CES: Lenovo and Huawei phones unveiled, ultrabooks previewed
Intel and Huawei have both thrown down the smart-phone gauntlet and ultrabooks compete fiercely for top billing at CES 2012 in Las Vegas.
Chip manufacturer Intel stole the show on the first official day of CES, as it showed off the first Windows 8 Intel-operated tablets ever, the first Intel smart phone from Lenovo (pictured above), the first Ivy Bridge ultrabooks, and a bunch of tablet and PC prototypes.
The company may be late to the smart phone and tablet game, but don't be fooled into to thinking it doesn't know how to play. The Lenovo smart phone should be the first to appear on the market later this year, and Intel has also announced a multi-device deal with Motorola.
Here at CNET HQ in London yesterday, we got particularly excited over the Huawei Ascend P1S, a highly impressive smart phone with the thinnest chassis we've ever seen. It will ship running Ice Cream Sandwich and is making us wonder whether Huawei could be the next HTC.
On Monday, Asus and Nvidia teased a Tegra 3-based tablet, which turned out to be the Asus Memo 370T. Measuring 7 inches, the Memo will pack a quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage and will ship running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Best of all, it promises to be relatively cheap ($250 in the US), continuing the precendent set by the Kindle Fire for competitively priced tablets.
As predicted, CES has been flooded with ultrabooks this year. These nifty laptops are designed to a set of specifications dictated by Intel and are generally slim, light and offer impressive battery life.
We've managed to go hands-on with a bunch of different models and are looking forward to getting acquainted with several more -- particularly the Dell XPS 13, which was announced yesterday and is the computing giant's first foray into the ultrabook world.
For now though, take a look at some of our ultrabook previews. Samsung has unveiled its refined second-generation of Series 9 PCs, as well as its Series 5 ultrabooks. LG, not usually known for its laptop efforts, has also jumped on the bandwagon with the Z330 and Z430. Lenovo has launched a lovely pair of IdeaPads, and let us not forget the rather novel HP Envy 14 Spectre, which is coated in glass.CES usually brings some kooky hybrid tech out of the woodwork, and this year is no exception. Polaroid has created the SC1630, the first camera to run Android. From the front it looks like a compact camera; from the back, a smart phone -- the mind boggles.
Fujitsu has dived in at the deep end of the phone market with a super-slim Android phone that's waterproof to 1.4m. It's also surfaced a waterproof tablet for those who like to indulge in a bit of bath-time browsing.
Keep your peepers trained on ces.cnet.com to stay up to date with all the latest CES news. Later today the CNET UK team will be taking to the stage, with 50 Cent as our support act, to record the weekly podcast in front of a live audience. If that doesn't grab you, Justin Bieber will be unveiling an 'entertainment robot' on behalf of robotics company TOSY.
Let us know what you think of the latest CES products in the comments below or on our Facebook page.