Gadgetory

Linus tech tips coverage of CES 2014 is brought to you by NCI XCOM your source for great technology selection and service along with Corsair memory and Western Digital we're kicking things off at the LG booth with a couple of major themes of the show overall so one of which being curved TVs LG is showing off the world's largest curved Ultra HD TV now one of the other common themes here is 4k but not to be outdone by what everyone else is doing LG has delivered a 21 by 9 5 K curved TV now to be clear guys this is absolutely massive this is a hundred and five inches diagonally which to put it in perspective is if you play basketball and you're trying to put the ball in the basket from the free-throw line you would have to actually throw it about the distance of the diagonal width of this TV now the objective of curved TVs is of course to enhance the image quality by having every part of the screen being equal distance from your eyes compared to the more traditional flat TV style now you might be looking at this going okay well this is like space-age technology can we expect to buy one in 2020 if you have the funds and they're not talking about pricing yet you could actually buy one of these this year they are releasing it in 2014 all right so let's move on to something that is a little bit more space-age now if the objective of a curved TV is to have the viewing angles be absolutely optimal regardless of how far away you are from the TV then you're going to need something a little bit different this my friends is the world's first flexible curved TV now that's not to say that it's flexible in terms of somewhere at their manufacturing plant there today it's manufactured out of some sort of you know flexible OLED screen and they came in and they put it on a solid background no the idea is that with a remote control you can actually take this phenomenally thin 4k OLED TV and adjust it on the fly for the optimal picture quality we have no idea when this is coming but what I can tell you guys is having the privilege of being able to stand right next to it it still looks absolutely amazing the problem with the best image quality in the world and the most advanced technology is that quite frankly my aunt bless her heart I hope she's not watching simply can't use it now LG acquired webOS from HP earlier in 2013 and we are now seeing the fruits of that acquisition in the form of webOS integrated directly with their new Smart TVs now there are a few advantages here that are sort of on a more granular level but the overarching message is simplicity it is much much simpler to use than existing Smart TV systems which quite frankly my aunt and even my mother who's slightly more technical than my aunt also can't handle so number one is the launcher down here you can launch different apps in much the same way that you would on something like a tablet or smartphone which makes sense because webOS like was on tablets before so you know right - obvious you can look at sort of your recent applications so we can fire up a web browser here go to cnn.com you can switch back using the recent application feature to the blu-ray disc that was playing before that will take a few seconds though guys just because of HDMI is handshakes it process that has to occur here it's also got now this is really cool what they're calling input assist so there's a blu-ray player down here unfortunately I can't demo this one live but if you plug in something like an Xbox 360 the idea is that you plug it in and it goes okay boom you've got an Xbox 360 we're going to go ahead and add you something a little icon in the launcher here so that you don't even have to like really think about it anymore HDMI one HDMI two that's too complicated for my mother in my aunt so LG was specifically trying to address that for me the last thing is the live menu the fact that you don't have to navigate away to a separate menu structure with a static background you can actually keep your content playing in the background and navigate all of your Smart TVs features next up we've got my first hands-on time with the LG G flex this is the world's first curved smartphone I mean let's go through the regular standard phone stuffer so it has a six inch plastic OLED display which I guess isn't that standard considering that's the largest pio LED display on the market at this time it has a 3500 milliamp hour battery which I guess also isn't unexceptional is exceptional because that happens to be curved as well it's got a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor it's got however much storage you decide you want based on what your needs are and it's got a lock button as well as volume control it's on the back of the phone I guess now this is really that standard so what's LG trying to do here by doing a bunch of non-standard stuff with their phones they're trying to make the interface and the way that you interact with it more natural so there's a couple things that this does number one is a curved phone puts the microphone closer to your mouth so sound quality can be improved number two is when you're enjoying content this is sort of the year of curved TVs they want you to be able to enjoy that curve to display experience even when you're just watching videos on your smartphone now in terms of carrying the thing around does it fit in your hand does it create a little bit more comfortably in spite of the six-inch size I would actually go as far as to say yeah it kind of does already you can really tell it's just it's a more natural position for your hand I mean electronics in the past have been flat not because they should be necessarily but out of necessity and one other feature they have they call the the the the doesn't make your bum fall asleep as often as bad leafy add notes what they say is it fits more comfortably in your back pocket and more naturally when you put it in there because of its flexibility now you might worry you might go okay well I don't put my phone in my back pocket because I'm worried about it being damaged as a as a you know as a straight phone maybe I'm not exactly the you know the curvature of my glutes isn't quite like this I'm still worried about breaking it don't worry the Flex is not only for the curved nature of the display but also for the flexibility of the display you can actually curve it back pretty much to a straight position without damaging the phone and then speaking of durability this is a feature that's been getting a lot of airtime guys is the fact that the back is self-healing no you're not going to be able to take an ice pick to it but if you put it in your pocket with your keys or whatever else we've pretty much started taking Gorilla Glass for granted but the plastic backs on these phones tend to develop micro scratches very very quickly not so much with this one you leave it for you know 15 minutes half an hour particularly in a warm environment and those micro scratches will disappear almost completely closing things out at the LG booth we've got the life band touch now the unique thing about this particular fitness wearable is that unlike others where you have to link them to something like a smartphone like whether it's an iOS or an Android smartphone din order to monitor your stats particularly on a daily basis you don't have to with this one it operates completely standalone it's got both an Excel Tim etre so you know it can track things like your steps your calorie count but it can also even help you train for things like marathons now in order to turn it on you just go ahead and flick your wrist there you go in the display lights up this helps maintain a very solid multi day battery life which is excellent when you compare it to other sort of more SmartWatch feature-rich devices which is something I actually prefer I'm using a pebble myself right now and I find that having a low-power display even if I lose some of the extra fancy features is definitely a plus now what can you do with that touch screen display well you can change your music tracks you can accept phone calls and all that kind of stuff if you have it linked to a smart phone but other than that you can use it to track things like your calorie consumption that day and you can set little achievements and goals for yourself and it's just generally use it to enable a more healthy lifestyle now from a pure sort of okay I'm going to wear this everyday perspective is quite comfortable and it does a few useful things but if you're actually going for an intensive workout and you want even more stats you can plug in the included earphones that have a battery-powered Bluetooth link right here and this will give you obviously the ability to listen to music but also the ability to monitor your heart rate and the oxygenation of your blood so I think we're pretty much done here guys I think they actually need these so we're going to wrap things up thanks for checking out our coverage of the LG booth here at CES 2014 don't forget our trip to the show with powered by NCI XCOM your source for great technology selection and service as well as course our memory and Western Digital without those guys we wouldn't be able to be here