The world’s biggest technology companies have showcased their latest inventions at a huge event in Las Vegas, including Google in your car and robot strippers.
Here’s five really interesting gadgets from CES 2018.
A Laptop powered by a smartphone
Smartphones have become so powerful that one can now be docked and essentially used as a laptop.
Project Linda, an amazingly specced dummy laptop that’s powered by phone manufacturer Razer’s new smartphone, was showcased at CES 2018.
It slots in to become a trackpad and second screen while a cut-out means you can still use the fingerprint scanner.
The laptop itself, currently a prototype, will have a Quad HD 120Hz touchscreen, 200GB of storage and a battery big enough to charge the Razer Phone three times.
Turn your home into a smart home
The Lenovo Smart Display with Google Assistant could be to the next-generation smart home what the iPhones were to smartphones. It could genuinely make it really easy to turn your home into the sort of thing you’d see in a bond film and expect to pay thousands for.
This device is a tabletop smart screen that acts as a touchscreen tablet, virtual personal assistant, and smart-home hub.
With a stunning upscale design, it’s also pretty enough to keep on a countertop in your kitchen or perched on a bedside table.
You can set it up to say, “Hey Google,” and start a routine: Turn on the lights, get the coffee brewing, read your daily schedule, give you traffic and weather reports, wake the kids, and remind you to feed the dog.
Best of all is contextual support for YouTube, like finding a video to demonstrate a cooking technique mid-recipe.
The best TVs in the world
CES 2018 is famous for showing off the best TVs in the world just before they are released.
LG has vowed it will make “the best TV even better” – and, as supplier of OLED TV panels to the TV industry as a whole, this is highly likely. The newest TVs are so thin they basically look like a living poster on your wall.
It has five new OLED ranges for 2018, all available in screen sizes from 55in to 77in. Dubbed W8, G8, E8, C8 and B8, each promises 50% more processing power than the 2017 ranges they replace. They’re ready to handle frames rates of up to 120 per second, too.
They’re all part of LG’s ThinQ concept, too – which at this stage means the ability to learn your watching habits and (for the US and Korea to begin with) direct Google Assistant interactivity.
So if you want an amazing TV, get an LG.
Real time translation
Travis the translator took CES 2018 by storm, as reviewers from around the world waxed lyrical about how this amazing device can translate language instantly as it is spoken.
It’s about the size of a flip phone, and can translate 80 languages with a SIM card or WiFi connection, or 20 in offline mode.
Let’s say you’re in Italy, don’t speak Italian, and need to ask for directions. You tap a little touchpad and scroll to pick the two languages, tap an arrow and speak normally.
About a second after you stop talking, your question pops up in a small little window, in Italian, and a voice asks the question out-loud too.
When it’s the other persons turn to talk, you tap another arrow, let Travis listen, and it repeats the answer back in English.
The company behind Travis told us they partnered with “the world’s best translation engines” for each language and that the gadget can even auto-detect languages, as well.
Robot Strippers
British artist Giles Walker took over the Gentleman’s Club, the world’s largest strip club bringing robo-strippers to the stage to grind and gyrate alongside the club’s real-life pole dancers.
The robo-strippers weren’t designed to replace traditional strippers, however.
They were part of a wider installation, intended to showcase how machines are often ill used for surveillance and voyeurism.
So rather than being part of the new wave of ‘sex robots’ they could actually be used to protect people working in ‘gentleman’s clubs’.
