What Happens in Vegas: CES 2010

Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is of the yearly highlights for tech aficionados. And over the last 40 years some amazing gadgets made their debut here: we had the Palm Pre, OLED displays and Dell Adamo subnotebooks in 2009. 2008 was mostly about the retirement speech held by Bill Gates. In 2001 we saw the first Xbox there, along with plasma TVs.  Two years later high-definition television and Blue-Ray conquered the scene. Going way back in time, we had the first camcorder and CD player at the 1981 edition.VCR in 1970. You got the idea.

At this year’s edition (January 7-10) many highly-anticipated consumer technologies are expected to surface: wireless chargers, eco-friendly devices (like the Vaio W, Sony’s netbook made out of recycled soda cans), HDTVs, 3D TV,  netbooks, e-book readers, internet radios, home energy-management devices, mobile DTV etc.

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Just hours before CES 2010, at Google’s Mountain View headquarters the first Google-branded phone was unveiled. Nexus One is truly great phone which can teach Apple’s iPhone some new tricks: multitasking, full Google apps integration, 5Mpx camera, better display and battery, great processing power (1Ghz Snapdragon processor).

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During the first days at CES, Microsoft broke in the news on its motion-sensing Project Natal. The revolutionary Xbox 360 add-on will be available just in time for this year’s Christmas shopping season. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed off some Windows 7-enabled tablet prototypes, but no mind-blowing moves here.

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Also at CES 2010, HTC opens its smartphone lineup to the masses with the new HTC Smart running BREW, especially build for European and Asian markets.

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New Internet-ready TVs from LG made their debut at CES. Youtube, Skype, Pandora, Netflix, VUDU are available right out of the box.

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CES 2010: Ford introduces MyFord Touch system, which basically connects drivers with in-car technologies such as air conditioning, 3D maps or HD satellite radio or even Twitter streams through voice commands or touch-screen taps instead of traditional knobs.

More to come.