CES 2017: What major brands have in store this year

With the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2017 about to start in a day’s time, electronics companies are revealing details of the products they are planning to showcase over the next four days. Some of these gadgets will be released over the next few days, and a majority will show up on stands in the next few months.

Lenovo Legion series laptops

The big news from Lenovo’s camp is the new gaming series of laptops called Legion. The two new laptops to make a debut under the new sub-brand are Y720 and Y520. Equipped with Intel’s 7th Gen Core i7 with 16GB RAM, the Legion Y270 is the more powerful of the two and is based on Nvidia’s VR ready GeForce GTX 1060 GPU. It offers a15.6-inch display with resolution of 3,840x2,160p. The Y520 has a 15.6-inch full HD display and is powered by Nvidia’s new GTX 1050 GPU. Legion Y720 is priced at $1,399 and will be available from April 2017, while the Y520 will be available from February 2017 at $899.

Nvidia GTX 1050 and 1050ti graphics

Nvidia has announced two new variants of GTX 1050 and 1050ti GPUs (Graphics processing unit) for gaming laptops. Despite their smaller footprint, the new GPUs offer as many CUDA cores as their desktop siblings. What makes them better than their predecessor is their 16nm architecture which delivers three times more over clocking speed than 28nm-based GPUs and Nvidia’s new Battery Boost technology which makes them 30% better battery efficient. The two GPUs will be available with all major gaming laptops starting at $700 from this month onwards.

Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 convertible PC

Dell has upgraded the XPS 13 line-up with XPS 13 2-in-1 laptop with a flexible hinge design that allows the display to be flexed backwards up to 360 degrees so it can double up as a tablet. Made of aluminium and carbon fibre, the new XPS 13 offers a 13.3-inch IGZO IPS display with screen resolution of up to 3,200x1,800p. The laptop will be driven by Intel’s 7th Gen Core i5 and i7 processor paired with 4GB to 16GB RAM. Priced at $999, the new notebook will be available in the US from 5 January onwards.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon laptop

Lenovo has made subtle design changes with the new version of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon notebook. The new X1 has a smaller footprint, weighs just 1.14kg and yet has managed to accommodate a 14-inch display. It runs on Intel’s 7th Gen Core i7 processor and promises a battery backup of up to 15 hours. The new X1 Carbon will show up on stands from February 2017 and will start at $1,349.

Blackberry DTEK70 smartphone

Blackberry is reportedly planning to show off a new Android smartphone, likely to be dubbed as DTEK 70. The phone is believed to be designed by Blackberry and manufactured by TCL. A teaser released ahead of the Show suggests that the new phone may have a physical keyboard just like Blackberry Priv, the company’s first Android smartphone that was released last year.

Honor 6x smartphone

Huawei’s sub-brand Honor is expected to release a budget smartphone called the Honor 6x. Successor to Honor 5x, the new smartphone runs on a superior HiSilicon Kirin 655 octa-core processor and dual cameras which has been a highlight in several Honor smart phones recently. The phone runs Android 6.0 with the latest version of Emotion UI 4.1 over it. It has a metal body, offers a 5.5-inch display and weighs 162g.

Lenovo Phab 2 Pro smartphone

Lenovo has finally unveiled its first Tango-enabled smartphone. Developed by Google, Project Tango is a platform which allows better implementation of augmented reality games and features on smartphones. Dubbed as Phab 2 Pro, the new smartphone offers a 6.4-inch quad HD display, runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 652 octa-core processor and is powered by a 4,050mAh battery. It starts at $499 and is available in the US.

Xiaomi Mi Mix smartphone

Another Chinese company looking to make a mark at CES can be Xiaomi which is expected to unveil its new smartphone Mi Mix, which has all the makings of a flagship killer smartphone. The phone is likely to use Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor, has a 6.4-inch 2k display and offers up to 256GB of internal storage.

ODG R8 & R9 VR and AR wearables

ODG (Osterhout Design Group), a US-based company known for augmented reality technologies and products, has unveiled two new AR-based smart glasses R8 and R9. Designed for work and entertainment, the new glasses can be used for both AR and VR apps. The glasses will be powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 835 and offer a 50-degree field of view at a resolution of 1,920x1,080p.

Fossil smart watches

Fossil is the only wearable brand with big plans at this year’s CES and is expected to unveil multiple wearable devices across categories this time.

Google’s improved operating system for smart watches, called Android Wear 2.0, is rumoured to show up on some of these Fossil smart watches expected to show up.

Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate GT storage

Kingston has unveiled the world’s highest capacity USB flash drives that will be available in 1TB and 2TB variants. Both the drives will support USB 3.1 Gen 1 standard which means slightly better read and write speeds than USB 3.0 standard drives. The drives will be available in the US from February 2017.