The start of September noticed the Android Authority group 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 a couple of conferences to take a look at some actually cool merchandise, the journey was my first expertise of Las Vegas, so what have been my highlights of CTIA? Let’s have a look.
CTIA as a present has been lowering in dimension over the previous few occasions however with an attendance of 35,000-45,000 individuals, it’s nonetheless fairly a big present. Over the previous few editions, it’s seen a shift in direction of a extra business- and distributor-focused present which means the occasion holds comparatively little in the best way of client merchandise.
That being mentioned, there have been fairly a couple of merchandise we bought our palms on, and one in every of these was the Nextbit. We’ve already coated the cloud-first Nextbit in our full hands-on however to shortly recap, this can be a telephone that’s generated over $1 million in backing on Kickstarter.
Led by a group that features Tom Moss – one of many former heads of the unique Android group 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 definitely has a slightly distinctive cloud-focused proposition that’s totally different to the rest available on the market. For a full look, head over to our Nextbit Robin palms on.
From one telephone to a different and the BLU Pure XL is unquestionably a tool that stands out from the gang. I’ve already revealed my first ideas on the gadget however to shortly recap, it’s BLU’s greatest smartphone-to-date and the American producer has actually packed lots of punch inside a smartphone that prices simply $350 unlocked.
The specs checklist is huge and features a 6.0-inch Quad HD Tremendous AMOLED show (which is unbelievable), a MediaTek Helio X10 processor, 64GB inner storage, a fingerprint sensor, 3GB RAM and a 24MP rear digital camera. It presents 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 gadget.
Whereas at BLU’s sales space, we additionally bought to take a look at one other actually fascinating BLU smartphone: the vivo Air LTE, which is the world’s thinnest smartphone. At a price of $199, it has an honest specs checklist and it’s extra sturdy than it appears. For more information, head over to our impressions publish. We’ve bought 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 long run bots of the sky. Though there was a complete satellite tv for pc occasion devoted to those winged bots, there have been a couple of on show on the primary present flooring 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 individual POV feed direct from the 12MP digital camera, which presents 4K video recording.
At a price of $700 to $1200, the Phantom is actually not the most affordable drone available on the market but it surely actually appears 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 hung out 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 every thing 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 expertise to show info in an easy-to-use dashboard. The community says that the dashboard can show info for a single wheelchair or all of the wheelchairs in a fleet and might segregate information on a need-to-know foundation.
For instance, sellers and upkeep corporations can entry info like wheelchair battery and restore standing (however not affected person information), whereas physicians can entry affected person information akin to quantity of motion, seat place (nice for diagnosing again pains or ulcers) and padding quantity. For physicians, the wheelchair can even ship notifications when the consumer stops shifting (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 sequence 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 each time they wish to go someplace. The long run purpose is that almost all of wheelchair customers shall 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 it, a brief recap of some cool merchandise we got here throughout at CTIA 2015 in Las Vegas. The occasion was actually fascinating however in contrast to different reveals 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?
