CES 2012: The shape of things to come

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas from 10-13 January has already had a shadow cast over it by the news that 2012 will be the last to feature a large-scale Microsoft presence. With Windows 8 set for release later this year maybe Microsoft won’t have a lot to shout about at this early stage of the year, nor may it next January when the first push completes. From a purely scheduling perspective it makes some sense, but it also smacks of arrogance. The world’s second largest technology company isn’t supporting a show attended by virtually all its hardware partners? Whatever.

So, what can we expect next week? Already there are a few trends worth looking at, so let’s take them in turn.

4K
If you’ve been to the cinema lately or watched some high resolution video on YouTube, you’ve probably come across 4K footage. Unlike the current full HD standard that present an image broken down into 1920×1080 (WxH) pixels, 4K images have resolutions up to 4096×3112 pixels – over six times sharper.
Cinemas have already invested in new projectors to keep up with high quality digital copies and cameras like the Red One have put the technology in the hands of regular users. YouTube has some truly stunning slow motion clips shot in 4K.
Despite being pitched as the next step forward for HD in the home, 4K sets won’t be mainstream options in the short term. If you’re looking to upgrade your TV in the next 12 months looking towards a smart TV would be a better bet. LG will be showing off an 84" 4K 3DTV. Does this mean we have to get a new Blu-ray and broadcast standard to go with it?

OLED
Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display technology isn’t exactly new either, but has been shoved into the background behind LCD and LED screens owing to steeper production costs. OLED sets offer a wider range of viewing angles, are more energy efficient, have better contrast ratios and have faster refresh rates for dealing with fast-moving pictures without losing sharpness.
One thing OLED has its competitors beat is that they can be used in the development of flexible displays. This could have applications in everything from clothing to roll up computer screens to X-rays. Its stuffier rivals may have the display market sewn up for now, but OLED’s novelty value should see some interesting products arrive.

Ice Cream Sandwich
Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) was intended as an OS specifically for tablets and made a big splash last year through the Motorola Xoom, but the proliferation of devices using Google’s open source mobile software has been such that some kind of consolidation has to take place. Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) has been designed to work equally well across all mobile devices, and it adds a few tricks like facial recognition login, near field communication for swipe transactions, and an improved camera system. Once it gets social network integration sorted (like Windows Phone 7) Ice Cream Sandwich could really be something to scream about. Depending on the number of gadgets sporting it next week we could be on the way to a proper unified platform to take on iOS.

Ultrabooks
Netbooks were a convenient mobile computing solution until users got tired of the small screen sizes and manufacturers got tired of seeing Apple sell a premium product in the MacBook Air and win over largely the same customer base. The new wave of superlight, superthin ‘ultrabooks’ borrow liberally from Apple’s design aesthetic and pricing – the days of €300 netbooks are long gone as the price of convenience looks set to pass €800.
Unlike netbooks before them, ultrabooks like Acer’s Aspire S3, Lenovo’s Ideapad U300 and Toshiba’s Portege Z830 series are marketed as slick premium products, will they match the hype?
The device we’re looking at most earnestly here is Asus’ Eee Pad Transformer Prime. Merging the best of tablet and small form notebook computers, the Transformer has a detachable touch screen, so the user has a choice of either a tablet or laptop configurations.

Read More: Blog CES Niall Kitson