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