Top 10 Gadgets of 2016
1.
LG Rollable OLED
LG Display has a prototype 18-inch screen it's showing off at the Consumer Electronics Show this week that rolls up like a piece of paper. The technology builds on LG's forward-looking OLED work focusing on bendable, rollable, and curving displays. The company showed similar technology last year as a proof of concept, but kept images behind closed doors. Now LG looks ready to show the world.
LGD will show 65" and 77" 4K HDR OLED TVs, a paper-thin 55" concept, a 139" Vertical-Tiled OLED display and a 18" rollable OLED that has a curvature radius of 30 mm.
2.
HTC Vive
The HTC Vive is amazing piece of technology. But explaining it to someone who's never seen it before can be sort of a challenge.
Imagine that you're in the audience of the historic screening of L'arrivee d'un train en gare de La Ciotat , the 1895 short film that depicted a train coming towards the audience. Imagine seeing a moving image, an entirely new medium, unfold before your eyes for the very first time.
Picture that, with all the emotions of fear and joy and surprise and wonder, and I think you'll be able to begin to understand what it's like using the HTC Vive .
Describing what it's like to use virtual reality of this caliber is an almost impossible job. It's like describing video games to someone who's never played them before or a symphony performance to someone who has never been to a concert. It's possible, yes, but the words you use will pale in comparison to the experience of actually trying it for yourself.
3.
Parrot DISCO FPV
Described as the first fixed wing drone for immersive flights, it looks different to many other drones. Compact, ultra lightweight at 1.6lbs, and with a brushless engine and a folding bi-blades propeller the Disco can reach top speed of 50 mph. It’s flight time is an impressive 45 minutes and it can resist winds of 24 mph. You can fly for an hour if you also use the wind!.
Designed to be easy to use, the Disco takes off and lands automatically and comes fully equipped with a powerful autopilot function to help control the flight. It’s pretty intuitive. For example, when the remote control control stick is tilted to the right, the drone will curve to the right while the autopilot lightly tilts the wing and increases the engine speed.
The Disco’s wings are engineered to optimize both stability and speed in flight, as they use an aerodynamic airfoil which reduces trail and improves lift. The wing extremities are equipped with Winglet and have mobile ailerons positioned on the trailing edge, supporting steering like an aircraft.
The Disco has a 14 megapixels full HD frontal camera and a 32GB memory, allowing pilots to record high quality shots.
The Parrot Disco drone comes with a FPV headset.
2. The pilot puts their smartphone into the headset and they can stream live video. The FPV experience features stable images with no distortion, and follows the Disco’s flight path with a display of radar and telemetric data. We liked using these.
4.
Lenovo project tango phone
Google's Project Tango is an attempt to map inside spaces, where GPS isn't granular enough, the way it has outside spaces. One major application for that is enabling your mobile phone to know which store you're standing in front of at the mall, or directions to find Ikea in a massive outlet store complex. Convenient! Of course, they're not doing this out of altruism. It's also to let them serve you up hyperlocalized ads, such as a discount on the electric scooter in the window that you're gazing at lovingly. And it would provide a gold mine of data for them.it's got three cameras to sense color, depth and spatial layout.
5.
Amazon Echo
This holiday season Amazon’s talking speakers jump from the “Great for Techies” list to the “Great for Everyone” list. Alexa, the built-in voice assistant, is always listening for your voice commands; it can control your favorite music services, set cooking timers, tell you the forecast and answer random questions. (Yes, it has an eggnog recipe.) The larger Echo provides better sound quality, while the Echo Dot stocking stuffer can connect to existing speakers.
