A feast of technology

Las Vegas is the last place you would expect to see a tech geek. But, every January, for three days, hundreds of thousands of geeks descend on the Sin City to explore the latest and the weirdest gadgets at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). This year’s show was no different. With flexible e-ink tablets, self-driving cars, transparent washing machines, curved 3D TV’s, augmented reality windshields, WiFi enabled refrigerators, snake skin headphones, 3D printers and loads of other wonderful gadgets, it was a riot of the great technologies we are going to see in the next few months and years. Here are 10 of the best products at the CES 2013 that will come to the market:

1. Sony Xperia Z

What if there existed a well-designed Android phone? One that had a five-inch Full HD highly durable glass display, the latest Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor, a 13-megapixel fast-capture camera, a mobile version of the Bravia engine that is found in high-end TVs and 4G capability, all in a beautiful package put together by Sony. And one that is dust-resistant and one that can be left in water for up to 30 minutes. If that dream came true it would be Sony Xperia Z which is being touted as Sony’s comeback phone.

2. Yotaphone

Yotaphone is the most innovative phone ever made. Period! On the face of it, the Yotaphone is a powerful Android phone with a 4.3-inch, full-color LCD screen. It is when you flip it over that you get the surprise. The back is a monochromotic e-ink screen on which you can get notifications, read news, display time or pictures or even read a book without using up the phone battery.

3. Panasonic 20-inch 4K Tablet Prototype

When Panasonic brought out a Windows 8 Tablet prototype, no one gave it a second thought. Until they looked at it. For starters, the Tablet has a massive 20-inch screen and it boasts of 4K resolution. At 3,840x2,560 pixels, it puts all the HD, retina and 1080p videos and all the HD TV’s in the world to shame. To that extreme level of detail, Panasonic added a Core i5 processor, 16GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD storage, making it a powerful and huge. And at 0.4-inch thickness, it is a very thin Tablet.

4. Samsung 4K Floating TVs

4K TVs are to HD TVs, what an iPhone is to a Nokia 1100. While many companies showed off impressive 4K TVs, the one that stood out is the one from Samsung. It comes in three gigantic sizes at 85, 95 and 110 inches. The extremely thin TV is floating inside an external frame which lets it to be tilted to any angle and also carries impressive 120-watt 2.2 speakers. It can be available from March and would priced starting from around `20 lakh. But, you have to fit that gigantic screen in your living room.

5. Sharp Freestyle Aquos TV

  On the other end of the TV spectrum, Sharp’s Freestyle Aquos TVs liberate your TV from hanging on a wall, or from being static on a stand. The extremely lightweight models, available in 60, 40, 32 and 20 inches, are WiFi-enabled and have in-built batteries. It means, you can carry your TV around and hang it anywhere in the house with built-in handle.

6. Kingston 1TB Flash Drive

Kingston’s 1Terra Byte flash drive is the first time so much storage has been put in such a small package. Allowing you to carry your entire digital life and a lot more free space in your pocket, this USB 3.0 flash drive boasts of speeds of up to 240MB while reading and 160MB while writing, and is compatible with USB 2.0. The casing is made from shock-resistant Zinc alloy metal which makes it highly durable. But don’t expect to pay anything less than `2 lakh for the drive.

7. Nvidia Project Shield

When you say Nvidia you think graphics processors. What you don’t think is hand-held gaming consoles. And with Project Shield that is exactly what Nvidia made. Promising to turn the gaming industry on it’s head, Project Shield brings console quality games to a hand-held. Running pure Android, it is powered by a Tegra 4 processor, has a 5-inch 720p multitouch display, has a micro SD slot and promises a battery capable of five to 10 hours of playtime.In one word, this looks like the future of serious gaming.

8. Fitbit Flex

Fitbit Flex is a wristband activity tracker that syncs with your iPhone or Galaxy S III to give you real-time updates of your activity data. From tracking your activities, like running and climbing steps, it also tracks sleep quality, lets you set alarms and comes with a USB 4.0 Bluetooth dongle, so you can sync your data with your Mac or PC. Available in different colours, this water-resistant wristband shows the Nike FuelBands of the world how it is done.

9. Hapifork

 The Hapifork falls into the wierd and the wonderful category. You can call it a self-tracking device. Or you can call it a fork to eat food. Except, this fork vibrates when you eat too fast. By making you eat slow, it promises you good digestion and weight control. It also tracks the duration you took to complete a meal, the number of chews per minute and the intervals between ‘fork servings’. And you can track your progress.

10. iPotty

Mixing your two-year-old’s potty time with your iPad can be dangerous. For the iPad. As your’s truly found out unfortunately. The CES brings the iPotty for every parent out there who wants to keep their iPad safe. However, the self

explanatory iPotty does not come with any kid-specific apps. You have to get your own apps and kids.