CES 2009 Preview
By
December 31st, 2008
Every year, companies spend millions of dollars preparing for four days in January: the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Years worth of research and design are laid out on the table, photographed, written about, and analyzed from every angle. And while most of these concepts are closely guarded company secrets new to even the savviest of techies, a handful always manage to escape early – intentionally or otherwise. We’ve rounded up a few of the coolest early prospects from the upcoming 2009 CES, and while we promise the best is yet to come, these early peeks are definitely worth checking out.
Touch-Based MSI Wind Netbook
We fondly remember MSI’s Wind U100 as one of the best netbooks of 2008, and if rumors hold true, the line is set to become even better in 2009. According to LaptopMag’s interview with MSI’s U.S. sales director, Andy Tung, the company will show off a touch-enabled version of the Wind at CES this year, along with a a larger 16-inch touch notebook. At the moment, the company isn’t certain if either will reach production, but other non-touch Wind models, including a U110, U115, and U120, should follow the show in January. Among them, we think the U115, which uses a new version of Intel’s Atom processor to produce a claimed 10 hours of battery life, is among the most promising.
Sharp Aquos LCDs with Built-in Blu-Ray Players
Investing $2,000 in a television that plays Blu-ray movies would have been quite a risk a year or two ago, but now that most doubts have been cleared about Blu-ray’s longevity, we expect to see more and more of these combo devices. According to Wired, Sharp will be showing off both 32- and 42-inch LCDs with built-in Blu-ray players at CES 2009. The big news: they’ll be available in the U.S. right after the show, and likely for around $2,000 for the bigger model.
LG GD-910 3G Wrist Phone
LG is far from the first company to take a phone, slap straps on it and call it a wrist phone, but the GD-910, set to debut at CES, is unique for a couple reasons. First, it’s from a respected name brand company, not a hole-in-the-wall factory somewhere in China. Second, it’s the first wrist phone to ever sport 3G speeds. And third, it has an brilliant-looking (in pictures, at least) 1.43 inch touch screen, and cool features like a voice-to-text engine for operating it with spoken commands. If you’ve really been craving one of these phones for years, this one might be the first truly viable model to buy.
Netgear EVA 9150
Apple TV failed. Anyone else care to take a shot at a set-top streaming media device? Netgear will be one company (of many) stepping up to the plate in 2009 with the EVA9150 Digital Entertainer Elite. Although it will match its competitors by pulling Web-based media like YouTube and Flickr to the television, Netgear says the main attraction will its 500GB internal hard drive that allows plenty of media to be stored locally, as well as support for 1080p video.
LG LH95 Ultra-Thin LCD
Loose lips over at LG have revealed yet another of the company’s major CES launches, and this one beats the watch, hands down. The LH95 is an LED-lit LCD display that will measure less than an inch thick – only .98 inches. The company claims that will make it the thinnest of its type, so thin that it nearly disappears when viewed from the side. While we don’t yet know what kind of horizontal resolution it will offer, other impressive specs that have cropped up include an unusually fast 240Hz refresh rate and 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio.
Palm Nova OS
The company that has dangled on by a thread in the hurricane of new interest (and competition) in smartphones will either begin to recoup ground, or lose it all with the launch of its long-rumored Nova OS at CES this year. So far, Palm has kept specific details of the new operating system locked up tight, but interviews with CEO Ed Colligan indicate it will place a much greater emphasis on Web applications, and delivering a better mobile Web browsing experience.
Asus S121 Netbook
Pushing the definition of “netbooks” even further this year, Asus will expand into the territory normally occupied by ordinary notebooks with a 12.1-inch version of its S-series line, which originally launched with the dressy S101. Specs will also resemble those of a full-size book, with 1GB of RAM, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and both solid-state and magnetic hard drives rolled into one computer. The processor, though, will be carried over from the little guys: a 1.6GHz Intel Atom.
Energizer Zinc Air Prismatic Batteries
You’ve heard of nickel-cadmium batteries, nickel-metal hydride batteries, and lithium-ion batteries. Now it’s time to add one more term to your portable energy lexicon: zinc air prismatic. While Energizer hasn’t really delivered the full scoop on its new Zinc Air Prismatic line of barriers that will debut at CES, the company does claim they will deliver three times better energy density than existing alkaline and lithium-ion batteries, meaning longer runtimes from smaller devices. That’s a pretty tall claim. However, existing zinc air batteries (like those used in hearing aids) aren’t rechargeable, so unless Energizer has cooked up something entirely new, expect these to be disposable.
Sony Vaio P Series Netbook
It looks like Sony has sat out the low-margin netbook business for long enough, and is finally ready to get in the game with a premium netbook of its own. Little is known about the Vaio P series, which it has teased through December, but specs include an Intel Atom 1.33Ghz processor, choice of SSD hard drives up to 128GB, and perhaps most interestingly, an 8-inch screen with unusually high 1600 × 768 resolution, which should make for some very tightly packed pixels.