-Good morning and welcome back to CNET's live coverage of CES 2014.
It is day three of the show.
I'm Donald Bell.
She is Bridget Carey and this is Inside Scoop, or daily news round-up of everything you need to know for your yesterday and today.
-Yes.
-Mostly,
we're still looking back.
I mean at day three really everything that has needs to be announced had been announced right there's no-- we're still just kinda scrambling to catch up all of the little sleeper stories.
-It gives us time without having all those big announcements to go testing on and hands-on time with all the quirky products on the show floor.
-Didn't do the analysis too.
Sometimes it's just like a scatter shot, a stuff being thrown at us for the first couple of days and then we actually kind of can tie the themes together.
Some stuff that did happen yesterday of note,
or this is the first thing that happened yesterday of note was T Mobile's announcement that not only or they break in into AT&T's party to see Macklemore.
But they are also going to buy you out of your contract if you want to leave your carrier to come to T Mobile, they will erase the pain of breaking your contract.
-There were early termination fees.
They'll give you the money for whatever it cost up to $650 provide that you also turn in your old devices to
trade in.
-You're probably sick of your old phone anyways, but you're gonna get new carrier, new phone--
-Right.
-and no pain in terms of the termination fees, so I think that's always set the kicker, it's like when you're in your six months into your contract like a Verizon or AT&T and you're like, "This is killing me."
-Or you'll learn about something new and you feel like you just can't even make the switch 'cause it's just not worth the cost but they're trying to-- they're being really edgy here.
-This is got to hurt the other guy.
-Yeah.
-I feel like T Mobile's whole role
aside from being like the bad-asses of the carriers--
-He always had a leather jacket, you know.
-It just disrupt the whole, I mean in terms of the whole prepayment for the way that you're buying your phones with T Mobile by paying upfront for or breaking up the cost so you're not walked in to a contract with T Mobile.
But then also this being also like actively poached the customers from other carriers to try to get them to come over to T Mobile I think is smart.
-John Legere, I think he is Batman.
You know, he's always trying to be
crazy and disruptive and this is the year that, you know, they're gonna see if it all pays out.
-It'll be an interesting year.
Okay, also we saw yesterday the Razer Project Christine.
This is for gamers for like PC gamers.
-Uh-hmm.
-This is a serious tower computer where everything is modular, right?
You can pull-- you can swap out the drive, you can swap out the interface.
You can swap out the-- all of the system but they're like all swapable kind of like a-- what's that like the
hard drive storage system where you can just kinda swap out like this one.
-Yeah, so even if you don't know how to build your own PC, it's just kinda like stick the PSU on into the slot if you wanna upgrade something or upgrade another piece of it.
What's also interesting is it's all cooled by mineral oil like that's kind of like unique too.
Now this is--
-Yeah, a nice aroma.
-Yeah.
This is something that's a project, you know, it's not gonna probably go out yet.
But be interesting to see if it goes to another level in next CES 'cause Razer does show us a lot of gaming
projects every other year, so--
-Yeah, I think the Drobo is what I was thinking of, it's that kind of the swapable drive deals that looked cooler than maybe they really are but it looks neat.
I mean for as little news as we get out of the tower PC space, it looks like a cool product.
We also saw the Avegant Glyph.
We saw a lot of wearable tech for your face--
-Oh, everyone's-- yeah.
-at CES.
A lot of Google Glassy and kind of spinoffs.
-Everyone is trying to put some sort of glass thing on your face, yeah.
And this Avegant Glyph is kinda like a two-in-one.
It's a headset but you take the headset down and put it as a visor and suddenly you have a movie screen in front of you and the screen is so good that it could even do 3Ds.
-You wore this yesterday.
-Yes, I did.
-I came by the booth and I just saw Bridget sitting here with this on her face.
-This massive thing and it felt like--
-And Scott Stein next to her just talking about it.
-Felt like I was at a Star Trek.
I would say that I was surprised at how crisp it was.
I didn't feel like I was trying to focus really hard or go cross-eyed trying to see this 'cause in some
iterations of this kind of technology, it gives you a headache.
You're prone to get dizzy and not this.
-It also looks a little bulky.
I mean and the actual fit on your head.
-It's very bulk.
-If the headband is not at the top, there's like a smaller headband that kinda keep this, it's kinda hit in Scott Stein's hair in that picture but--
-Yeah, when I had it on, I mean I had a kind of, you know, hold it a bit.
It wasn't exactly all tweaked to the size of my head.
But I hope that they have a model that's a little smaller because it is a lot of tech just sitting on the bridge of your nose having that video.
-It's also it's a lot of trust that people are gonna like knock you over when you have that on your face, right?
-Yeah, I imagine you might want this when you're sitting on a plane for a while, a train but I hope no one like you can't see anything around you so I hope no one like sneaks you up with your bag or something but it's a lot of trust.
-All right.
We also saw an interesting hybrid laptop from Toshiba, a proof of concept may come to market or may not but the cool thing about this guy was that aside from opening up and having a tablet like a touch screen, it also had a detachable keyboard so you could-- and that detach in such a way that when you flip
the base underneath it, you can kind of have a separate keyboard.
You almost have like a PC kind of--
-Yeah.
We've seen a lot of this hybrids where it's part tablet, it's part laptop, whichever you want, just unclip it, take it with you.
You know, kinda start with like you see that in the surface and other products, some that-- like a yoga that can fold in different ways.
This one folds all the way and also the tablet has a stand.
So I think it's an interesting trend where people who were buying PCs right now don't know whether they want
one or the other.
They can have best of both worlds and here's an example of when a tablet separates, you could still stand it up.
-Yeah.
I mean, but it still remains to be seen if people are going or still be buying PCs.
I mean it feels like as innovative as this might be, this is still doesn't seem like this is the thing that's gonna pick people's attention not from actually buying a new laptop this year like everything's been on the decline for this market.
-Yeah.
-As sexy as this product might be--
-Well because it's hoping to get that
group of folks who go-- I don't know if I want a tablet but I don't wanna get rid of the keyboard.
It's holding the target back.
-So as every PC product that came out in 2013.
-Yeah.
-This one for as great as it is, it's also-- it's lacking of track pad too.
Like it has a little-- one of those little Thinkpad knobs.
-Oh, no knobs.
No, no, no, no.
-I know you're not going back to the knob.
-No I can't go back to the knobbing.
-But yeah, maybe we'll see this.
It's an interesting product that probably for better or worse, maybe one of the more
interesting laptops we saw from CES 2014.
But I think that's speaking a lot about where PCs are right now at the show.
-Yeah, not exactly a lot of big jumps in differentiation points.
-Speaking of hybrids.
Here's an interesting one.
I don't think I've ever seen before.
It is a--
-This is a very unique product.
-mobile hotspot from ZTE--
-And also a projector.
-also a projector.
-And it's also a battery charger.
-Also a tablet.
-And also, yeah, a four-screen Android portable
tablet.
Four-screen I mean.
-ZTE, I mean their phones when we hear about them they're usually the middle-of-the-road kind of phones.
They kind of hit every carrier for like a mid-range model.
But you don't see a lot of quirky stuff out of this company.
This one looks interesting.
-This is very innovative.
So it's about 5x5-inch box, a very lightweight and once you pop a SIM card in it, so you're gonna need your own data plan for it.
-Yeah.
-It can be its own hotspot
for up to eight devices and then because it's Android inside, you can put any Android app in it whether it's NetFlix or anything you would do on Android device like your Powerpoint presentation and then just the display mirrored exactly what's on that screen on to the wall.
You could so-- you have families on a trip.
You could do video that way but also for work kinda like the work-play aspect.
-Yeah.
-It even has an HDMI port.
So if you don't wanna have a television for your Xbox,
you could plug in there and display your game that way.
-It's the use cases I still don't buy yet but like, it is the most products where I'm-- I feel like the whole thing was like, we can make this product now we couldn't make it before.
I don't know if anyone needs it but isn't that cool that we can make it?
And I--
-Yeah.
-I'm behind it.
I would like to play around with it.
-You don't carry so many things around with you if you're a business traveler.
That's the sweet spot.
-Yeah.
It's not a projector though.
It's like--
-Well, actually it gets up to 120 inches.
I mean, we didn't get
to see it in the small room there.
-But I feel like it's the projection you would have to like show movie inside of a tent while you're camping.
-Yeah.
-Like that kind of thing like for a kid but interesting product.
And ZTE not usually want to come out with things that are exorbitantly expensive.
So if it does come out probably something you could actually afford.
-Yeah, yeah.
Hopefully.
-All right.
That will be it for today's Inside Scoop.
Thanks Bridget 'cause you were not gonna be joining me tomorrow, right?
You're getting out of here.
-I'm going back.
-I'll be back tomorrow.
Last day of CES joined by UK editor Jason Jenkins and there's a whole lot more
coming your way today at 11 AM Pacific Time.
Brian Cooley and I will be here for the last of our CES In-Depth shows and it will be the final word of the most important trends and products from CES 2014.
We'll see you then.
