CES 2009: New Devices Help Take The Show On The Road
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Swiss Army knives are no longer what people reach for when they are looking for a handheld multitasking tool. NY1 kicks off its special series on the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with Adam Balkin's look at the latest in mobile technology. At the Consumer Electronic Show, manufacturers showed off a new feature added to portable devices – Haptic technology.
"When you have a touch-screen, sometimes you're not sure if it actually recognizes your touch," explains Scott Cohen of Samsung. "Our P3 Portable Media Player now vibrates, so when you hit play, stop, or fast forward, it'll give you a little vibration to know you actually hit that button."
The P3 also has Bluetooth, so you can use it to make or take calls via your cell phone.
If there's one big trend in mobile that looks to be big this year, it's getting content, particularly video, off handheld devices and moving it onto walls. It seems nearly a dozen developers are getting into these mobile projectors that you just plug into your tiny media players. Wow Wee, the robot manufacturers, will have three out in the coming months.
"We're coming out with a line of micro-projectors, which are ultra-portable, light weight, mini projectors," says Steve Hardy of Wow Wee Robotics. "And the three items are the Cinemin Swivel, a small, candy bar-sized projector that has a hinge built into it; there's the Cinemin Stick, which is basically the same size and has on-board memory and an SD memory slot, and then another one that's a little bit larger about the size of two soda cans and that has larger speakers."
Most manufacturers will say the ultimate goal of the projectors is to embed the projectors into other devices, like cell phones, which, as a matter of fact, one cell phone manufacturer has already done.
"The Logic Wireless Bolt phone can go from 34 inches to 64 inches," says Aasim Saied of Logic Wireless. "The further you go, the bigger it goes. And the darker the room is, the brighter it gets. The phone comes with 12 gigabytes, so it can store four DVD-quality movies or over 50 movies in standard quality."
Samsung is also working on tone similar product called the Show.
But for videophiles who crave top-of-the-line video on the go, there is the Panasonic DMP-B15, the first portable Bluray player.