I'm at the airport and I'm already having CES flashbacks.
Later, CES. See you next year.
WIRED's CES Smartphone Thunderdome: The Final Results
The Thunderphone challenge has concluded. It was a wild ride, filled with trolls, broken phones, terrifying 3-D avatars, and a 'poopin'' or two. For five days and nights, our immensely talented reporters did nothing but stare at their phones and tap out hilarious, insightful, weird, and always entertaining posts about what they saw and experienced here at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show. Frankly, it was no way to go through life. But the quick-hit entries were a useful way to capture the sensory overload and general madness of this desert show. We think they all did an amazing job. So without further ado, here are the final results of our Smartphone Thunderdome. Read more...
I have walked 8-12 miles a day in these little Tyvek shoes from Unbelievable Testing Laboratory. They are awesome.
Pinball is making a resurgence.
Between a growth of arcades, 'barcades,' and personal collectors, Stern Pinball, once owned by SEGA, has upped its game from selling thousands of units in 2009 to selling tens of thousands of units today. What's old is new again.
Stern displayed a sampling of its classic gaming machines among the vast and varied booths of CES's South Hall. They range in price from $3,000 to $8,000. One gentleman at the booth the same time as me owns 15 limited edition models, which are on the pricier end.
Today's pinball machines are slightly different from the original models that debuted in the pre-microprocessor days. These machines include solid-state electronics, LEDs for more fantastical light shows (new models will include tricolor LEDs for a broader range of colors), and even onboard diagnostics that can help or fix problems that arise. The play fields also have more mechanical action and features.
'We have more toys, more drop targets, and more animated figures,' Stern Pinball CEO Gary Stern said. New machines debuting later this year will connect to the cloud so you can compare and beat others' high scores. But the game itself still relies on just how the ball spins.
Stern's models come in a variety of themed designs, like The Avengers, Star Trek, and AC-DC. Pinball enthusiasts love comic book heroes, sci-fi movies, and rock 'n roll. Also cars. Stern said that the company's next big design will be a Ford Mustang themed pinball machine at the Detroit Auto Show in conjunction with the Mustang's 50th anniversary.
It was almost impossible for me to check out the pinball machines myself at the Stern Pinball booth because of the crowd of enthusiasts around the machines.
Perhaps pinball is becoming the place where nerds, hipsters, and gamers collide.
Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply.
CES and The Triumph of the Phone
This year CES is supposed to be all about wearables and 4K TV and the Internet of Stuff - but mostly about wearables. There were very few new phones announced. The only one I really heard anyone talking about was a model from Huawei called the Ascend Mate 2 that claims to have two days of battery life and is approximately the size of Clark County Navada.
Instead, we saw a thousand and twenty new gadgets that are all utterly dependent on phones. Think of all those wearables-all the trackers and watches and hideous glasses that were utterly everywhere this year. I'm not sure that there is a single company left on earth that isn't making some sort of activity tracker, at least based on what I saw at CES.
And all of them would be useless without the smartphone - the computer in our pockets that makes all those other things possible .
Its striking when you really start to think about it.. I mean, there's even a TV set running WebOS-an operating system we originally saw on Palm's ill-fated smartphones.
Anyway. Maybe I'm just thinking about this because of our Smartphone ThunderDome challenge. I'll be honest, I was dreading it going in. It seemed like a miserable way to try to cover CES. But it definitely proved its point to me. It really is possible to be mobile only. And honestly, by day two, every time I stood up from a meeting to head out across the show floor it was exhilarating to not have to lug a bag around. Everything fit in my pockets and I could just roll. In many respects it made covering CES much easier.
There was a bit of weirdness to walking into a meeting and then sitting down and taking notes on my phone. It felt rude-like I was texting. while they were talking or something. It's hard to describe. But I think typically is a sign that the person you're with isn't paying attention to you when you're on your phone. So I would typically apologize for this in advance.
You know who told me not to worry about that? 50 Cent. Which, okay, is crazy. But he has his own headphones company, SMS Audio, and was at CES showing off its new water resistant and Star Wars branded lines. Turns out, he's basically already living in a phone only world to write.
'I only require headphones at this point,' he told me. 'Producers will send music and I'll sit and go through the actual music, find things that sound interesting and play it. There's never a point when there's something I can't be writing to.'
He flipped open his phone and showed me email after email after email from producers, and clicked into one to play a beat by OJ Smallz. Then he swapped over to the Notes app on his iPhone was loaded with songs lyrics. Enough that he could just scroll and scroll and scroll. It means he can write anywhere, where once he had to be close to a CD player.
You hear about combat reporters who have gone phone-only, but that's been by necessity. It never would have occurred to me to intentionally leave my laptop behind. But posting from the phone gave me (and all of us) a new kind of freedom. We could pop from anywhere, anytime. It was great.
Editing, however, was a chore. Really moving blocks of text around and fine-tuning things is pretty difficult on a small touchscreen. I like the way Android does cut and paste, but I strongly prefer the precision I get on the desktop. I'm not sure I could have written my wrap-up post from a phone.
Battery life was the real killer, though. Man that is the worst thing about smartphones. It's especially true at CES, though. There are so many people crammed into the LVCC and your phone is working so hard to connect that it's already running on fumes. Then you add in constant usage and GroupMe messaging and video uploads and phew. I had two battery packs and could have used two more.
But overall? I'd totally do it again. And I may even start covering events phone-only. As long as I can have a Bluetooth keyboard to go with it.
This is the Buccaneer 3D printer from Pirate3D. There were a of 3D printers at CES - but here's what stuck out to me about this particular one to me: it's very forward thinking.Let me explain. You'll notice you can't see it print, the company says that's because they think printers should be more like home appliances. If you're going to have it in your house, you probably will get tired of seeing its guts all the time. It has a very easy to use app (at least for me) that lets you dial in and alter the design of common objects, or import designs and alter them to suit your needs and desires, so you don't have to know anything about AutoCAD to work on your designs. You'll even be able to scroll through existing objects in its forthcoming website and create them just by hitting print now. It only prints in PLA - which the company says was a conscious decision due to the fumes of ABS plastic, again, because it says this is intended to be a printer people use in their homes. It's $497 for pre-orders, when it hits retail the MSRP will be $897.
I have no idea what a Dalek has to do with speakers. It's probably just a ploy to get nerds to take photos of their booth.
Well played.
Future anthropologists will discover the WIRED CES 2014 GroupMe text archive and determine that our great-great-grandchildren should be detained away from normal society lest they spread their insane ideas.
Things I Wish I'd Seen at CES #
CES has lots of things but not everything. It's possible that some of these were at the show, and I missed them. It's a big show.
1. Laser technology - What can be accomplished with a laser? I don't know, but I want to find out. Moar laserz plz. 2. Toilet tech - Automatic flushing toilets are the worst. I'd estimate 5 percent of all automatically flushing toilets flush at a reasonable time. I propose all that 3D gesture recognition be used in this scenario. Wave to the toilet then it flushes. Your hands don't get dirty, and it doesn't flush prematurely or too late. Maybe this exists already, if so let me know where these awesome bathrooms are in the comments. 3. Smart textiles - Let's innovate on flexible, wearable, waterproof electronics that can be embedded in clothing items. Some folks don't really want to wear a watch or wristband to track stats during their workouts. How about an HRM, GPS, and accelerometer embedded in a workout shirt or sports bra? Or something. 4. More robots - There were not enough robots at CES. 5. iPhone cases - Just kidding, there were tons of these.
'No, no it's not that bad.'
I caught myself saying that on more than one occasion after explaining why I was using a Windows Phone. Unless they're one of those rabid platform snobs, people rarely question your decision to use an iPhone or Android within the first few minutes of meeting you. Blackberry users still populate the PR and marketing world. I saw them everywhere. Windows Phone, not so much. So there were the questions.
Honestly I didn't have many answers at the beginning. My main phone is an iPhone. But I have an Android and BlackBerry phone with me most of the time. Before I stuck my SIM card into the Lumia 1020 on Friday, my experience with Windows Phone was setting up a phone swiping the live tiles for few minutes, then moving on to my iPhone to check Twitter.
That's one of main reasons I wanted the Windows phone. It's completely different from what I'm used too. If you're going to take part in a slightly insane experiment, you might as well go all out.
The second reason was the Lumia 1020's camera. If you're only able to report and take photographs from a single device, find a phone with a good camera.
The 1020's camera is more than a nice sensor shoved into a rectangle. It's tied to the Nokia camera app. During the Intel keynote presentation I could manually adjust the white balance, ISO, shutter speed, and focus. It was great. The photos were outstanding compared to the auto settings and what I could shoot with my iPhone.
Then I started switching between Word and the camera app. My finely crafted manual-camera settings disappeared. I found out later that if you use the shutter button to launch the camera app instead of opening the version that's saved in the recent apps switcher, it opens it from scratch. If was frustrating and I didn't realize until days later that if I had used the app switcher, my manual settings would have been right where I left them.
That's where Windows Phone frustrated me. I really liked the Live Tiles UI. I could pin an individual and see only messages from that person. Perfect for families and close friends. But there's no notification center like on the other three mobile OSs. If you miss a notification, you have to launch the app instead having a quick look at all the notifications you missed. It slowed me down and in some cases I inadvertently ignored messages.
The app switcher itself is also odd. You can have three apps available in the switcher. Fewer than most, but five seems like a nice number until you realize you can have multiple states of the same app in the switcher. At certain points during the day I would have three versions of the same text thread in the switcher. That's not helpful. It's confusing and like the lack of a notification center, it wastes time.
But the biggest problem with Windows Phone is the app situation. Developers are treating the platform as an after thought. I was far more frustrated with the shoddy apps from Vine, Twitter, and Instagram than the OS. The OS probably isn't the best for fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants blogging. But for everyday use, it's a refreshing change and fun to navigate. Apps on the other hand need to be on point and the apps I used were not.
It's a bummer too. Because without quality apps, your phone gets ignored. Just ask BlackBerry.
But, I'm very happy that I brought the Lumia 1020 along to CES. For me, it was a grand experiment to see what could be accomplished on a platform that's foreign to me. If Joe, Mike, and Bryan told me I had to use Windows Phone next year, I'd be perfectly fine with that. Hell, the keyboard is better than the iPhone and that was what really mattered most the time.
But, when I land in San Francisco I'll pull my SIM card and put it in my iPhone. I need a notification center and less confusing app switcher. But more importantly, I need apps. Especially apps that work correctly.
Note: I tried to post this night and the Tumblr app locked me out from posting. I mean come on. http://ift.tt/19jfUgJ
No comments:
Post a Comment