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CES 2011 – The Year Of 4G And Tablets

The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is a major technology-related trade-show held each January in Las Vegas.  This event is not open to the public and typically hosts previews of products and new product announcements.   The first CES was held in 1967 in New York.  Notable products reveled at CES in the past have been; CD player in 1981, Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985, Tetris in 1988, and Xbox in 2001.   If the timing is right, CES is one good place to show off what the future has in store. This year’s CES did not fail at doing that.

4G Coming To Mobile Devices

As many of you know, 4G was a big thing talked about this.  Each major cell phone provider in the US was ready to announce what they had in store for their consumers.  Here are my general reactions…

I feel that HTC leads the way in providing devices for this new 4G service.  For T-Mobile, you have the G2 while Sprint has the EVO 4G.  Now for AT&T, we will see the Inspire and Verizon will have the Thunderbolt. The Inspire/Thunderbolt are said to be Americanized versions of the Desire. Both feature the new version of HTC Sense on Android 2.2 along with a 4.3” 800 x 480 Super LCD, and 1 GHz Qualcomm processor.  However, HTC is not the only one to catch many peoples’ eyes, Motorola is in the mix as well.

The first one up is the Droid Bionic for Verizon. The Bionic is 2 GHz dual core (1 GHz per core) Android with a 8 megapixel rear camera, VGA front facing camera, and 4.3” qHD display, which allows for 1080p outut through HDMI. For AT&T we have the Atrix 4G. The Atrix 4G sports a 2 GHz dual core Tegra 2 processor and 1 GB of DDR2 RAM; a qHD 4” 960 x 540 display and you’ve also got a front camera and rear one capable of HD video recording. It will be interesting to see who will hold come out on top once all of these device are released and running later this year. I personally like the new HTC Inspire 4G for AT&T. Although, phones were not the only gadgets being talked about, we also had tablets as the talk of the town.

Will Tablets Erase The Short-lived Netbooks?

Now, last year tablets saw some floor time, but we mostly heard about netbooks and how they were the next best thing. This year netbooks were still there, but seem to be behind the tablets. So to highlight things; I have first picked the Samsung Sliding PC 7 series. Ultimately, this tablet combines a netbook and tablet into one seamless experience.  From what I’ve read, it seems to do a great job combining the experience on a netbook and tablet. It comes equipped with a 10.1-inch 1366 x 768 display, 1.5GHz Oak Trail processor, a MicroSD slot, as well as a mini-HDMI port. Now the good thing is it runs Windows 7; most netbooks I’ve seen run either XP or the downgrade version of 7 (Starter).

The last device is a tablet; the Xoom from Motorola. This will be the first dual-core tablet and runs Android 3.0 (Honeycomb). It comes packed with Google software, Adobe Flash, front and rear cameras and a 10.1 HD wide screen display.

I am still a fan of netbooks over tablets, but with devices that put the experience of both devices into one experience, such as the Samsung Sliding PC, maybe I could make the switch.