With the annual Consumer Electronics Show right around the corner and the industry’s marketing efforts going into overdrive, what is it that we will likely see next week?

It’s a safe bet that if will be a week of opposites.

From hardware going to both larger and smaller designs, Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) G-Sync versus AMD (NYSE: AMD) FreeSync, small displays with massive resolution, and gaming notebooks of both massive and diminutive sizes.

Small form factor hardware as is one of the fastest growing areas in the hardware segment, and no doubt there will be a lot of it on display at CES.  With hardware becoming so powerful and small we are seeing a lot of really powerful builds that can be done.  With even MATX X99 boards we are seeing that there is a move toward making things small and potent.  On the other side there is a lot of huge pieces of hardware showing up on the market, namely 4K and ultra wide monitors.  They are becoming even more prolific and the ultra wide monitors are drawing a lot of interest from gamers and power users who were once planning on going for a 4K monitor or two.  There will be a lot of talk this CES about AMD’s FreeSync for enthusiast gaming monitors as it is the newcomer challenging Nvidia’s established G-Sync.  FreeSync will draw the attention of monitor manufacturers since it is less costly to implement and license than the G-Sync solution.  The LG 34UM67 will be a curved ultra wide monitor that will feature AMD’s FreeSync, and should definitely steal a lot of the spotlight next week.

The mobile computing segment is also something to watch next week as we will see a lot of small notebooks with very high resolution displays.  It is easy to say that there will be a number of notebook models that will feature 3K and 4K screens, even at the 15.6-inch sizes.  There will also be a movement with ultraportable gaming notebooks of small size that can be docked with a desktop graphics card for superior gaming ability while at a desk.  With the shrinking of parts that make up computers we will be seeing a drastic reduction in size and weight of these ulta portable notebooks.  Not only will they be smaller but they will be potent and even come equipped with quad-core Intel i7 processors and decent graphics.  On the other hand you will also see that there is a move to the opposite extreme as there will be new 18″ gaming notebooks that will be the true embodiment of the “desktop replacement” name.  Some of these huge notebooks will even sport gaming grade mechanical keyboards featuring Cherry MX Brown switches.

Be sure to check back throughout next week as CES 2015 kicks off in Las Vegas.

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Thanks to the guys at iFixit and their absolutely astonishingly fast teardown of the new Google HTC Nexus 9, we already know quite a bit about the new tablet. The image you see above is actually the final image of their Nexus 9 teardown, showing all of the parts of the Nexus 9 individually. In the teardown, we find out some really interesting things about the tablet that may have been suspected but weren’t confirmed unless someone had torn it down.

One thing that was expected was that HTC included a 3.8 V, 6700 mAh, and 25.46 Wh battery, meeting the specs that HTC stated on their spec sheet. This makes it smaller than the iPad Air 2, but larger than the iPad Mini Retina. They also confirmed that the camera is an 8MP f/2.4 module that is the same as the one as the HTC Desire 610.

On the mainboard itself, iFixit was able to find exactly which version of the Tegra K1 that the Nexus 9 features, which is the dual core Denver 64-bit variant. This variant is labelled as a T4K885 01P TD590D-A3, meaning that this is A3 revision silicon and that Nvidia is without a doubt well into production silicon. The Nexus 9 also uses Elpida (now Micron) RAM, Samsung NAND flash, Broadcom BCM4354 MIMO 5G Wi-Fi module and a Broadcom BCM4752 GNSS receiver to complement whatever GPS is probably already in the Tegra K1.

There’s also an Asahi Kasei 3-axis compass, dual speakers and Synaptics touch controller as the rest of the components on the Nexus 9. Overall, iFixit gave the Nexus 9 a fairly poor teardown score of a 3 (as many HTC devices have gotten lately). The reason for the poor repairability score is because of the difficulty of removing the battery (which was glued on) and the fact that the LCD panel is fused to the glass of the display which makes repairing a cracked screen more difficult and costly.

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It seems as though May is going to be a pretty busy month in the smartphone industry, much like April was. This month we saw the Launch of the HTC One M8 as well as the Samsung Galaxy S5, after their announcements in the months before. Now, it appears to be Motorola’s and LG’s turn as Motorola is rumored to be announcing the Moto E and Moto X+1 on May 13th and LG is expected to launch the LG G3 on the 27th, an update to the G2 from last year. The G2 last year was a fantastic phone and really cemented LG’s platform in a way that got Google to borrow from it for the Nexus 5, which is made by LG for Google. The G2 is actually a renaming of the original line’s naming as the Optimus G series, but LG had already made an Optimus G2 phone, so they dropped the Optimus name and now we’re coming up on the G3.

LG G3 Launch Invitation

With LG’s G3, the expectations have mostly been that the company will launch a phone in the 5-5.5″ ballpark since the LG G2 is already a 5.2″ nearly bezel-less phone. The expectation is that LG will continue this trend with the G3, which means no buttons on the sides of the phone and all of the buttons on the back of the phone. The big deal about the G3, however, is that it is rumored to be bringing a 2560 x 1440 (or 2560 x 1600) resolution display to the smartphone formfactor which is eagerly awaiting a phone with that kind of resolution from a mainstream manufacturer. OPPO’s Find 7 is supposed to have a 2560 x 1440 display, but that phone isn’t quite available yet in most markets and it isn’t necessarily a mainstream/tier 1 manufacturer. It will probably have a pretty impressive camera like the G2 did and it will probably have an even bigger battery than the G2 did, which was already a massive 3100 mAh lithium polymer battery. I don’t really know what LG can do that’ll be considered innovative outside of the new display, but anything they introduce should be received well, even if their phone does come a bit later than Samsung’s and HTC’s. I think the 2560 x 1440 resolution is worth waiting for, purely because of the quality of the display and because it may also mean a Snapdragon 805 as opposed to a Snapdragon 801.

Motorola Launch Invitation

In terms of Motorola’s announcement, the rumored devices that are expected to be announced are the Moto E and Moto X+1 which are essentially a new budget phone (Moto E) and a new flagship phone (Moto X+1). However, one must remember that Motorola is technically now a Lenovo division and this may affect where they try to position the Moto X+1 because frankly, the Moto X was overpriced for what it offered and as a result, I don’t think they sold as many as they had thought. Perhaps they’ll realize this with the new Moto X+1 and offer it at a lower price like the current Moto X is, at $299 tomorrow. Their business model should be to offer the bare experience at $299 and then to offer various premium experiences of that phone at $349, $399, $449 and $499, encouraging people to spend more money for a better looking phone but lure them with the base price. Heck, its what all the car manufacturers have been for decades.

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The long awaited OnePlus One smartphone has finally made its official debut after many months of slow trickles and leaks. This smartphone was promised to be the smartphone without compromises, and judging by the current specs listed of the OnePlus One, it appears that their statement has held true. The current OnePlus One (still not too hot about that name) will be available in two colors and models. Specifically, the white model selling for $299 with 16GB of storage space (and no memory card slot) and the black version selling for $349 with 64GB of storage space. This price is all the more ridiculous when you realize that this is a 5.5″ 1080P phone with a quality LCD display all being powered by a 2.45 GHz Snapdragon 801 SoC and a 3100 mAh battery. It will have a Cat 4 LTE modem from Qualcomm as well, enabling quite a broad array of 3G/LTE connectivity across various markets. It does, however, lack 802.11ac connectivity but makes up for it with USB 3.0 support, which isn’t necessarily a complete compensation, but it does show some signs of compromise as 802.11ac parts aren’t cheap. It will also sport a non-standard 3GB of RAM, which is generally more than what most Android smartphones ship with today, however, this is clearly OnePlus trying to win the spec wars and possibly even make the phone more ‘future-proof’ even though such an idea is almost ludicrous in today’s smartphone market.

But OnePlus isn’t all about the hardware specs, they’re also all about the software simplicity and overall design. As a result of that, they are offering the OnePlus One without any brand logo work anywhere on the front of device, as they claim this adds to making the device bigger. They also added the ability to change the back cover of the phone to a various series of materials ranging from Bamboo and Denim to Wood and Kevlar. They are also claiming that white version utilizes a cashew cover as well, which is a bit quirky, but offers people the chance to be unique and ‘green’ since cashews are technically a renewable resource.

The great thing about the OnePlus One is that it also has stereo speakers in the bottom of the phone, which means that it will have pretty good sound, as they are claiming a partnership with JBL, which means that they have Harman’s audio engineers to help them tune the sound perfectly. Something that many of their competitors have honestly overlooked or were unable to do. Only the HTC One line of smartphones actually has stereo speakers, although those are front-facing, a decision that OnePlus decided they weren’t going to do.

In addition to the fast processor, large battery, simplistic design, and quality sound, they’ve also made sure that the cameras match the 1080P display’s capabilities by including a 13 Mp Sony camera sensor and a 5mp front-facing camera sensor as well. This would put it above all of the flagship phones currently available in terms of both front-facing and main back cameras as many of them are between 13 and 16 Mp on the back and between 2 and 5 mp on the front. This should allow for some great photography, but we will have to see what kind of quality is ultimately gained from these sensors once they start shipping in Q2 since the hardest part of any smartphone camera is building the right software around it. The camera will also be able to shoot in RAW and capture slow-motion video at 120 FPS, which is yet another set of features that most flagship phones either have or don’t have yet (RAW support).

The OnePlus One will be shipping with a special version of Cyanogenmod 11S sporting Android Kitkat 4.4 and will use Cyanogenmod’s secure messaging services like TextSecure to allow end to end message encryption for security and privacy purposes. The first 100 phones will become available on April 25th as part of their viral Smash campaign that encourages users to smash their smartphones in order to get a OnePlus One smartphone for $1. However, that page is currently down and the details about it can’t be viewed until their site goes back up. As of right now, their entire site is down likely due to insanely heavy traffic from the announcement of the pricing and availability. There are still no details about the availability and pricing of the unique material covers to replace the white and black ones, but we will likely get more details soon. The expected overall date for shipments of these devices across global markets is roughly set at Q2 with Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, UK and the USA. The purchasing system will be obtained through an invite system and devices will be shipping locally from within the country you ordered it from in order to make shipping simple and quick.

OnePlus calls their OnePlus One the flagship killer, and you know what, they might just be right. The real question is, how in the hell do they do it? How are they able to take premium smartphone features and throw them into a phone for literally half the cost? Not just that, but how do they do it in a sustainable manner that allows them to actually design and manufacture the devices at a profit. It seems almost impossible, but maybe they’ve done it? After all, Google came as close as ever with the Nexus 5.

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Second big winner is LED-backlight panel. This type of displays jumped from 2.3 million in Q3’08 to 3.7 million in Q4’08, or 62%. Furthermore, market share of LED-backlit panels is expected to reach 24.1% in the current quarter, up from 13.4% in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Recession or not, shipments of higher-quality (more expensive) displays isn’t stopping anytime soon. Both 120 Hz and LED-backlit panels should make for majority of shipments in Q1’10.

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Is it possible that my 2408WFP is already out-dated?

What makes this very interesting is the explanation what Splendid video engine actually is. It is obvious that Splendid is a name for custom design C-Media chips that enhance the sound (on Xonar cards) and video (on selected graphics cards) quality. In case of displays, “Splendid Video Intelligence Technology” is a name for color engine that analyzes and modifies the video playback. There are five presets that should enhance your experience, but one of most important features to us is the fact that this technology clears distortion when playing 4:3 content on these 16:10 screens.
Out of launched displays, we like VK266H the most. This display comes with rotatable 2.0 MPixel camera and those mics that enable seamless internet communication. One of things that pissed me the most was the fact that if you used video conferencing, your notebook would be better equipped than the desktop. I had numerous video conferences where my notebook camera was capturing my face while I watched at 24″ screen, and that just looked odd.
If you haven’t tried working on 24 or 26″ screens, I would personally recommend that you switch from limits of 4:3/5:4. Could any of these four monitors be your ideal candidate? Only time will tell.

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