As you have seen here on ARMdevices.net during these past 2 weeks, I filmed and posted 106 videos of the 106 coolest products I could find at CES 2011 (6 are still to be posted in the next few days), this is my record for the number of videos filmed at a trade show since I started video-blogging at consumer electronics trade shows since CeBIT 2004.
Here is the top-20 best products that I filmed at CES 2011
1. Motorola Atrix 4G, this is the direction for this industry, convergence in the area of Mobile Computing.
2. Exclusive Honeycomb UI hands-on (not just video of the UI), I actually clicked through the reference Honeycomb OS UI for about a minute in that video while the Motorola representative was looking the other way. Anyone else posted a similar actual Honeycomb UI video and not just pre-recorded video?
3. ARM Powered OLPC XO-1.75 laptop, One Laptop Per Child already invented the Netbook market, now they are pushing the Netbook/Laptop industry into becoming ARM Powered to lower power consumption, lower complexity and lower cost. They are nicely using the high-end Marvell Armada 610 processor for full laptop performance.
4. Archos 101 Home Tablet, Rockchip is pretty amazing, they came from nowhere a year ago (as far as I knew), and now they are powering over 50 Android tablets at CES. This Archos 101 Home Tablet could be sold for as low as $199-$249 at retail when it comes out in a couple months (depends if you listen to what Rockchip or Archos says), it’s 10.1″ capacitive touch screen, HDMI output and very compact and light form factor, it comes with Rockchip’s new RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 1Ghz processor which they claim is more powerful than Hummingbird/Apple A4, does 1080p playback, and most importantly, they say, allows for more affordable ARM Powered devices. And Rockchip is expanding into Laptops and Set-top-boxes as well, where they likely will provide their knowledge and experience providing an all-in-one turn-key-solution for cheap Chrome OS on ARM and Google TV on ARM solutions, to be provided by all the cheap Chinese manufacturer, possibly starting at CeBIT in March, or by China Sourcing fair in April, or Computex in June and beyond.
5. Pixel Qi shows 7″ and announces 9.7″ and 10.1″ 1280×800, these announcements hopefully give us a clue as to we soon may see mass produced devices like Kindle 4 or iPad 2 use this screen technology, and not only the nice Notion Ink tablet which may be reaching some few consumers now but not in large enough scales to fund mass manufacturing and real mass adoption of this new type of screen.
6. LG Optimus black, amazingly light 109gr OMAP3630 Android Super Phone (same power as Droid X) and also uses LG’s new NOVA super bright 700nit display.
7. Sony-Ericsson Xperia Arc, they dominated the Japanese 2010 smartphone sales, now Sony-Ericsson wants to dominate worldwide smartphone sales. The Xperia Arc is also extremely light at 117gr and uses Sony’s big push into mobile displays, their new Bravia LCD display. I wish they would allow for easy one-click Home replacement to become fully 100% Vanilla UI like on a Nexus S.
8. Windows on ARM, there were no booth demos yet, but the excitement at Steve Ballmer’s keynote was insane, this is the end of an era called Wintel.
9. Acer Iconia Tab A500 Tegra2 Tablet, seems to me Acer is showing one of the best looking new major Nvidia Tegra2 based Android Honeycomb tablets.
10. Innodigital shows ARM Cortex-A8 (Samsung) and ARM Cortex-A9 (Amlogic) Android based Set-top-boxes, the ARM Cortex-A8 is already on the market at $168 and the A9 one will come within a couple months for around $268. Those could run Google TV for ARM when that becomes available. Those are the best performing ARM Powered Android set-top-boxes I have seen yet.
11. Joyplus, Pierre Cardin showed Samsung ARM Cortex-A8 7″ Capacitive low cost tablets. Those pretty much can perform like a Samsung Galaxy Tab, basically run the same Samsung Hummingbird ARM Cortex-A8 processor with 1080p video playback (I don’t know what bitrate/codec complexity limitations it has), but instead of costing over $600, these are to be sold in bulk at $150 and possibly retail a bit over $200, depending on screen quality.
12. Shenzhen ACT 4.8″ capacitive Marvel PXA935 clamshell Android, really nice 4.8″ capacitive Android Tablet using a Marvell processor and dual-sim card slots in a clamshell form factor with keyboard.
13. NEC LT-W Android Dual-Screen Tablet, it’s actually pretty cool to see such dual-screen Android tablet concept. Although text input is too slow, it probably still needs a real external keyboard solution for full speed text entry.
14. NEC Tegra2 Powered 7″ Laptop, there’s a 7″ capacitive Tegra2 with full keyboard Tablet/Laptop combination prototype. I’d like to see such form factor in a jacket pocketable size.
15. Ramos ARM Cortex-A9 Tablets, Ramos is famous in making cheap PMPs and are now launching Amlogic based ARM Cortex-A9 Android tablets. I also filmed Nufront’s ARM Cortex-A9 10″ and 14″ Laptops and Tablets.
16. Polaroid, Yifang, Pierre Cardin, Match Tech, Yootechpros all presented 9.7″ Android Tablets, now Apple’s exclusivity on the screen is finished. Now all Android tablet manufacturers may use the exact same LG IPS capacitive touch screen as used in the iPad.
17. Freescale i.MX508, next generation platform for e-ink e-readers, shows 8fps fast e-ink refresh rates, Android user interfaces for e-ink e-readers. This processor platform will probably be in a large part of the future e-ink e-readers.
18. RIM Blackberry Playbook, most awesome thing about this demo is to experience the power of Texas Instruments OMAP4430 ARM Cortex-A9 processor, see how nicely QNX’s embedded Linux OS does multi-tasking. This specific tablet seems to be pretty great, uses a new bezel touch sensitive user experience, but that also increases the size of the bezel.
19. Seco srl’s Pico Projector in a Lamp concept, watch this one, it’s really fun. This concept could turn out to be in many lamps, adding pico projectors onto every wall, displaying informations and changing moods in your room. Texas Instrument’s new nHD Pico Projector is so small, so low cost, uses so little power, we may see it in many if not in all ARM Powered devices soon, in all mobile phones, all tablets, all cameras such as the GE PJ1. I especially am looking forward to the user interface of turning any pocketable device into a large screen computer projecting the desktop onto any table and having multi-touch sensors built-in.
20. Nvidia’s announcement of Project Denver, they are making a super high performance ARM Processor not only for super phones, super laptops but also for super computers. This may be Nvidia’s custom ARM Processor design or ARM Cortex-A15 based design. Get more infos from my interview with Mike Rayfield on this subject.
Find more of my top CES videos in my Top-24 videos filmed at CES of products not covered by Engadget.
