02:28PM EST – We’re here at ASUS‘ Press Event, Zennovation
02:28PM EST – Expect to see Jonney Shih on stage
02:29PM EST – Last year, ASUS didn’t have a CES event because everything was being launched after Computex
02:29PM EST – But given the recent launch of Kaby Lake, I suspect we’ll see some KBL enabled systems
02:30PM EST – Ian on text, Ryan on photos. TeAm AnandTech in the house
02:33PM EST – We’re starting
02:33PM EST – ‚ASUS is changing the mobile industry‘
02:33PM EST – ‚AN event to go above and beyond expectations‘
02:34PM EST – playing the intro video
02:34PM EST – very movie-esque
02:35PM EST – Jonney Shih to the stage
02:35PM EST – Jonney is always a character on stage
02:36PM EST – ‚2016 was an incredible year for ASUS – the success of our Zenbook 3 enabled us to embark on a journey that dares for more‘
02:36PM EST – Demo video
02:38PM EST – Looks like a smartphone in the video
02:38PM EST – ’stay forever young‘
02:39PM EST – Announcing the Zenfone 3 Zoom
02:39PM EST – built for photography
02:39PM EST – Uses Qualcomm Snapdragon
02:39PM EST – 2x12MP, 1x13MP
02:39PM EST – 2.3x optical zoom, 59mm focal on first 12MP
02:40PM EST – 12MP main camera, Sony IMX362
02:40PM EST – 13MP front camera, f/2.0
02:40PM EST – ’59mm focal length is golden ratio for perfect portrait‘
02:41PM EST – Main camera (Sony IMX362) f/1.7 and uses SuperPixel
02:41PM EST – ‚more light capture and longer exposure time‘
02:42PM EST – ‚Our technology thrives on making a dramatic difference in image quality‘
02:42PM EST – SuperPixel: 2.5x light sensitivity, 10x to industry standard
02:43PM EST – SuperPixel Engine: Multi-frame, multi-stage noise reduction algorithm
02:43PM EST – ASUS TriTech+ 0.03s auto-focus
02:43PM EST – 2nd Gen Laser AF, Subject tracking AF, Dual Pixel PDAF
02:43PM EST – 100% pixels for phase detection auto focus
02:44PM EST – traditional phone uses only 5% of pixels
02:45PM EST – Front Camera: Sony IMX213, f/2.0, SuperPixel, 13MP Wide Angle, 2x light sensitivity
02:45PM EST – Professional manual mode, RAW support, Manual Lens Selection
02:45PM EST – 59mm or 25mm lens selection
02:45PM EST – Pro Mode allows selection for shutter speed, EV, ISO, White Balance
02:46PM EST – Snapdragon 625, 5000mAh batery
02:46PM EST – 6.4hr 4K UHD recording, 32day standby, 8.5hr social media livestreaming
02:46PM EST – 5000mAh is quite good
02:47PM EST – I’m all for that
02:47PM EST – 5.5-inch, 7.99mm at slimmest edge, 170g
02:47PM EST – Gorilla Glass 5, 500 nits, AMOLED
02:48PM EST – Rose Gold, Glacier Silver, Navy Black
02:48PM EST – 4-axis OIS, 3-axis EIS
02:48PM EST – so, price? DRAM/Storage? UFS or eMMC
02:49PM EST – Available February
02:49PM EST – Next product
02:49PM EST – focus on creators
02:50PM EST – Zenfone AR
02:50PM EST – Tango-enabled and Daydream ready
02:50PM EST – Built for Augmented Reality
02:50PM EST – TriCam system
02:51PM EST – 23MP Motion tracking and depth sensing
02:51PM EST – Motion Tracking, Area Learning, Depth Perception
02:51PM EST – Mobile Augmented Reality
02:52PM EST – From online shopping, to home improvement projects
02:52PM EST – ‚Games that go beyond the screen‘
02:52PM EST – I assume this eats battery like no tomorrow
02:52PM EST – WQHD 2560×1440, 5.7-inch SuperAMOLED, 79% screen to Body Ratio
02:54PM EST – Exclusive ZenUI VR 360
02:54PM EST – Create, view and share 360 content without 3rd party apps
02:54PM EST – Erik Hermanson on stage, Head of Content and Brand Marketing
02:55PM EST – ‚This is the next wave in tech that will get consumers excited in smartphones‘
02:55PM EST – ‚Consumers are also looking for a good app ecosystem‘
02:55PM EST – Previewing some of the apps on Zenfone
02:56PM EST – Johnny Lee, Director of Engineering for Tango on stage too
02:56PM EST – ‚We think smartphones can do much more‘
02:57PM EST – ’35+ Tango enabled apps coming out in the next few months‘
02:58PM EST – Jeff Kirwan, Global President of Gap on stage
02:58PM EST – stage is getting crowded
02:59PM EST – Discussing GAP’s key mantras
03:00PM EST – ‚Our product has to fit you just perfect, and we have to provide a rich customer experience that is effortless and inspirational‘
03:00PM EST – ‚A dramatic shift in retail‘
03:01PM EST – ‚We have to be there whenever a customer needs us, wherever they are‘
03:01PM EST – ‚Allowing a customer to see if the product fits on a body shape‘
03:02PM EST – Dressing Room from GAP
03:04PM EST – Moving 2D images on the app to the display to load a 3D manniquin with a selected body type
03:04PM EST – Can look at the garment from full 360-degree
03:04PM EST – Switching between X and XL to see the garment length and fit
03:05PM EST – Womens clothing, to see how the clothing looks with folds and creases
03:05PM EST – Takes GAPs CAD images for clothing and does physics simulations to see how clothing will look
03:06PM EST – ‚Ensures the customer buys the product they really want‘
03:07PM EST – Ability to compare multiple sizes at once
03:08PM EST – Now demoing a Hot Wheels game
03:09PM EST – The app allows to have a virtual playset, and a set of challenges to get a car to the start to finish
03:10PM EST – More intuitive than just a controller
03:12PM EST – Hot Wheels app already in the play store
03:13PM EST – Dedicated inertial motion unit
03:13PM EST – 2.5ms detection
03:15PM EST – Jonney Shih back on stage
03:16PM EST – Zenfone AR with Snapdragon 821, 8GB DRAM, Vapor cooling system (so a heatpipe)
03:16PM EST – Cristiano Amon, EVP of Qualcomm Technologies on stage
03:17PM EST – ‚Zenfone AR is first Tango-enabled S821, ZF3 Zoom is first dual-camera S625‘
03:17PM EST – ‚ASUS is Qualcomm for all their smartphones‘
03:19PM EST – ‚We believe S821 is a perfect fit for Tango‘
03:20PM EST – ’no need for external coprocessors‘
03:20PM EST – Always-on sensor core
03:22PM EST – Android 7, obviously
03:22PM EST – Zenfone AR Available in Q2
03:23PM EST – Stage photo
03:24PM EST – That’s a wrap!

© Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10991/ces-2017-asus-zennovation-press-event-live-blog-1130am-pt
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Dell is taking aim at the Microsoft Surface Studio with the launch at CES 2017 in Las Vegas this week of the XPS 27 all-in-one (AIO) and Canvas 27 display.
On first impressions, the device looks like…

© Source: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/3002023/ces-2017-dell-launches-xps-27-aio-and-canvas-display-as-direct-rival-to-microsoft-surface-studio
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It was around the time I saw a smart contraction monitor stuck to a pregnant lady’s abdomen in the middle of the convention floor that it hit me. This show is going to have way more nifty tech than must-have gear.
The monitor is made by a company in San Francisco called Bloomlife, whose eponymous product sticks to a pregnant mother and, just as you’d expect from the tech industry these days, uses sensors to tell her something about her body. In this case, it monitors contractions and helps a mother-to-be track contractions, both in an active labor and a false one.
Bloomlife doesn’t yet have the FDA certification of a medical device.
It’s the latest example of the typical tech industry approach: Take an old product (in this case, the bulky monitors strapped on a mother’s body in the hospital), make it cheaper and more portable by relying on smaller sensors, and then connect it to an app.
If that’s not so much your game, across the way at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was a kid’s smart alarm clock. A day later, I saw smart thermometers, smart strollers and smart fertility trackers.
It’s easy to dismiss many of these products as just another smart fill-in-the-blank. It was hard for me not to scoff, „Really? We need an app to tell a woman when she’s in labor? My wife could tell just fine without it. “
Here’s the thing: They all make sense if you’re a techie. But while many of them pass the „oh, that’s clever“ test, few promise to upend the way I’m parenting today.
As much as I’d like to convince myself otherwise, a normal thermometer is just fine. An app is appealing though, and it means record keeping is easier. Additionally, one company’s — Kinsa’s — aim to use people’s data to track the flu around the world is noble. But I won’t be worse off without a high-tech temperature taker.
The same goes for many of the other baby tech products, which is probably why tech accounted for less than 9 percent of baby product sales in 2015 , according to industry watcher GfK.
That may change. One survey by popular parenting blog The Bump found that 76 percent of moms say they consider technology an important factor when shopping for baby products.
„Tech is a tool — it’s a power tool — and you have to use power tools wisely,“ said Harvey Karp, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the USC School of Medicine. He’s also the founder of Happiest Baby, a tech startup named after his chart-topping “ The Happiest Baby on the Block “ book and DVD. Karp was showing off the $1,160 Snoo sleeper bed , which was designed with his teachings in mind.
The Snoo will rock children and use white noise to soothe them, and it’s carefully calibrated to respond to baby’s needs.
To Karp, the explosion of tech is part of a response to our changing, more insular culture. Some families are raising kids without help from a large family or a gaggle of friends and neighbors. Some new parents haven’t held a baby before their own is born, and they often have little help at home.
„It used to be you had five people living with you, and now if you have a nanny it’s extravagant, so parents suck it up and deal with it all on their own,“ he said. „That leads to exhaustion and marital stress and depression and all sorts of problems. “
Karp isn’t the only name-brand on the show floor either. There’s Fisher-Price, showing a $150 stationary bike called the Think and Learn Smart Cycle that hooks up to a tablet app so kids can pedal their way through virtual adventures.
There’s also 4moms, which showed off its Moxi Stroller. It’s $699 and screams tech, from its built-in distance trackers to its app-controlled headlights and even a way to charge your phone.
There were also parent-inspired takes on voice assistants, which have become the tech du jour. One is Memoo, a $175 contraption that brings the technology into kids‘ rooms, letting them play games, learn about the weather and listen to music. Mattel has a competing device called Aristotle, which costs $299 and offers more features, such as a way for parents to spy (nay, check in) on their kids with an included camera.
There will be even more products announced as CES wraps up , but I’ll probably be aiming my money at the college fund. For now.

© Source: https://www.cnet.com/news/ive-seen-lots-of-baby-tech-products-at-ces-2017-im-not-buying-yet/
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Among the many challenges facing the Internet of Things (IoT) is the problem of power. How to keep millions of tiny devices running without having to replace the batteries when the charge runs out? How…

© Source: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/analysis/3001934/tech-trends-in-2017-energy-harvesting
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Gaming laptops were once the Rodney Dangerfield of computers — they got no respect. Many were much more expensive than comparable desktop gaming rigs, despite having worse performance and less flexibility. Worse, many were laptops in name only, with back-breakingly big bodies, and some of the worst design elements ever pulled from the adolescent sci-fi fantasy look book.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen a steady march of improvement, to the point where serious gamers no longer look down on laptops as automatically second-class gaming machines. This year, at CES 2017 , we’ve seen the next step in the evolution, with a lot of that progress towards thinner, nicer-looking gaming laptops with better performance trickling down to some systems at pretty amazing prices.
The Dell Inspiron 15 7000
One of Nvidia’s big announcements at CES 2017 was the latest addition to the GeForce graphics card line, with the mainstream GeForce 1050 and 1050Ti GPUs. Of course, the 1050 has been spoken about pretty freely for months, so it’s far from the first time we’ve been hearing about these, but now we have the first official lineup of GeForce 1050 laptops.
Dell leads the way, in my early impression, with the Inspiron 15 7000. It’s got a little more design edge than standard Inspiron laptops, plus new seventh-gen Intel CPUs and the new Nvidia GeForce 1050 GPU, all for just $799 (£645 or AU$1,100 converted). I hear a version with the better GeForce 1050Ti GPU will only run $100 more.
The Samsung Odyssey.
Acer has a very similar config, the Predator VX 15 , for the same $799, and the Lenovo Legion Y520 and Samsung Odyssey 15 will be in roughly the same price and performance zones. These are generally just shy of the specs needed for VR , but upgraded systems with the GeForce 1050Ti may work for some VR games and apps.
The Lenovo Legion.
Of course, you can’t keep all the PC gaming talk at CES restricted to under-$1,000 systems. Prototypes and moonshots are what make the show fun to cover. This year, we finally got hands on with the Acer Predator 21X , a massive $9,000 gaming laptop with a 21:9 aspect ratio curved display. Just as impractical, but still fun, is the Project Valerie prototype from Razer, which has two extra 17-inch displays hidden behind its main screen, making for the world’s first triple-screen gaming laptop.
The Razer Project Valerie prototype.
And finally, if either one giant wide screen or a triple-screen combo isn’t enough for you, one other cool concept piece we saw was also from Razer. Project Ariana is an immersive wide-angle second-screen projector, which throws gaming content on the very walls around you, from an expanded view to weather effects to color-coordinated lights, all while the game is still running on your main display.

© Source: https://www.cnet.com/news/gaming-laptops-get-an-extra-life-at-ces-2017/
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