Vizio’s 7-incher is scheduled for launch sometime in the first half of 2013, so we’ll have to see if Vizio can stick with that launch window. Be sure to check out our CES hub for all you need to know from the show!

A company by the name of Tech Tips created a detachable fingernail attachment of sorts that acts as a stylus. From there, the company figured out a way to embed the technology into wearable and fashionable fingernails. Nano Nails hide a tiny capacitive tip under the index fingernail that can be detected by a touchscreen just like a fingertip would, and it’s completely invisibile unless you’re looking for it.

The stylus nails will save you from having to carry a separate stylus, and since they’re glued to your finger, they’re always at the ready. There is a slight learning curve to Nano Nails, which is mostly getting used to using the proper angle for the tip to make contact with the display, but it’s certainly better than having to blindly tap at your phone with the pad of your finger.

Nano Nails will be available in either a full press-on nail or a nail tip, and the company expects them to sell in packages of four or six for around $10. They can also be put on by either the wearer or applied professionally at a salon. Tech Tips expects to start shipping the new product sometime this May.

[via CNET]

While we weren’t given an exact figure, the total number of attendees this year didn’t surpass last year’s total of just over 156,000. Still, we felt pretty cramped while walking the various halls, and we no doubt had to push our way through to make it to the next booth in order to get some ample hands-on time with the latest toys.

However, CES 2013 was the biggest in its 45-year history in terms of square footage, with more than 1.92 million square feet of exhibit space, compared to 1.86 million a year ago. Over 3,250 exhibitors showed off 20,000 new products at the show this year, and the attendee list included 35,000 people from overseas, with folks from over 170 countries making an appearance at the show.

The number of attendees still has to be audited later this spring, which is why we don’t have an exact number, but it should still be around that 150,000 mark. In any case, we definitely saw a number of famous faces at the show, including Maroon 5, Alicia Keys, Bill Clinton, Justin Bieber, LL Cool J, and Snooki. Here’s hoping that CES 2014 will be just as jam-packed with fun.

Launching in Q1 2013, the panel apparently brings not only a bump in resolution over Samsung’s previous AMOLEDs – the Galaxy S III, for instance, has a 4.8-inch 720p screen – but a cut in power consumption. The company claims the newer panels use 25-percent less juice than before, thanks to a switch-up in materials, while a low-power mode cuts the battery drain by almost half.

It’s YOUM technology we’d really like to see show up in the wild, however. Samsung’s mock-ups weren’t flexible in the sense of being bendable by the user, but instead wrapped the panel around the edges of the device; since AMOLEDs can selectively turn on sections of the display while leaving other parts shut off, that could mean the side of your phone might perpetually show a status ticker – with new message alerts, battery and signal indicators, IM previews, music playlist details, or other information – while consuming minimal power.

That’s an idea Nokia has flirted with in its Gem concept phone, though there the touchscreen was altogether more comprehensive, envisaged as wrapping around the whole device. Meanwhile, Samsung itself has dabbled in dual-displays, with the Continuum of late 2010 having a pair of screens. Since Samsung didn’t have flexible panels available at the time, however, it put both displays on the front of the handset.

Exactly when we can expect to see YOUM displays in shipping devices is unclear, however. Samsung’s original plan was to begin volume-production of the technology in 2012, but according to sources within the company opted to delay that roadmap and focus instead on regular AMOLED panels, which were still in high demand thanks to strong sellers like the Galaxy S III.

We’ll start with the Pebble smart watch, a device that had visitors to CES clamoring for a look left and right. The Kickstarter darling was on display at CES 2013, with SlashGear managing to secure some hands-on time with the device despite the chaos that seemed to follow Pebble everywhere it went. We also got the chance to sit down with Pebble CEO Eric Migocovsky to talk about what makes the watch stand out from the competition and why it became such a hit with Kickstarter users. The company also talked about developers, apps, and how its future proofing the device, along with revealing when Pebble will begin shipping out to consumers (spoiler: its ship date is right around the corner).

Pebble netted a lot of attention during the show, but there were a couple other watches that managed to stick out despite Pebble’s presence. One of these watches was the the eInk CST-01, which has the distinction of being the world’s thinnest watch (it looks pretty sleek too, if we do say so ourselves). Next we come to the Martian Passport Watch, which boasts voice commands and Bluetooth to allow for simple connectivity to your Android or iOS device. If you’ve been in the market for a new watch, CES 2013 offered a bevy of potential choices.

The same could be said for smartphone cases at CES 2013. It isn’t much of a surprise that many of the cases we saw were for Apple’s relatively new (but nonetheless incredibly popular) iPhone 5. Otterbox was on-hand to show off its new Armor series and Defender series, using Apple’s latest iPhone to display them. Just the same, Pelican announced its first foray into the world of smartphone cases with its new ProGear Vault cases for the iPhone 5 and iPad mini. olloclip made itself stand out from the rest of the case manufacturers by offering one iPhone 5 case that has lens system, while Lifeproof was showing off a number of accessories for its iPhone 5 case, including a bright orange “Life Jacket” meant to keep your phone afloat if it ever goes overboard.

One of the coolest things to happen during CES 2013 was when the TATS CRU customized our Cygnett ICON cases right there in person. It wasn’t all just about iPhone 5 cases, however, with Pelican showing off a pair of new cases for the Galaxy S III, and ONGUARD introducing us to a rather unique origami case for the Nexus 7 (though the origami case is also available for the iPhone 5 and iPad).

Just as well, there seemed to be an awful lot of speakers on display on the show floor. SoundMatters had its Dash 7 portable Bluetooth speaker primed and ready for the spotlight, while SuperTooth was showing off its Disco Twin stereo Bluetooth speakers. If you’re looking for something a little more out of the ordinary, iuiDesign’s Mirror Boombox might be worth a look, considering its based on the side mirrors of a Mini Cooper car.

We also went hands-on with the HMDX Jam Plus and Burst speakers, which are cylindrical and available in all sorts of different colors. TYLT, which was there primarily to show off its Energi backpack that can charge three devices at a time, also had its TUNZ Bluetooth speaker on-hand, though this one comes with the bonus of NFC functionality.

Corning Optical Cables kept the Apple train moving by introducing new Thunderbolt cables aimed at the budget crowd during the show, so we imagine that those will be a big hit given the cost of spare Thunderbolt cables. Fitbit Flex is looking to to tackle the fitness monitoring business that Jawbone has conquered, while MpowerD was offering a waterproof, solar-powered lantern that seems perfect for the more adventurous among us.

Wearables seemed to be a pretty big thing at CES 2013. We already told you about TYLT’s Energi backpack and its device-charging capabilities, but TYLT had some competition from the likes of Spigen with its new SGP backpack. The SGP has enough pockets and storage areas to satisfy even the most serious gadget hoarder, and it’s also lined with super soft fabric that will keep your devices free of scratches. Then there’s the prototype TEC Jacket 2.0, which among other things features a battery pack for on-the-go charging and an antenna to boost your mobile data speeds. It’s lightweight to boot, so don’t be surprised to see this bad boy take off once its eventually released.

Griffin used the show to introduce a trio of new products. First up is its Powerdock 5, which as you can imagine can charge up to five devices at a time. The company was also showing off its StudioConnect iPad dock, which comes complete with a Lightning connector, making it compatible with Apple’s newest slate offerings. While those two were impressive, Griffin also had the very cool Crayola Light Marker on hand. The best description we could come up with for this device was calling it a “laser pointer on steroids,” so you’ll just have to check out our hands-on for more.

While many companies were announcing a collection of new products at CES 2013, there was also a number of one-off devices that were just as cool. These include Tethercell, which lets you use an app on your smartphone to control devices powered by double-A batteries (seriously, it’s super awesome), and the Silverlit Mercedes-Benz RC Car that’s controlled using your iOS device – and also features speakers you can use to stream music! Ion Scratch 2 is looking to outfit your iPad with actual DJ controls, and the Belkin WeMo light switch wants to bring light switches into the Internet age, offering connectivity with your iOS or Android device.

Kingston had its 1TB flash drive on display during the show, and though it’s a bit bulkier than the flash drives we’re used to seeing, it’s still incredibly small considering it houses a full terabyte of storage. We all know that power is always a difficulty, with many of us experiencing dead cellphone batteries at the worst possible times more than once. MiPower has taken it upon itself to solve that problem with its new PowerCube 8000M, which packs in 8,000mAh to make sure that you’ve always got enough juice to share between your devices.

Finally, there were a number of companies showing off new headsets. Turtle Beach had a collection of gaming-centric headsets at the show, introducing us to its new PX51, XP510, and SEVEN series headsets. Monster also targeted gamers out there with its MVP headset, which signifies a partnership with Electronic Arts, one of the biggest games publishers around. Last but not least, we got to spend some time with the Sennheiser MOMENTUM Black headphones, and boy do they looks sharp.

So there you have it folks – we weren’t kidding when we said that CES 2013 was in many ways all about the accessories. There were plenty of impressive devices and accessories on display, and we’re excited to get the chance to spend more time with these as the year goes on. As always, you can find any news from the show you may have missed at our CES portal!

A quick recap, if you’ve not been keeping up. Revealed at IFA 2012 last September, the Galaxy Camera blends a 16-megapixel camera with a 21x optical zoom together with Android as per the Galaxy S III smartphone. We had a mixture of AT&T and the recently-released Verizon versions of the Galaxy Camera, each using 4G LTE networks (there’s WiFi b/g/n, but we rarely took the time to hunt down local wireless networks) [Update: The Verizon version uses LTE; AT&T's maxes out at HSPA+]. Just about all of the regular Android apps run on the camera, including Instagram, but we stuck with Samsung’s default app, that can also record Full HD 1080p video.

Our thinking was that, rather than shooting in our normal style – swapping out memory cards and offloading media to a laptop whenever convenient – we would use the Galaxy Camera’s wireless connectivity to upload photos and videos directly to the cloud. By using Smugmug, which has a dedicated app for Android, we could automatically watermark each shot and keep all of the media together in a place where the whole team (whether physically present at CES or otherwise) could access it.

In practice, that turned out to be largely the way the team worked, at least in more time-critical situations. Tag-teaming on press conference coverage, one person could shoot content and pick the best of the images to upload, all wirelessly, while the other person could pull their preferred images from the Smugmug gallery. With product hands-on, there was no “which memory card were those photos on?” confusion, since the images had already been uploaded.

Functionality is useless if the quality is lacking, though happily that wasn’t our experience with the Galaxy Camera. For best results you’ll usually get the most ideal images from a DSLR, unsurprisingly, but heavy, bulky cameras aren’t especially suited to the booth-hopping of a show like CES. In fact, we were able to coax some decent results from the Samsung – our Pebble smartwatch hands-on photos were all taken with the Galaxy Camera, for instance – while the 21x optical zoom proved invaluable for getting closer to items on-stage during press conferences.

Pebble smartwatch photo samples:

The Galaxy Camera isn’t perfect, mind. We experienced the odd focusing issue, where the Samsung would be reluctant to lock onto close-up subjects. That could usually be addressed by repositioning the frame and trying again – or backing off a little altogether – but it was frustrating when it happened, and interrupted our workflow. The uploading process could also be fiddly; we were using the Smugmug app, through which we could choosing individual photos and videos to be uploaded to a gallery in the cloud, but each required separate selections.

It’s also not ideal to be jumping in and out of the camera app, picking content to be uploaded. Some sort of briefly-shown “Upload This” button shown displayed with the preview frame after each shot is taken would be great, as would easy onboard watermarking. A double-save – one lower-res copy for uploading more quickly, and a higher-res original kept on the memory card for later – would also be useful. It’s worth noting that most of our complaints could be addressed by apps, which the Galaxy Camera’s Android OS would make easy to install – not something you could say about most point-and-shoots.

So what have we learned? Our experiment to integrate the Galaxy Camera into our workflow isn’t over, with a trial-by-fire at CES highlighting some of the Samsung snapper’s shortcomings. We returned to an old-fashioned whip-out-the-memory-card style workflow at a couple of points, for instance, usually when there was a particularly urgent image we specifically needed. It proved difficult to edit the upload priority of content in the task list, forcing us to go manual with our offloads. Samsung’s onboard video editing app proved fiddly to use on the go, and we quickly reverted to more traditional editing once the footage was on our computer.

For its balance of convenience and performance, though, the Galaxy Camera has impressed us again. When time is of the essence – and when we’re incredibly excited to bring you the latest news, as soon as possible – the effectiveness of an online camera is demonstrable. We’ll be tweaking with alternative apps and maybe even cooking up some custom software of our own, just so that we can better embed the Samsung into the SlashGear system, so expect to see more photos and video shot on the Galaxy Camera through 2013!

Thanks to Samsung who loaned us a number of Galaxy Cameras, with no expectations as to whether/how we might use them at CES, or indeed subsequently report on them.

A ton of the new products announced at CES were built for the iPhone or iPad — mostly accessories, mind you, but there were a ton of accessories lining the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center, and while we covered a crap-ton of new accessories here at CES, there were still a truckload that we never got to. Company after company had new iPhone and iPad cases, like OtterBox, who unveiled new additions to their Armor and Defender series of cases, and Pelican, who introduced the ProGear Vault series. Olloclip showed off a new lens for the iPhone 5, Lifeproof had new cases and mounts, Cygnett had some custom cases for the iPhone 5, Belkin had a nifty speaker case for the iPad, and ONGUARD had fancy origami stands for Apple devices.

That doesn’t even begin to touch the surface, folks. Griffin introduced the StudioConnect iPad dock, as well as the Crayola Light Marker, which was made specifically for…you got it…the iPad. However, companies who didn’t have accessories to announce or sell were still showing off the Apple brand. Many companies demoed their new products with none other than iPhones and iPads, including Parrot with their AR.Drone 2.0, Liquipel with their water-resistant coatings, Harman with their Aha integration with Porsche, Tethercell with their smartphone-controlled batteries, SilverLit with their Mercedes RC cars, Martian with their Passport smartwatch, Belkin with their NetCam HD, and Ford with their in-car Sync technology. And finally, we also saw Corning release new Thunderbolt cables, Ion unveiled Scratch 2 Go for the iPad, and Behringer released a new line of speakers and audio equipment with AirPlay.

*Takes gasp of fresh air*

Other than all the companies showing off new products for Apple devices, and using iOS devices to demo various products, we also noticed the abundance of MacBooks being used in the press rooms at CES. Our team alone consisted of all MacBooks except for one team member, and we had an iMac back at our temporary headquarters that took care of any heavy video work.

Is all this Apple swag a bad thing? Of course it’s not — I think it goes to show just how much of an impact Apple products have had on a lot of people, and will continue to have. And while Apple isn’t directly participating in all of the CES festivities here in Sin City, their logo is plastered everywhere, and they’re not paying a dime for it. Companies want to spend money on things that are worthwhile and that have the biggest audience — the Samsung Galaxy S III was up there, but it was ultimately the iPhones and iPads that stood out in the end.

When we were introduced to Project SHIELD at NVIDIA’s press conference during CES, the company’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang prefaced the situation with assurances on the future: “Next-generation gamers play literally on whatever they can, whenever they can. Just like we enjoy movies on multiple screens, just like we listen to music on multiple devices.” Though the delivery couldn’t have been as powerful as the initial reveal of the iPod, a revolutionary device for the music industry (referenced in the conference earlier as such), NVIDIA intended and intends to push Project SHIELD as a revolutionary device for the gaming industry.

We had a chat with Nick Stam, Technical Marketing Director for NVIDIA (as you’ll see above), in which we were told that not only is Project SHIELD a real project, but it’ll be coming to the market in the second quarter of 2013 as an NVIDIA-branded piece of equipment. Though the idea of creating a bridge between large hardware (PC and console) and small hardware (mobile) gaming may be more significant than the actual SHIELD device, the device is being prepared for a real release.

“What you’re seeing here is a Beta version that we’re showing at CES – and there may be some modifications to the physical design elements, some of the software elements, but our plan is to ship this Project SHIELD under an official marketing name in Q2. That’s our plan: in Q2 2013 in retail. So in retail and e-tail, with an NVIDIA name.” – Stam

NVIDIA has appeared in the news essentially the same amount of times for its mobile processor business as it has for its high-powered computing components over the past year. As we see them tie the two together with SHIELD as well as NVIDIA GRID for cloud-based gaming companies and NVIDIA GeForce Experience for high-powered gaming optimization, the circle can be made complete. With the continuation of NVIDIA’s rather successful GeForce GPU lineup and the new Tegra 4 mobile processor (also just revealed this past week) as well, NVIDIA has created a new ecosystem for themselves.

You’ll need GeForce GPU power to stream games from your PC to your Project SHIELD device, and though any number of games will work on the device from the Google Play market for Android, NVIDIA’s Tegra Zone will surely be the place where you’ll find the best of the best, optimized for the Tegra 4 processor you’ve got under the hood, made perfect for the physical controls you’ve got in front of you.

It’s difficult to say how much of an impact this device will have in and of itself as far as sales go – certainly not until we see the price, at least. The confidence with which NVIDIA presents this device as a knot that ties together its two major product lines – PC and mobile – that’s what will have the biggest effect on their future. No other company made such a unique product ecosystem presentation at CES 2013.

And yet, CES is a necessary evil. Like it or not, the show is what the industry needs to ensure that the average non-Apple company can actually get some attention in a world dominated by the iPhone maker.

In some ways, the technology industry has become a sad place. Apple’s success has tossed all other companies in its growing shadow, and those firms can only hope to come out when the iPhone maker isn’t looking. Each year around this year, such an event happens.

CES is the opportunity that small vendors and even large companies like LG, Dish, and so many others, need to finally communicate their products to customers. For once, those companies can sit in front of a packed audience and show off their plans for the years. Better yet, they can get in touch with journalists, hold one-to-one meetings, and (hopefully) excite them into thinking that their latest inventions are the next big things in technology.

All of the rest of the year, things are much different for those companies. They’ll send out a press release here and there and typically receive a story or two. If they’re lucky, the average consumer will pay attention long enough to find out when the product will launch and how much it costs. If they’re really lucky, those companies might even be able to get the consumer out of their home and into the store to try the product out. And if they’re really, really lucky, those folks might just buy the respective device.

That’s the world that Apple, Microsoft, and Google has created. The big three are garnering all of the attention in the technology industry, and just about anything they have to say is newsworthy. All other companies are hoping to fill in the ever-smaller gaps that line up around them.

CES, though, levels the playing field. Apple is nowhere to be seen at the show, and Google and Microsoft hardly have a presence. CES, therefore, is open to smaller or less important companies that want to share off their wares while the giants are off working on products that will steal the world’s attention all the other days of the year.

That’s precisely why CES should not – and cannot – be shuttered. As big and annoying as it is, the show serves a very important purpose in the technology industry. And without CES, it’s hard to see how companies will be able to get their products out there and into our increasingly busy lives.

So, perhaps we should have a little patience with CES. Sure, it’s not what it used to be and there are increasingly boring aspects to it, but it’s an important event, nonetheless. And we can’t discount that.

Find all of our CES 2013 news at our CES Hub!

We’ll jump right in with Vizio’s Thin + Light Touch line of notebooks. As you might have already guessed, the major focus with these new laptops are Windows 8 and a thin and lightweight form factor. In those two areas, the notebooks do not disappoint, with Vizio offering one with a 14″ touchscreen and the other with a 15.6″ display. Ready for some great news? 1366×768 resolution is nowhere to be found with these two notebooks, with the 14″ model offering up 1600×900 and the 15.6″ variant going all the way with 1080p resolution.

Interestingly enough, Vizio will be offering a number of different configurations that you’ll be able to choose from depending on your taste. Both the 14″ and the 15.6″ models will come packing either a 2.4GHz Intel Core i7 processor and integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics, or an AMD A10 4657M clocked at 2.3GHz with discrete Radeon HD graphics. Either configuration should keep things running smooth, especially considering that both come with 8GB of RAM and solid-state drives.

As you’ve probably already figured out, the full HD display on the 15.6″ inch model looks great, though 1600×900 doesn’t look bad either – the only thing its missing is the full HD capabilities of its bigger brother. The keyboards on both are excellent, though the buttons do seem slightly bigger than most notebook keyboards, so that might take some getting used to. Both are very slim when they’re closed and relatively lightweight, so while we can’t exactly classify either as an ultrabook, they’re toward the bottom of the size scale for notebooks.

Next up is Vizio’s new all-in-one touch line. These all-in-one touch PCs will come in 24″ and 27″ varieties, with the 24″ coming with the option of a 2.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 and Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics or a quad-core AMD A10 4600M 2.3GHz and Radeon HD 8750A discrete graphics. For the 27″ it looks like the only option is that 2.4GHz Core i7 quad-core and Intel 4000 integrated graphics. Both will come with a 1TB hard drive and a 32GB SSD to offer a performance boost, so don’t plan on storing too much stuff on that SSD.

While both screens look excellent and, like the new Windows 8 notebooks on the way, offer 10-point multitouch, there’s one feature in particular that’s very interesting about these all-in-ones: the power supply also doubles as a subwoofer. With many all-in-one PCs, we often run into issues with sounds and tinniness, but that subwoofer will give Vizio’s all-in-one touch PCs a certain boost that other packages lack. There are a number of ports on the base, meaning that you won’t have any ugly cables sticking out of the sides of your computer. To be specific, both models feature two HDMI ports, and Vizio told us that users won’t need to boot to Windows before switching to their HDMI inputs.

Those HDMI ports will come in handy if you want to watch a movie on the excellent screens, and Vizio is trying to make this a true-to-form multimedia center with the addition of a remote. The keyboard is pretty similar to the ones we saw on the company’s new notebooks, at least from an aesthetic standpoint. Obviously, all-in-one PCs aren’t for everyone, but if you’ve been in the market, we’re seeing some great things coming from Vizio with these computers.

So, even though the Windows 8 tablet was the Vizio product that originally caught our eye, we ended up impressed with the notebooks and all-in-one PCs the company will soon be bringing to the table. Vizio should give itself a pat on the back, because as far as we’re concerned, the company managed to stand out in a sea of other manufacturers that are ready and willing to show off new products at CES 2013. Be sure to check out CES portal for even more from the show!

While that’s impressive enough, it gets even better: Project SHIELD won’t just play Android games, but is also capable of streaming games over Wi-Fi from a computer outfitted with a GeForce GPU. During our hands-on time with the device, we got to see it streaming Black Ops II to its 5-inch 720p screen, so there’s certainly plenty to look forward to with this new device. The streaming functionality makes a good segway to another major announcement from the company – NVIDIA GRID.

With NVIDIA GRID, we’re seeing NVIDIA enter the cloud gaming space, outfitting its server racks with enough GeForce GPUs to supposedly match the power of 700 Xbox 360s. A number of key players have failed or otherwise stalled out in the cloud gaming space, so it’ll be interesting to see if NVIDIA can excel. The company also gave us more details about GeForce Experience, which will do its best to optimize your graphics settings so that games run as good as they can on your rig.

Of course, the show wasn’t only about NVIDIA. The company made a lot of major gaming announcements – that much is true – but it had quite a bit of competition for gamers’ attention. Razer had its Project Fiona tablet on hand at the show, only now it’s been renamed the Razer Edge. Making use of Intel’s third-gen Core line of processors (with one configuration even sporting a Core i7) and an NVIDIA GT640M LE GPU, this tablet definitely has some stellar hardware. It will also have a number of accessories available separately, including a detachable controller dock, keyboard dock, 360-esque gamepad, and docking station that has all the ports you need to turn your Edge into a mini gaming desktop.

As you might imagine, we found during our hands-on time that playing games on the Razer Edge is a blast, and seeing triple-A retail titles like Dishonored running on it at excellent frame rates certainly was exciting. It seems safe to say that if the Edge catches on with gamers, then we can look forward to a whole new era in mobile gaming.

Archos was at the show, and though it had a number of different devices on display, one of the more intriguing products was its GamePad. The Archos GamePad is another tablet made specifically for gamers, though it comes with a far less expensive price tag than the Razer Edge. As one of the only Android tablets to provide physical face buttons, this makes the tablet a prime choice for people who like enjoy games but hate touchscreen controls. In our hands-on, we said that though you’ll have to map the physical controls for a fair number of Android games, the process seems pretty easy, and should keep the downtime between downloading and gaming short.

Right before Pepcom kicked off, we heard that Xi3 and Valve would be showing off a new product. Xi3 was there in force at Pepcom, showing off its brand new 7 series modular computer, and while we made a few guesses at what Valve would be using it for, in the end it turned out that we were wrong. It would appear that Valve has invested heavily in Xi3′s modular computer to offer set-top “Steam boxes,” meant for gaming and streaming content, so we’ll be keeping and eye on that.

Switching gears completely to move from hardware to peripherals, there were two companies in particular that were showing off new gaming mice. One was Genius, which let us get a little hands-on time in with its relatively new Gila mouse. The Gila comes with a number of accessibility options, letting users program any of the twelve buttons and featuring highly adjustable dpi settings.

Mad Catz is not one to be outdone, however, giving us a look at its new R.A.T.M and M.O.U.S.9 mice. If you’re a serious PC gamer, these mice seem to be aimed directly at you. Both mice are quite similar, with the M.O.U.S.9 being just a bit bigger than its brother. Both have very unique designs as far as gaming mice go, with buttons everywhere on the pair. They each can supposedly boast one year of battery life as well, so that’s something to get stoked about if you’re always on your gaming PC.

In the end, this was actually a pretty big year for gaming at CES. All of the stuff we saw during the show will of course being popping up more and more as the year goes on, and we’re hoping that we’ll get the chance to spend much more time with Project SHIELD, the Razer Edge, and the Archos GamePad soon. Keep it here to SlashGear for more information on all of these cool devices, and in the meantime, be sure to check out our CES portal for our full show coverage.

The lens on this machine is a 28mm F1.8 wide angle, making sure your next-level photos bring on a life that’ll make you want to stick with Pentax through the future. The middle of this device is a texturized rubbery black while the top and bottom are a cool metallic with brass panels up top and down below. This machine will be available sometime inside 2013, likely by the time Summer rolls around.

Also revealed this week was the Pentax Q10′s new ultra-vast collection of body colors. You’ll now be able to pick 100 different custom color combinations for the Pentax Q10 – and it still feels so nice to use this classic body and set of controls. Have a peek at pure red here and create your own at the Pentax studio online. You’ll be able to pick your own body color and your own grip color – go wild!

For those of you that didn’t see this camera back when it was announced in September of 2012, it’s a real live interchangeable lens system-toting camera with a 12.4-megapixel sensor all in the size of “a pack of cards.” It’s small and it’s powerful, those two things are certainly true. Have a peek at a whole lot more CES 2013 coverage in our CES portal and be sure to stay tuned to our Pentax tag for more camera action all year long!

The IdeaPhone K900 is a beast of a phone. It has a 5.5-inch 1080p IPS display with an Intel Atom Clover Trail Z2580 processor inside. There’s also a Sony Exmor BSI sensor with an F1.8 focal length lens to make up the 12MP rear camera, and it has the widest aperture of any smartphone-based camera right now. The front-facing camera has an 88-degree viewing angle, which again, is the widest angle lens on the market right now for a smartphone.

We also took a look at the Sony Xperia Z, which is a completely waterproof smartphone and the company’s newest and best device to date. It’s got a 5-inch TFT LCD HD Reality Display, Qualcomm’s S4 Pro APQ8064+MDM9215 quad-core processor with 2GB of RAM, and an internal storage size of 16GB. There’s also a 2,330 mAh non-removable battery that provides up to 14 hours of talk time or up to 510 hours of LTE standby time. And of course, the 13MP camera on the back will allow you to get some excellent shots.

The infamous YotaPhone also made an appearance this week, and it’s a smartphone that actually has two 4.3-inch displays — there’s the main one on the front that’s a regular LCD 720p HD display, and then the back has an e-ink display. The e-ink screen is meant to stay on all the time, and the purpose of the phone is to push whatever you have showing on the LCD to the e-ink display for saving battery.

Chinese manufacturer Huawei unveiled two new phones at CES, with one being a gargantuan 6.1-inch phablet-style smartphone, the Ascend Mate. The specs are fairly disappointing, with only a 720p HD display and an 8MP camera, but the 6.1-inch screen definitely turned some heads at the show, for better or for worse. The company also announced the Ascend D2, which has a 5-inch 1080p HD display and a 13MP camera. It also has a 1.5 GHz quad-core Hi-Silicon K3V2 + Balong V7R1 processor, 2GB of RAM, and 32GB of internal storage. The device itself is a little chubbier than most smartphones on the market right now, but it’s extremely lightweight.

ViewSonic, who’s mostly known for their great computer displays, outed a new 24-inch Smart Display that runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. It comes packing with an NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor with 4-PLUS-1 technology, and it also has HDMI via MHL, full-sized USB, and Bluetooth connectivity. While the company refers to it as a display, it’s essentially a massive tablet that comes with all sorts of goodies, including Tegra Zone with a handful of games the work with NVIDIA’s Tegra line of processors. Of course, it has a stiff MSRP of $675, so be sure to bust out that piggy bank and save up your coins.

Some other new Android stuff we saw was the ZTE Grand S LTE, packing a 5-inch 1080p display, as well as the Pantech Discover, which is AT&T’s latest budget powerhouse, sporting a 4.8-inch 720p TFT display, a 13MP camera, and a dual-core Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon S4 processor, all for the price of only $50 after signing a new two-year contract.

As far as Android tablets go, there were a few that stood out. We took a look at the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet, which was revealed for Verizon this week, and it essentially comes with the same features as the other variants, except that it runs on Verizon’s blazing fast LTE service. We also fooled around with the Archos GamePad, which comes with a 7-inch 1024×600 display and has built-in physical controls on the sides.

Overall, while a lot of the new Android devices that we saw this year weren’t anything to write home about, a few stood out from the crowd. One reoccurring theme is certain though: bigger screens, faster processors, and better cameras, are continually making their way into smartphones every year, and we’re already pretty excited for what 2013 has to offer in the Android industry, and we can’t wait to see what CES 2014 will have in store. Let us know what you were most excited about from CES in the Android realm, and be sure to hit up our CES portal for all our CES 2013 news and hands-on.

Another feature worth getting excited about: 1080p resolution. Despite the fact that the screen is only 11.6-inches, the tablet is still displaying at 1920×1080. That smaller screen size naturally means that the pixel density is great, which in turns means that consumers can look forward to particularly sharp visuals. Videos, especially the clip from The Lorax we saw, looked absolutely wonderful.

Powered by a dual-core AMD Z-60 APU, AMD Radeon HD 6250 integrated graphics, and 2GB of RAM, users will have quite the speedy little tablet on their hands. There were a few dropped frames when swiping through apps, zooming, and playing HD video, but overall it was a pretty smooth experience, which is impressive for a tablet running the full version of Windows 8 at 1080p resolution. The 64GB SSD this bad boy ships with should do its part to keep things moving nice and fast, which is just icing on the cake.

The tablet itself is surprisingly thin and light – Vizio states that the tablet is 0.4″ thick and just 1.8 pounds. I was expecting a heavier tablet when I picked this up from the stand, but was pleasantly surprised when I realized how light it is. More importantly, it feels good in the hand and looks really good. We’re looking forward to seeing more from Vizio’s new Windows 8 tablet as we move closer to its release date (no specifics on that just yet), but for now, it definitely seems like the company is on the right track. Check out our CES portal for even more from the show!

That’s because Pelican’s goal with these cases seems to be to protect the phone from all manner of damage while keeping the overall size down. That’s especially important with the Galaxy S III, which is a pretty thin phone – having a big, bulky case attached to such a sleek phone would ruin the aesthetic, so Pelican is trying to hit the protection bullet points while keeping a thinner form factor overall.

The first case we have is the ProGear Vault Series, which actually requires you that use screws to seal your phone within the case. While that will make removing your phone a bit more difficult than your usual case that snaps together, there are benefits in that it makes the case resistant to “wind-driven rain.” The case also offers protection against dust and scratches, thanks to the fact that its made from magnesium and engineering-grade polymer. This case really locks down every opening you can think of with your phone, with Pelican even placing acoustic membranes over the microphone and speaker openings to prevent water from getting in without hindering audio quality. The Vault Series, which is also shockproof from a height of 72 inches, will be releasing in April or May with a “tentative” price of $75-$80.

Next we have the ProGear Defender Series, which is a little more accessible for folks who want to keep their phone safe without spending an arm and a leg on a case. The Defender obviously boasts fewer features than its more expensive brother, but it’s built with the same engineering-grade polymer and sports a rubber interior to make the case crushproof and shock-resistant. It also has a smooth plastic finish to make it easier to pull your out of your pocket. At the moment, Pelican is saying that the Defender series should launch in April with a price point of $35, but those could change by the time its release rolls around.

So there you have it, a duo of new cases from Pelican for your Galaxy S III. The cases seemed pretty solid when we checked them out, and the felt pretty light to boot, which means that they shouldn’t add too much weight to your phone. Expect to see more of Pelican in the mobile space as moving forward, but for now, be sure to check out our CES portal for all the news you need from the show!

The massive beast known as the Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon Table PC was by far the most unique offering in the PC hardware space at this year’s show, creating not just a massive touchscreen interface, but a table on which you can play games with specialized accessories that come with. Have a peek at the smart dice, game pieces you can use to play table hockey, and more! We’ll be looking for this monster on our review bench soon.

Lenovo also brought on one sharp looking gaming PC known as the Lenovo Erazer X700 as well as a transforming tablet with a keyboard dock known as the ThinkPad Helix. We actually have a short version of the Helix hands-on as well as an extended Lenovo ThinkPad Helix hands-on for more “rip and flip” action than you’ll be able to handle. The Lenovo ThinkVision mobile monitor was also revealed, bringing you Windows 8 touchscreen-friendly action either wired with a brand new USB 3.0 B cord or completely wirelessly and across the room – mirroring or no!

The Lenovo team kept on bringing in hits with the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11S, a smaller version of the IdeaPad Yoga 13 we reviewed late last year. Lenovo got sharp a couple more times with the ThinkPad Edge E431 and E531, and kept it mainstream with the lovely IdeaPad U310 Touch as well.

One of the most important sets of announcements of the convention as a whole came from NVIDIA, their press event revealing first and foremost a system called NVIDIA GeForce Experience, this allowing users to get instant game optimization from the folks who know how to do it best, the GeForce team. Cloud gaming companies also got a massive jolt in the side at the announcement of NVIDIA GRID, stacks of servers made to turn cloud gaming into a real way of the future. NVIDIA also tied mobile gaming to full-power PC gaming with a device called NVIDIA Project SHIELD. We’ll see more information on that system by the time of its release in Q2 of 2013 (this year). For now you’ll have to survive on this simple demonstration video courtesy of NVIDIA:

The folks at 3M showed off their rather sizable 84-inch multi-touch table the night before CES began, here bringing real-deal 4K technology to this emerging market. At the moment this machine is still a prototype, but we’ll be seeing a real product later this year. ASUS took on the Windows 8 world with a unique slate by the name of ASUS VivoTab Smart Tablet, complete with an origami fold-up cover with magnets and a wireless keyboard.

Samsung brought on some heat with the Samsung Series 7 Chonos and Series 7 Ultra, both of them extremely lightweight and bursting with immensely high resolution displays – touchscreens, too! The Xi3 7 series modular computer gained some notoriety this week as Valve was hinted to be working with them in the very near future. Vizio essentially updated their entire PC lineup including notebooks, all-in-one, and and a brand new 11.6-inch Windows 8 Tablet.

If you though you’d seen the only massive tablet-like gorilla of a unit of the show up above with Lenovo, you were mistaken. Above you’ll see the Panasonic 20-inch 4K Windows 8 Tablet, a monster with 3840 x 2160 pixels to its name, running full Windows 8 with a release date set some time later this year. Sony also brought on a little bit of heat with the Sony VAIO T15 Touch and T14 Touch, both of them ready with Intel under the hood and Windows 8 for your everyday use.

In short, what we saw this year at CES was a set of upgrades to machines that were already out, touch added to displays that were before without, and some ever-so-slightly interesting innovations in how devices were connected to one another. Let us know what you were most excited about from CES in the PC space below, and make sure not to skimp on the possibilities for the future! Also hit up our CES portal for everything we saw and reported on over the course of the week!

What this wave sensor being able to “toggle” means here is that if you wave your hand over the faucet once, the water turns on, if you wave your hand over it again, the water turns off. Whichever state the water flow is in when you wave your hand over it, it’ll be the opposite when you’ve waved. If you wave once to turn the water off and walk away, the water will automatically shut off in 2 minutes.

Next is the Ready Sensor, this feature turning the water flow on when you place your hands under the faucet. This works like the sensor you’ll see it massive amounts of bathrooms in restaurants, hotels, and everywhere in between right this minute. The third way to work with this faucet is with its one handle – pull the handle out and it turns on, pull back or push forward and the water becomes hot or cold.

As for the temperature of the water when you use one of the sensors: that’s controlled by a control box that you set (under the deck, aka under your countertop) when you first install the faucet. You can set and re-set this controlled temperature but can also control the temperature above the deck with the handle as described above. This system sticks to the controlled temperature you’ve set whenever you initiate the flow of water with one of the two sensors.

This faucet starts at $399 USD and is available right this minute from a variety of retailers and online (if you know where to look). Have a peek at the rest of our CES 2013 coverage in our giant CES hub or check just the ShowStoppers hands-on posts in our ShowStoppers 2013 tag portal – it’s all good!

What we’ve seen this week is a wide variety of devices, services, and events that collectively give us a basic idea of what we’ll be seeing from developers, manufacturers, and creators of all kinds over the coming set of months. CES 2013 has presented the usual undeniably intense next-generation in televisions, too massive to use, more accessories than we’ll ever have time to use, and whispers of this Spring and Summer’s mobile device offerings.

NOTE: We brought more people than the photo above suggests, but planes take off early, and it’s rare you get a minute to take a photo with the SlashGear truck!

Interestingly enough, we only saw a few devices in the mobile market that we’d not seen before. Groups like NVIDIA and Lenovo presented smart mobile devices while Samsung, LG, Nokia, and Motorola all but abstained from the “CES reveal” method. Instead they stuck to their refrigerators, software upgrades, and re-commitments to the devices they’ve already got out.

What we’re expecting from the companies that did not present (only represented) is either a big showing at Mobile World Congress (next month) or their own device reveals spattered throughout the coming weeks. We shall see soon enough!

So for now you’ll want to head to our massive CES portal for everything CES 2013 and stay tuned to SlashGear for a set of wrap-up posts you wont want to miss!

The company has come up with a small set of suction cup-equipped accessories that turn the iPad itself into a pair of decks and a mixer on the cheap. The unit that we took a look at consists of a slider control, two round discs for scratching, and two banks of three knobs each for all the fine tuning.

The suction cups feel pretty solid. Underneath, the spinners have what looks to be like the tip of a touchscreen stylus. It’s certainly nothing fancy, but it works. I ended up playing around with the knobs and controls, essentially proving to myself why I would be a terrible DJ, but they were fun to use, and were way more handy than just using the flat touchscreen.

Serious turntablists will probably want to steer clear, since it would be best to get an actual deck and mixer, but for those just wanting to have fun and need a little more tactile control, you may want to check these out. They work with a variety of DJ apps, such as Djay, Deej, and iDJ2GO. Ion Audio will sell the kit for only $40 starting in May.

I can understand why manufacturers like Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, and others push TVs as the perfect vehicle for Ultra HD. They’re huge products – physically speaking – and in the charged, competitive, genital-waving atmosphere of Las Vegas, having The Biggest is a fair way to being seen as having The Best. A vast TV looks great on a stage during your keynote, and it provides a great focus point for gawping visitors to your booth.

Practically, though, when you need a huge set to actually take advantage of the technology you’re positioning as the Next Evolution for home entertainment, you’re already irrelevant to a huge swathe of your audience. The most common size was 84-inches - eighty four! – and they started to look small in comparison to the few 110-inch monsters. Worse still, every company did a grossly poor job telling us why we need Ultra HD, relying on big numbers to sell the technology alone.

That’s why, despite the majestic monsters from the main culprits, it was a far smaller – and quite different – interpretation of 4K that I left CES feeling was the best implementation of the technology. Panasonic’s 20-inch Windows 8 tablet may be a fraction of the size of, say, the company’s own Ultra HD TVs, but for once the 4K context made sense. The detailed resolution would be great for digital artists, Panasonic pointed out, as well as those in medical professions and architects.

Samsung even hinted at that alternative strategy itself; when Joe Stinziano, the company’s EVP, told us he saw mass-market relevance for Ultra HD perhaps five years out, he highlighted those fields as potential early-adopters, not people with playing field-scale living rooms.

A 20-inch tablet doesn’t leave you with the feeling that you need to wear sunscreen when you’re basking in its glow, however. And CES is perhaps the place where context has no role: we make these things because we can, is the unspoken message from manufacturers, not because you necessarily realized you needed it, or even wanted it. It’s proof of concept without pause for practicality.

And yet… what will they show us in January 2014? When Ultra HD sets are still the stuff of vastly expensive, niche, 84-inch irrelevance – because, let’s face it, 1080p is going to be the beginning and end for 99.999-percent of consumers this year – what will the TV industry wow us with? It’s an arms race of idiocy, when there are still plenty of far more worthy areas of attention (the broadly appalling smart TV performance of most internet-connected sets, for instance) which affect far more people but are just less attention-grabbing than a $20k luxury toy.

For now, though, the message is simple. Don’t worry about Ultra HD. It really doesn’t matter.

These headphones feel like just about as high quality a construction and amalgamation of materials as we’ve seen in a set of phones the company classifies as “urban design.” With Sennheiser at the helm, you’ve got quality in the sound without a doubt, but it’s all about the industrial design here with the new MOMENTUM Black.

You’ll have a metal headband slider made of stainless steel and padding along the inside of the top as well as around the earpads with fine black leather. It’s worth noting that this same design with a different color set is available in stores now, that being the MOMENTUM Brown (as it’s been re-named). MOMENTUM as a model offers 110 dB max sound pressure and a 200 mW load rating, the whole unit weighing in at 190 g.

These headphones are available in their Brown iteration for $349.95 while the Black will be hitting your audio equipment collection rather soon. Stick around SlashGear’s mighty CES portal to see the rest of the big push for gadgetry in a hands-on and otherwise in-person way into the future! Stick around for more Sennheiser as well – high fidelity excellence on the way!

The iPhone 5 variant offers protection from “wind-driven” rain, dust, and scratching. All the ports are protected with durable flaps that let the sound out (for the speakers), but don’t let dust in. The case also has insulating shock and impact protection, thanks to rubber shock absorbers inside the case.

The case is made out from a magnesium and high-grade polymer, and it’s held together using military-grade hex screws at the four corners. Acoustic membranes also prevent water access through the microphone speaker ports, without hindering the audio. The buttons on the side, as well as the silent switch, was a little difficult to press, but like most cases, added that extra layer will hinder some of the button performance. What’s odd about the iPhone 5 case, is that the silent switch on the case is actually a knob that you twist slightly to change it. It’s an interesting concept, and one that we don’t see very often.

The iPad mini version offers the same protection and technology as the iPhone 5 case, and it features a flap door cover that can be opened up and used as a kickstand. The iPad mini case is actually still a very early prototype, and the cover actually didn’t even close all the way when we tested it. Nonetheless, both the iPhone 5 case and the iPad mini case are planned for an April or may release. Both cases will be priced between $75 and $85 when they eventually launch.

This beast is made for someone wishing for the future right this minute, bringing you Android 4.1 Jelly Bean on a display that’ll allow you to watch your videos at a tap. While we’re not sure the uses of this machine are numerous enough for us to want to get such a massive machine with a stand built-in for the desktop running Android, the prospect of an all-touch monitor future does seem encouragingly cool.

The best thing about this monitor from our perspective may be the fact that you’re able to work with the NVIDIA Tegra Zone collection of games. NVIDIA works closely with a variety of developers to make games that work especially well with their processors, and having seen the power of the NVIDIA Tegra 3 over these past 12 months working with high-powered games galore, we’re rather pumped up indeed.

Have a peek at our hands-on video above and photos above and below to see a bit more close-up look at this machine and get pumped up as it hits the market very, very soon. You’ll be able to pick this machine up for MSRP $675 USD and it’ll be in its final form then – what we’re seeing here may be changed just a bit, but it’s essentially complete. Have a peek at our CES portal for all the CES 2013 action you can handle as well!

The list of new features found in DiskStation Manager 4.2 beta is absolutely huge, so Synology users are definitely in for a treat. Some of the major highlights of this release include an expansion of QuickConnect to cover DS Photo+, DS File, and DS Audio. This upgrade should make it easier for new users to set these features up, which is always a plus.

iOS users now also have a DS Cloud app at their disposal, which seems to essentially be Synology’s in-house version of Dropbox. DSM’s Package Manager is also getting a pretty major overhaul with this release, and it adds a bunch of new ease-of-use features and new apps that users have specifically been asking for. If you’ve been bugging Synology for new apps and functionality in the Package Manager, there seems to be a pretty good chance that your wishes have been granted.

Jumping back to the Cloud-related features, Synology has done quite a bit with syncing in this latest release. For instance, Cloud Station is being brought up to version 2, and with this new version, the size limit for files is doubling – now users can sync files up to 10GB in size, rather than just 5GB. DiskStation Manager 4.2 beta is available for download right now from Synology’s website, with the full release following in another month or so. Be sure to check out our CES portal for all of our coverage from the show!

While the 97 Titanium is the most expensive of the pack and features a 2048×1536 resolution display, the rest are rather affordable and should make for some good budget tablets. Today Archos took the wraps off the entire family. The models will include the 70 Titanium, 80 Titanium, 101 Titanium and the previously mentioned 97 Titanium HD.

Just like all tablets from Archos the models represent their respective sizes. So we have a 7-inch mode, 8, 9.7, and 10.1-inch to rock out all with dual-core processors and Android Jelly Bean — starting at $119. The full specs haven’t been released but Archos confirms they’ll all have IPS HD displays, and 1.6 GHz dual-core processors to keep things smooth. Obviously we have sleek aluminum or “titanium” designs, and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

Archos specifically mentions the 7-inch will also include an HD display, yet will still start at just $119 so we’re guessing this will be a pretty impressive price/performance tablet. Then you’ll be paying $169 for the 8-inch, $199 for the Titanium 101, and $249 for the Retina packing 97 that was announced last year. Archos states their 7-inch is similar to Amazon’s offering at a better price, the 80 competes with the iPad mini, and their 9.7 Titanium is half the price of the new iPad. Obviously build quality won’t be on par, but what are your thoughts on these new tablets?

[via Android Community]

The larger model, the Gigabyte U2442, has a 14-inch 1600 x 900 display and a 2.5GHz Core i5-3210M processor paired with up to 16GB of memory. There’s NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M 2GB graphics, and a choice of either 128GB mSATA, a duo of 128GB mSATA and up to 1TB HDD, or a single 256GB SSD. Ports include USB 2.0, USB 3.0, HDMI and VGA, ethernet, and an SD card reader, plus there’s WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0.

Finally, the Gigabyte P2742G is the company’s new gaming monster, with a 17.3-inch Full HD display, 2.4GHz Intel Core i7-3630QM processor, up to 24GB of DDR3 memory spread over three slots, and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M 2GB graphics. It can be fitted with either a 750GB hybrid HDD (with 8GB of flash caching memory) or a 128GB SSD/1TB HDD duo.

A Blu-ray drive, ethernet port, WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, and an 8-cell 5200mAh battery round out the key specs in what’s a 3.2kg machine. No word on pricing or availability for any of the three.

There’s also VGA and HDMI, a microphone input and headphones socket, a microSD card reader, and a SIM slot for the optional 3.5G WWAN. WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 are standard. Up front is a 1.3-megapixel camera, with a 5-megapixel camera on the back. Gigabyte will also offer a keyboard dock for easier text input.

As for the Gigabyte S1082, that runs a 1.1GHz Celeron dualcore 847 with up to 8GB of DDR3 memory and Intel HD Graphics. There’s an optional docking station with an integrated DVD burner, while storage is courtesy of either up to a 500GB HDD or up to a 256GB SSD.

Ports include USB 2.0, VGA, HDMI, gigabit ethernet, audio in/out, SD card reader, and a SIM card slot for the optional 3.5G WWAN. As with the larger model, WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 are standard. No word on pricing or availability at this stage.

Talk has been focused primarily on mobile broadband, with demand for both bandwidth and speed increasing rapidly. Wireless Internet needs some attention too, however, according to the FCC. By making this move, wireless networks in general, and particularly public wifi networks, will be relieved by sharing this new spectrum.

Genachowski offered this statement. “[The FCC is] announcing today that we’re moving to free up a substantial amount of spectrum for wifi to relieve wifi congestion and improve wifi speeds at conferences and airports and, ultimately, in people’s homes. There’s also a wifi traffic jam, and anyone who has been to conferences and airports knows that it is true.”

The spectrum in question is the 5GHz band, which is currently in use by the Department of Defense and other government agencies. For now, a proceeding is set for February to move forward with opening the spectrum. Genachowski is estimating that 35-percent of the spectrum will be opened, but says the number may change.

[via The Register]

“The effects in the video are rendered in real time and are captured live,” Microsoft research says, “not special effects added in post processing.” The system uses a Kinect for Windows camera paired up with a computer-controlled projector, with the sensor bar mapping the geometry of the room and then overlaying the digital graphics on top.

None of the visuals are pre-processed, with the whole IllumiRoom system figuring out the skew of the walls and how the images need to be modified to suit in real-time. “Our system can change the appearance of the room, induce apparent motion, extend the field of view, and enable entirely new game experiences” Microsoft suggests.

Full details of the system haven’t been revealed yet, with Microsoft saying that it will be detailing the whole system in an upcoming paper. Exactly how the company might leverage the technology into a commercial product isn’t detailed, though we think it might be a while before Xbox gamers can fill their living room with gameplay.

The two printing heads allow for printing more complex objects, and whereas the Replicator 2 uses PLA filament, the 2X uses ABS filaments. However, the 2X is supposed to run more smoothly, and print in multiple colors, as well as even multiple materials. The 2X will also be able to print at a 100-micron resolution.

The Replicator has a slightly redesigned chassis, and among the updated features of the new design are an aluminum build platform and print area that’s enclosed by plastic windows. The benefit is that the build area retains heat better than the open chassis of past models from the company, allowing for faster and more reliable printing.

MakerBot will begin taking pre-orders for the Replicator 2X on January 11, and the company says it will begin shipping the printer to customers by mid-March. As for the price, you’re looking at something close to what a high-end MacBook Pro would cost — $2,799 to be exact.

The version of this device that we got here is the Purple while the folks at MiPow also have Orange, Charcoal Gray, and Silver available now. You’ll be able to charge this device up with your own microUSB cord from a wall socket the same as you would your own smartphone and you’ll be able to charge your Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, or BlackBerry device up at will. In fact, if you’ve got any sort of device that charges with either a micro USB (included in the device’s build), or full-size plug USB charging cable (like an iPhone 5 Lightning cable, for instance), you’ll be able to charge here.

Five of the sides (all but the bottom) are anodized aluminum while the bottom is “painted by a fine rubber” as they say, anti-slip and all. We’ve had a look at a few other MiPow devices this week as well including the SP 5500 mobile battery, also known as the Power Tube 5500. This machine works with 5500mAh battery capacity and is available in a massive amount of different colors – and it’s got a flashlight on it as well!

Have a peek at our whole CES 2013 offering in hands-on and up to the minute updates in our giant CES portal all week long. Also be sure to be on the lookout in the future for more MiPow action from all angles – they’ve also got Bluetooth headsets and speakers. Fun stuff for everyone!

In the video here you’re able to see one message being sent over wireless Bluetooth connection to the watch itself. We’re also looking at the final form of the watch here, mind you, complete with its basic high-quality band and metal construction. You’ll be working with a 96 x 16 pixel OLED display on the bottom section of the watch for read-back of messages of all kinds from your device while the top bit is reserved for some classy analog watch hands action.

This machine also has the ability to vibrate with each new message, this allowing you to get alerts without being rude – just take a glimpse at your Martian watch and you’re back in the game. This watch is also vibrates according to which kind of notification it’s delivering, with multiple vibrations for a phone call and a single vibration for a text or social media update.

This watch 1.53 x 1.46 x 0.52 inches in size, weighing in at 2.1 oz (59.5 grams) with its leather band or 2.5 oz (70.9 grams) with its silicone band – both are available to you. You’ll be powering this watch up with a microUSB cord via its side under a simple cover, and the box contains the watch, a microUSB cord, and a quick starter guide. You’ll be able to start ordering this device right this minute for $299 right now and the estimated delivery date is currently in-between February and March of 2013.

The NetCam HD touts 720p video capabilities, as well as digital audio capture for monitoring while your on the road. It also boasts easy setup with an Android or iOS smartphone with your home’s wireless router, so there’s no need to get on your computer to configure the device, which is incredible convenient, especially for those who use their smartphones the most.

If you need to monitor your house at night, Belkin included night vision capabilities in the NetCam HD, just like the device’s predecessor. A companion mobile app handles most of the workload, and email alerts can be pushed to your inbox when motion is detected, complete with a screenshot of the culprit passing through.

Additionally, the NetCam HD will launch with the recently outed WeMo SMART platform that adds to Belkin’s home automation tools for a variety of in-home uses with electronics and appliances. The NetCam HD is slated to hit shelves this spring at a price of $149, which is just a tad more than the original NetCam.

The touchscreen works well, though we’ve still got mixed feelings about the usability of reaching over the keyboard and stabbing at the display. We’re also left thinking that Sony’s decision to carry over the ultrabook branding to the T15 Touch might be a bit ambitious; it’s not exactly a light machine, though in return you get plenty of connections (USB 3.0, both HDMI and VGA, and an ethernet socket) and an integrated optical drive.

The T14 Touch makes far more sense, ditching the separate numeric keypad but still retaining a solid-feeling ‘board and a sizable trackpad. Sony’s choice of materials can’t be faulted, either; the soft-touch composite strip that runs along the upper outer edge of the lid – where the antenna are – is a particularly nice compromise between tactile feel and wireless performance.

Unfortunately, the T14 Touch doesn’t share its bigger sibling’s 1080p Full HD display; instead, it makes do with a more humdrum 1366 x 768 panel. Sony isn’t saying when the new VAIOs will go on sale, nor for what price.

The company made a big appearance at last year’s CES with its incredibly-oversized iPod dock, the iNuke Boom. However, this year the company launched a series of AirPlay-compatible products, and we ended up checking out the Link and the SP5i. The Link is a stereo receiver that can turn any pair of ordinary speakers into networked AirPlay-supported speakers.

The Link and Amp both look very similar from the front, and are the exact same size, but the difference between the two is mostly dependent on the connections on the back, as well as the hardware on the inside. The Link has red and white RCA audio inputs, and the Amp includes two stereo wire inputs. Both models include an ethernet port for home network connectivity, and there’s also a 1/4-inch headphone jack on the front for personal listening. The Amp features a 2 x 40W stereo amplifier for increased quality and louder music out of those low-powered speakers you have lying around.

The SP5i is the company’s flagship OMNI AirPlay speaker, and it’s an active three-way speaker system with a 6-inch subwoofer inside. It’s a fairly large speaker, and the audio certainly doesn’t sound bad. Even with the loud noise and the large crowd on the show floor, the speaker blasted away and the bass was certainly bumping.

The OMNI Link will cost $129, and the Amp will be priced at $199, while the SP5i will cost you a hefty $349. The company will have a smaller version for $249 that will come with a smaller 4-inch subwoofer.

Sony’s using “4K X-Reality PRO” branding for its Ultra HD models, which start at 55-inches. The 84-inch XBR-84X900A, for instance, has a total of ten speakers, and comes with a One-touch NFC remote which allows for easy pairing and streaming from an Xperia smartphone or tablet.

As for what that 3840 x 2860 resolution can do, Sony had a display showing a full newspaper spread on a single display, with all the text legible. There’s a close-up shot in the gallery below.

Unfortunately, the 4K media player is being described as just a prototype for driving Sony’s demo displays here at CES; the company says it has no specific plans to release it. The hatbox-style design does have some history, however; Sony had a range of similarly-shaped VAIO PCs back in 2007.

First off, Ford ended up opening its Sync AppLink Developer Program to all developers for free, whereas in the past, the company kept it closed to only a handful of mobile app developers. The SDK and APIs will allow app devs to add voice-control features to their apps to work exclusively with Ford vehicles. The company has already worked with the likes of iHeartRadio, MOG, MLB, Pandora, and more, but they’re not bringing more apps into the mix, including USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, Rhapsody, and Amazon Cloud Player.

Ford Sync works by connecting your iOS or Android smartphone to your vehicles entertainment system. From there you can control your smartphone with your voice, as well as apps that come loaded with the technology. There’s nothing special that users need to do to get the Sync technology on a compatible app — the update will come as usual through the iTunes App Store or Google Play.

It’s pretty self-explanatory at this point, and thanks to Ford’s announcement of bringing the technology to anyone, we should be seeing a lot more mobile apps that will come with Ford Sync support built-in, making it even more tempting to go ahead and get that new Ford Fusion. In fact, over 1,000 app developers have already signed up for the new open-source program. Currently, iPhones have to be connected through USB in order to sync it with the vehicle’s entertainment system, while Android devices can utilize Bluetooth.