Gadgetory

hi everyone and welcome to dialed in coming to you live from the cnet stage at CES 2014 we are going to run down all the smartphone news and trends for you at the show I'm Jessica Thal court joined by Brian Bennett Lin LA and kent german your cnet mobile experts well this was a very interesting show for a lot of reasons first of all all of the big names in smartphones pretty much took a hiatus this year we didn't see Samsung we didn't see HTC Motorola nokia not much from LG either but there were still phones so Lynn you've got one here why didn't tell us about what you saw I have the LG G flex fortunately we were able to see this before CES 2014 but they really emphasized it here and along with like their folk a 4k TV this bone is on sale right now worldwide yeah that's available it's going to be on AT&T Sprint and t-mobile that's what the news that they announced this year so I'm really looking forward to then so the most interesting thing about this phone of course is that it's got a curved screen and you got a chance to actually review the phone do you think that this isn't exciting or interesting phone for the US market what do we feel about having it on three carriers it's definitely an interesting form factor i mean samsung also has something similar to it except it curves the other way and this one's it curves and it's flexible but the fact that it's coming on three carriers i was really surprised about that and it's like something that's very exciting fruit especially for eighteen t who announced are their phones own this year so so it sounds like LG is really commit committed into making the curved phone and maybe even a little bit of a flexible phone can you give us a little demo there i don't know like right here press down i don't know if you guys there was no one I was afraid of it the first time I did it but now I could really like a little nervous you're suddenly yeah it except something like 90 pounds of pressure yeah i think around like 88 pounds of pressure who would stand that much yeah so you rightly could sit on it and it not crack right that's the idea it's in your pocket Kent will you give us another little dent there hey put it down like this oh you just have the spirit not to do it you think of something bad and then it a and weary with a with those scratching on the back oh yeah that's like a self-healing coating that that they say that is featured in like cars to for like their paint jobs and you could scratch it's written usually daily wear and tear and stuff like that so it's not really used like if you have like an exacto knives it's definitely going to cut but you know if you throw it in your purse so if you just sew it on the table definitely will not accumulate the kind of general scratches that we normally see if you have it i use in your pocket then i think a nice thing about it too is you know the curve isn't just a gimmick because it does help with the viewing angle of the watching watching any movies or video on the screen there's a lot of this with TVs to soak roofing is definitely going to be something we see no sediment oh yeah you could sit on the side its like it has like oh really it kind of like bends the reflections away from what you're looking at to write it improves the visibility that way as well and then we've got no pricing or availability on this yet right the carrier is the disclosure unit and now it's all about information I'm Brian you've got a phone right here at SU that's right so dive right in essentially this is the know if you guys can see this is the xperia 10 1 s and this is the basically the US version of the xperia z1 that was shipped globally but now it's on t-mobile and it has basically all the flagship components that you expect has fast processor huge screen and as a matter fact about 5 inches its 5-inch full-hd and the cameras 20-megapixel it is also water resistant and dust resistant so you can drop it in you know up to three feet of water for 30 minutes i believe and you're fine it has you know water tight if you can see this here but it has watertight seals around each of the ports so much a lot of the Xperia phones it was pretty high-end to like the build quality on this looks nice yeah it's definitely it definitely looks nice it's very shiny it's very sleek very thin so you can see here the little flap here covering one of the ports it I think it comes with a lot of memory has a pretty nice camera so this is a really good attempt by Sony to get back into the smartphone game which is I gotta celebrate that waterproof thing is something I still can't get used to though and the good idea of like I can dunk it in water I'm even put it in the sink and turn it on and it's ran into the bottom of people aren't really going to Duncan and water it's more like you don't have to freak out I think you'd be a cries no I think yeah just go for a dive in the pool alright well actually that you know if cell phones have ruined throwing people in the pool a pool party yeah that is just a dude I demand that we changed this before was just your wallet your keys now it's like your phone is going to be really actually there is a company here that has kind of a cool thing they say that we're doing things backwards with the whole seals instead of worrying about the rubber gaskets and things like that but you should be doing as water proofing the internals so they've worked on a coating to do that oh yes kind of cool yeah definitely a lot of people who do that after the market you know you can give them your phone and they will like pump it full of some sort of nano coating which will you know lock it all down and make sure that there's no water damage at all so pool parties safe again for pranks okay that's good to know so t-mobile has this phone AT&T also announced that it was going to carry a phone that's been previously released globally this is a trend right global first and then at CES announced that yes I boy dance yeah you take a look at that one right yeah so in addition to the g flex 80s going announced that asus padfone exits it was basically a phone a smart phone that you could plug into the rear side of a tablet and the tablet is powered by the processor from the smartphone and we took a look at it at me in a luke westaway from cnet UK took a look at it and it's basically a really really nifty device we couldn't touch it as per 18 tease request but you know and there's a mini version that's coming out there's no availability but also gonna be 18 heroes a lot of global announcement for the mini version ya know we um its global we don't there's no us availability information that they gave us at that point but the mini comes in a lot of colors like this really cool soft touch sheen material that we were that we really like and I believe it's a four inch smartphone into a 7-inch versus a five anytime iphone into a 9 inch allen the others say they other pad phones you had that you had to kind of put it in and a little door closed looks like this with the slides in the back yeah not that smooth but like you kind of you know you shove it in it connects and then it powers up the tablet the tablet has its own battery source so and you can use a tablet to power the smartphone but you can't but it doesn't have you know it's process ringing but you couldn't touch it and I couldn't touch and we wanted to just I'm not a big my day they've companies bring these things to the show and you were supposed to stare at it what are you supposed to do just stay on there oh I bet I bet you could have snuck a little we wanted to just lick it and just put our finger on interested but we know we can't do that because you know then they'll never put a post-it limo yeah they remove the glass for us though oh wow well that's very nice for them what you really exciting to me about this announcement is that we've seen these before Kent you and I have seen them at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and this phone has never come to the US market and it's really cool Lynn and I also took a look at the sous Padfone infinity earlier this year and we had in the office and we're playing with it and it is so cool and is such a great idea for people who are interested in a tablet but kind of want to cut costs a little bit because sometimes you know you use your phone when you're out and about and then you use the tablet when you're at home because you want to play a game or just have a larger screen or share it with somebody this is like the zip off backpack from the backpacking backpack no yeah you're kind of like an obscure example or like zip off pants or something man that becomes a choice modular you bring it on these manatees ready what can I say I'm a 90s girls well you know that all this modular you know smartphone design seems to be a real trend you know you've got motorola with their ARA project you've got CTE yes you see just they showcase it here it's there eco mobius modular phone concept design is another it's cool i'm a better work it's a it's they just displayed it we weren't able to like take a really good look at it it's just a concept design came out of the R&D program and there it's just something that it's exciting that another manufacturer is also working on a mantra phone concept it's pretty cool so you basically just like build your phone like like you know a stack of Legos or something yeah you know as long as you don't drop it and it all falls apart into like all these little pieces I won't let go to make a phone I think you build your own phone they may have Simpsons house this week so they can probably make a phone I think so I mean it's really how hard is it to make a phone really um I took a look along with eric franklin at the Samsung Galaxy Note pro this is a 12.2 inch tablet now why are we talking about tablets arose we're talking about smartphones because um it's really important to keep an eye on that on the Samsung tablet space because what happens on the note tablets usually winds up in some form or another on the note smartphone so what was interesting about this is that Samsung is really making a push to go pro especially with tablets you know they want their tablets to replace your desktop but what it means is there might be a trickle-down effect with the new magazine interface design is basically just redesigned with widgets and things like that that really aims to put a lot of productivity front and center and Samsung this massive juggernaut has also come up with a lot of partnerships with content providers so we can see that may be coming down to the next version of the note smartphone where it comes pre-loaded with all this stuff and with Samsung really trying to make a play for offering you a corporate productivity experience on the smartphone so it runs on Android but then the magazine UX just sits over that so it's yeah similar to similar to TouchWiz right way that it works but different it looks different and that's that's really a failing of tablets right now but it's sort of like keep an eye on this because you might see it appearing so I almost sounds like Microsoft and Samsung are gonna go head to head and like that the enterprise sort of production and pro tablet kind of surface well Samsung wants to rule the world yes I'll take on any way Google a little Microsoft you're down right uh so we saw a lot of themes here at the show that don't relate directly to smartphones but they build off of them and one of those is wearables Brian you took a look at a boatload of wearables yeah definitely there are a ton of wearable products here it would seemed like the the major theme of the show we saw what we saw the new pebble steel which is a brand new watch from the you know people who innovated the entire you know whole segment of the category it's very nice it looks it looks beautiful it's expensive it's $249 but it looks like a real analog watch that does not look like a SmartWatch at all until this little old LED strip on the bottom starts to roll in with like a ticker-tape style of smartphone notification so you see text you see you see you know social media meetings all the stuff you want to see at a glance and it also does this crazy thing where it actually will buzz with haptic feedback the way you want it to so when you get an alert you can have it like a little like a mini Morse code kind of thing to say like dot dot dot like long long short short short short and long long long or long short long I mean it's crazy all this stuff happening on your wrist and no one will know does it actually talk to you like a marshal no darlin I know it doesn't though the big joke is they should have come up with a watch name that the Martian Chronicle you know that would be grabbed ah like that but no it's it's a it's a it's a really interesting product it's a very low price you know it's like I think it's a 129 try so actually really nice remarkably low especially when you compare it to something like the Samsung Galaxy gear that only works with oh yeah the samsung phones and not even all of them yet right true that's true so um so this connects to your phone via bluetooth and it gets all of your contacts and notifications through your phone that way yeah they have they basically have two at they have two versions of say map one for Android one for iOS and you can figure all all of your notifications directly there and it all gets pushed to your phone as a matter of fact what's really cool is it will support apps that aren't even out yet because as long as you get a notification and any sort of app you install gets you know sent to the notification area on your phone it will self populate and basically now send those alerts to your to your watch you know if you want to or not so you know whatever software is out there it will figure it out so means you're always quit my chicken at your watch to look at texting your phones what about dinner and someone's going on top of Morse code no no yeah you just keep it on the side look at it you just it reads it out you know and then if you get my emergency alert then then you have to check your watch have you seen any smartphones at this show that actually is built for like a woman's wrist cuz I'm waiting for that other part much more watches no and that's a huge that's a huge hole in this thing because I have yet to see one smart watch that is targeted at at you know or a woman female yes no matter how small does anyone who has a small wrist mean it's true I put on the Galaxy gear and they have this pretty rose closer and I like that but it was so uncomfortable just fitting over my phone I didn't think I was really designed for anyone yeah I mean it does look that that device looks it looks sleek and it's interesting but it's so futuristic looking you know you definitely look like you're kind of like the cyborg from the future and a guy you know or woman you know it's it's definitely people will look at you if you have it on your wrist and that's not what you want you want a watch I think that just looks like a watch and it has an elegant kind of sophisticated style yet you know people won't even know that it's giving you all you don't I'm looking like one of those calculator watches with all but we're so big and clunky but but those are actually pretty cool please come back please strap your phone to your wrist oh yeah so I would smartwatches I mean do you think that this year last year was sort of everyone getting started this year we've had a lot of version 2 point 0 but it's not really in a lot of traction are we going to start seeing this actually getting picked up I'm is pricing really important or I technology well pricing is getting there it's getting lower but I also think that the technology is starting like especially with Bluetooth 4.0 getting into a lot of phones now and the bluetooth low energy that and you know it natively will support a lot of these push notifications on Android and iOS already has it so it you know you've got a lot of now the ecosystem is kind of building and its building momentum and it's a lot easier to actually create products in software so and everyone has one of these and it seems like and you don't want to be checking it you know 200 times a day it drives you crazy yeah it drives people that you go to out to eat dinner with they all right sitting there for us table and you're like well you will definitely pay attention to me if I should have to dinner wearing my smart glasses because I tried on for days and Scott Stein tried on one and these are all google glass alikes I'm gonna call it massively their rivals um one of them was specifically for a camera used like you put it on I'm you could slip these mods on the end to extend battery life or do cool things and then developers can create an app and you can press the button maybe look around and it takes a panorama and uploads it a lot of these are Kickstarter and IndieGoGo projects there's one that actually looks kind of like glasses it looks like a cycling helmet there's one I tried on that was just like absolutely insane it looked I mean it has like pivot wheel it just looked like it was taking over my entire as the face right is that the pivot um it's called the aura s AR eyewear and it is actually hung twister rolls off the tongue and I'm looking at myself in these ins like you know it's just like high school all over again with my big old glasses on my face um you will definitely get notice wearing these and I've seen a lot of google glass around the show as well like a ton of it and I think that right now smart glasses are probably we're smart watches were two years ago right um they are not a practical solution yet they are all just pure development and they do rely on your phone quite a lot and I know there are some smart contact lenses that makes stat from news looked at really that's that's very amazing like you know I'm going to be assimilated if I put one of those um so there's definitely a lot of net next wave tech coming on Brian you took a look at iris scanning yeah yeah it seems like you know wearable tech and biometrics you know these devices that pay attention to your body it's a huge thing and this company called I lock they actually announced or they're showing a demo of basically a device that would scan your iris and know who you are based on your individual patterns and it works like lightning a suspected really quick and it's it's no stretch of the imagination to see it actually going into smartphones as a matter of fact yesterday there was some buzz that perhaps the Samsung Galaxy s5 may have some iris scanning technology built into it is that going to use the camera for optics uh yeah because what I believe how this this whole thing works is it uses the front-facing camera or you know on your laptop and it will basically shoot I are like infrared beams into your eyes and record the you know the little patterns and you're in the color part of your eye the iris and matches that against a database that lives up there you know though of course it's all I think it's all local so you have to worry about your your fingerprint or your I print or your iris ID you know kind of living in the cloud somewhere it's all like local but it's supposed to be really you know tight security and really fast and it's very futuristic yeah I mean we have face unlock but that doesn't quite work the same way does it no thank you try to face on Lachlan you've tried it yeah but the thing is you can use a photo like if you play some could be I guess you know if you had someone that kind of looks like you can unlock your phone I mean this is a unique thing you know somebody's somebody's irises which is definitely unique to them like their fingerprint not so much a face in some ways but so it's a little bit different there are companies that are also working on voice unlock as well right so they they pattern your voice they call it the voice matrix and then you have like an unlocked passphrase that only you would say like the quick brown fox or I hate passwords or something like that it's a little bit longer and that's supposed to unlock your phone so another thing that I took a look at that may also be on the samsung galaxy s5 I'm guessing this is totally uncomfortable art phones have gesture technology in it and they use that's been around for long yeah they use optics through the camera or some other devices use infrared and this one uses ultrasound okay yeah ultrasound so it uses normal microphones but then these ultra sound speakers so when you turn it on it sends out these sound waves that you can't hear and you'll basically wipe your hand over the phone doing any number of laboratories and it will bounce back now what's cool about ultrasound is that the space isn't limited because you don't have something that's looking at you it's it's setting out these sound waves so you can use a wider field I guess of space and you can use more elaborate controls like moving your hand in a circle could turn up the volume or turn down the volume so it's like something out three dimensional yeah you know you can you can make like different things with your fingers or whatever some kind of strange shape and it was a very cool I don't know what this thing's a lotta fun I do you think like this amazing I mean I just love the way in that video how you're just you know moving your hand so many of these phones that it's so particular you have to be so close you have to do is very certain thing I mean you're just going like this your other to the side of the phone yeah and it's working no I think this is really interesting the only problem with that is that when I was shooting the video there were a lot of false positives and negatives well a lot of false whatevers because I just stick you late a lot I'm so it's up to the device makers to actually constrain that and define what it means to do thee to do these things but the app makers can also start integrating that into the apps when that happens and we have been assured that that is going to start showing up in tablets and smartphones in 2014 so I think the big theme of this phone of this phone show this show here at least is that we're going to see a lot more from phones in the future in this year it was quiet here but we've got Mobile World Congress coming up at the end of februari into early March yeah the three of us are going to that the quieter CES is for women the bigger mwa that's really don't know that's a big show in barcelona spain every year and it's been growing and importance every year for we've been going since 2008 and its really where cell phone and smartphone news really happens now it's kind of taken over the show in that way I mean the smartphone still are here but we'll see new smartphones there more than we did here that's really evidenced by the fact that Samsung didn't have our presence noogie well nokia getting bought out by microsoft will know more about that by then there should be a phone either from nokia or a new windows phone whatever that's going to be branded as i'm expecting that we're going to see that there and of course seeing it will have great coverage about will congress so at last week of every seemed to turn into US and bring you all the news these guys will because they will be there and you will be there in spirit I will be building slight shadows back exactly so again thank you so much for joining us you can find out all of the coverage about every product we talked about and every product that cnet cover doesn't hold at CES cnet com