Electronics, Consumer Electronics Show | featured news

In June 2011, I spent some time with an early version of BlackBerry 10 and commented that things “can only get better.” I said that because. at the time, things weren’t good. At all. BlackBerry 10 was a mess and the developer unit I tried it on was so glitchy I felt guilty writing a hands-on piece at all. Yesterday, off-site at CES, I got a full run down of a near-final version of BlackBerry 10 by the folks at Research in Motion. I can’t believe the difference six months can make. BlackBerry 10 is not only fully functional now, but it’s exciting.

Phil Schiller, Apple’s SVP of Global Marketing, said in an interview to a Chinese newspaper that “cheap smart phones will not be developed in order to grab market share away”. There have been a number of analysts, especially over the past few days, and the Wall Street Journal who have speculated that Apple will come out with a lower priced iPhone in potentially a smaller format.

Samsung went for commercial flash at the international Consumer Electronics Show this week with bendable screens, kitchen appliances controlled by smartphones and razor-thin televisions. But just as important was a less-glamorous announcement that the world’s largest smartphone maker is turning its attention to a new pocket of lucrative potential customers: corporations and government agencies.

Sony unveils the Xperia Z, a flagship handset which is water resistant and feature HDR video.

Cameras that can record in 3-D are usually pretty complicated, sporting two lenses instead of one, to mimic human binocular vision. Samsung says it has a more elegant solution: a single lens that can go from 2-D to 3-D mode with the flip of a switch.

New TVs from Samsung will recognize an expanded range of gestures so people can swipe through on-screen menus in a way that revolutionizes the old remote control.

Today at CES, Intel officially announced a new partnership with Comcast that will will enable customers to view live and on-demand television content on Intel-based devices, such as tablets, ultrabooks and PCs. This experience is made possible by the Intel® Puma™ 6MG-based XG5 multi-screen video gateway.

The race to make TVs larger and larger has created a colossal problem for manufacturers: As screens grow, picture quality worsens - unless the viewer moves further away from the screen....

Dismayed that family members are spread out over the house, each with a separate PC or tablet? Lenovo has something it believes will get them back together: a PC the size of a coffee table that works like a gigantic tablet and lets four people use it at once. Lenovo Group Ltd., one of the world's largest PC makers, is calling the IdeaCentre Horizon Table PC the first "interpersonal computer" — as opposed to a "personal computer."

These days, the Las Vegas gathering favors deal-making over groundbreaking, but firms plan to unveil thousands of products.The International Consumer Electronics Show next week may be facing questions about its relevance in an Internet world that makes new things seem old in minutes, but it is still the foremost gathering for all things gadgety and geeky.