14 DAY TRIAL // CES is one of the biggest tech gatherings where the most important players in the industry gather up in Las Vegas to showcase new and upcoming products and also tease the crowd with their latest innovations.
We were all eagerly awaiting CES 2015, hoping we will see new flagship tablets and smartphones be rolled out into the wild, but surprise-surprise, tech innovators from around the world shied away from making any big announcements.
Well, surely not all of them, but we were expecting much more from the self-proclaimed world’s biggest tech gathering.
Disappointingly, Samsung didn’t unveil its highly anticipated Galaxy S6 flagship nor did it launch any new tablets. Prior to the event, we were drooling over the possibility of seeing a Galaxy Note 8.4 model.
HTC did not roll out the Hima handset (One M9) and chose to focus on the Desire lineup instead. Xioami wasn’t even present, although we expected to see the Mi5 or Mi 4s get unleashed as soon as January 15, with less impressive specs, however.
Sony didn’t launch the Xperia Z4 flagship, nor did it focus on tablets, although we are very much interested to know when the disruptive Xperia Z3 Tablet Ultra will see the light the day. You know, the tablet with the huge 12.9-inch 4K display, Snapdragon 810 chip on the inside and a whooping 6GB of RAM.
This year’s CES seemed to be to hell-bent on wearables and we saw a plethora of them from fitness trackers to smartwatches that imitated the design of the reputed Apple Watch.
Anyhow, let’s take a look at the best smartphones and tablets that got unveiled on the grounds in Las Vegas. You’ll see there are some interesting products in the list, but the best is yet to come.
LG G Flex 2
The LG G Flex 2 is actually the first smartphone to be announced with the Snapdragon 810 processor on the inside. The handset is supposed to go on sale later this month, but with so many rumors regarding the chip’s delay we have to wonder.
The LG G Flex 2 follows in the footsteps of the original model, so it boasts the same innovative design with a curved back. The self-healing mechanism that allows you to twist the smartphone has been improved and the machine is now even less prone to damage when dropped.
Sure, it’s an interesting device to behold, but will it end up making an impact? Not likely, as we have seen with the earlier iteration. For the time being, my instinct tells me people will tend to stick to the traditional models.
What about LG’s G4 flagship, you might wonder. The smartphone isn’t ready just yet and company might take a longer while than expected to actually roll it out. The reason? LG wants to experiment with it to make sure the handset will be bring something special to the table when it comes.
ASUS ZenFone 2
The ASUS ZenFone 2 is special mainly due to two reasons. It will reportedly have a $199 / €167 price tag and will come equipped with 4GB of RAM (although a 2GB version will be offered and the pricing most likely refers to this model).
Other than that, the flagship offers a 5.5-inch display with 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution, an Intel Atom Z35x0 SoC on the inside, 64GB of internal storage and a 13MP main camera with dual-tone LED flash.
As you can see, the handset offers a great value-for-money ratio, although as I warned you above, the higher-specced model will probably cost more, but you never know.
ASUS ZenFone Zoom
A spin-off of the ASUS ZenFone 2, the Zoom is touted as being the world’s thinnest handset with a 3x optical zoom.
It has an 11.95 mm / 0.47 inches profile and arrives with a 5.5-inch display with 1080p IPS LCD display with 400 nits of peak brightness.
Under the hood lies a 64-bit quad-core Atom processor (we’re not told which model exactly) and a 3,000 mAh battery.
In the photography zone which is the main selling point with this handset, we find a 13MP main spanner with 3x zoom 10-element lens and f/2.0 and f/4.8 aperture plus optical image stabilization.
On top of that, there’s laser autofocus plus a dual-color Real Tone Flash.
Expect the ZenFone Zoom to arrive in Q2 for $399 / €334 a pop.
ASUS Transformer Book Chi family
ASUS has been one busy bee at CES 2015. Someone had to do it and I have to applaud the Taiwanese device maker for its commitment.
Apart from launching flagship smartphones, ASUS also pulled the veil off three new models from its popular Transformer Book family.
The three 2-in-1 tablet/laptop hybrids called Chi run Windows 8.1 out of the box and look like worthy MacBook Air killers.
The top model takes advantage of a 12.5-inch display with 2560 x 1440 resolution and is powered by Intel’s new Core M platform with up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB SSD.
The middle version is a 10.1-incher with 1080p display and an Intel Atom Z3775 quad-core processor clocked at 1.4GHz.
Last but not least, the smallest and less powerful of the bunch has an 8.9-inch IPS display with 1280 x 768 pixels and relies on an Intel Atom Z3774 chip with 1GB of RAM (but you can get 2GB if you want) and 32GB of internal storage.
Prices climb up from $299 / €252.
So there you have it, these are the best smartphones and tablets we were able to find at CES 2015.Hopefully, MWC 2015 will get more action.
