The start of September noticed the Android Authority staff head to Germany for this yr’s IFA present in Berlin and straight after that, I took to the skies to fly out to Las Vegas for CTIA 2015. Together with just a few conferences to take a look at some actually cool merchandise, the journey was my first expertise of Las Vegas, so what had been my highlights of CTIA? Let’s have a look.
CTIA as a present has been lowering in measurement over the previous few occasions however with an attendance of 35,000-45,000 folks, it’s nonetheless fairly a big present. Over the previous few editions, it’s seen a shift in the direction of a extra business- and distributor-focused present that means the occasion holds comparatively little in the way in which of client merchandise.
That being stated, there have been fairly just a few merchandise we received our arms on, and one in every of these was the Nextbit. We’ve already lined the cloud-first Nextbit in our full hands-on however to shortly recap, it is a telephone that’s generated over $1 million in backing on Kickstarter.
Led by a staff that features Tom Moss – one of many former heads of the unique Android staff at Google – and Scott Croyle – the previous design chief behind the long-lasting HTC One M7 – the Nextbit Robin has the pedigree to make a distinction out there. The Robin is the corporate’s first smartphone and positively has a slightly distinctive cloud-focused proposition that’s completely different to anything in the marketplace. For a full look, head over to our Nextbit Robin arms on.
From one telephone to a different and the BLU Pure XL is unquestionably a tool that stands out from the group. I’ve already printed my first ideas on the machine however to shortly recap, it’s BLU’s greatest smartphone-to-date and the American producer has actually packed a whole lot of punch inside a smartphone that prices simply $350 unlocked.
The specs record is huge and features a 6.0-inch Quad HD Tremendous AMOLED show (which is improbable), a MediaTek Helio X10 processor, 64GB inner storage, a fingerprint sensor, 3GB RAM and a 24MP rear digital camera. It gives distinctive worth for cash and whereas it’s going up in opposition to some unbelievable competitors within the $350 bracket, we wouldn’t write this smartphone off. Head over to our first impressions posts for a more in-depth have a look at BLU’s new machine.
Whereas at BLU’s sales space, we additionally received to take a look at one other actually attention-grabbing BLU smartphone: the vivo Air LTE, which is the world’s thinnest smartphone. At a value of $199, it has a good specs record and it’s extra sturdy than it appears to be like. For more information, head over to our impressions submit. We’ve received critiques of each of BLU’s units coming within the subsequent few weeks so keep tuned!
From telephones to drones, and a key focus at CTIA was the longer term bots of the sky. Though there was a complete satellite tv for pc occasion devoted to those winged bots, there have been just a few on show on the principle present ground and the DJI Phantom positively caught my eye.
It was introduced earlier this yr and has a variety of options, together with simple to make use of controls and a companion app for iOS and Android. The companion app itself is nice because it provides additional controls to the drone and when you’ve docked your smartphone into the controller, the app additionally shows a primary particular person POV feed direct from the 12MP digital camera, which gives 4K video recording.
At a value of $700 to $1200, the Phantom is actually not the most affordable drone in the marketplace but it surely actually appears to be like the half, has nice dealing with and appears nicely constructed. If I used to be going to purchase a drone, the DJI Phantom would in all probability get my cash (though I’ve not frolicked with any of its rivals).
Now to one of many coolest merchandise I got here throughout at CTIA: the linked wheelchair. Developed by the AT&T Foundry in partnership with Permobil (the world’s main wheelchair maker), the linked wheelchair has a variety of sensors that measure all the things from seat place and padding to motion and mobility.
The wheelchair comes outfitted with a SIM card and makes use of AT&T Foundry’s IoT know-how to show data in an easy-to-use dashboard. The community says that the dashboard can show data for a single wheelchair or all of the wheelchairs in a fleet and might segregate information on a need-to-know foundation.
For example, sellers and upkeep corporations can entry data like wheelchair battery and restore standing (however not affected person information), whereas physicians can entry affected person information comparable to quantity of motion, seat place (nice for diagnosing again pains or ulcers) and padding quantity. For physicians, the wheelchair may also ship notifications when the consumer stops transferring (e.g. when the wheelchair has run out of battery) and if it topples over, which makes offering care quite a bit simpler.
[related_videos title=”Live at IFA 2015:” align=”left” type=”custom” videos=”641939,640044,639843,639842″]AT&T are additionally planning to develop a collection of wheelchair-focused maps, which – utilizing crowd-sourced information and the corporate’s personal information assortment efforts – will imply that customers can plot a wheelchair-safe route every time they need to go someplace. The long run objective is that almost all of wheelchair customers will probably be utilizing one in every of these and having seen this in motion, I can say that, if I wanted a wheelchair, that is positively one I’d prefer to have.
So there you’ve got it, a brief recap of some cool merchandise we got here throughout at CTIA 2015 in Las Vegas. The occasion was actually attention-grabbing however in contrast to different exhibits we usually cowl, it was much less consumer-focused and extra designed for companies and distributors. What did you consider CTIA and the few merchandise we discovered?
