What to expect in mobile at CES 2021: Galaxy S21, more foldables, new wearables
By Andrew Martonik
CES 2021 is rapidly approaching, and while things will certainly be different from the massive in-person event of 2020, there’s still plenty to anticipate and get excited about with the latest iteration of the show.
Even in a normal year, many of the biggest headlines and attention-grabbing announcements come around the show, rather than directly at the show. That’s likely to be the case even more so at CES 2021, since the entire show is virtual. Companies are likely to see less appeal to being a part of the official CES virtual platform compared to the usual in-person convention center booth space, so we’re likely to see a lot of announcements come at the same time as CES even if it’s not part of CES.
Samsung Galaxy S21 series
Of all the “not really at CES” announcements, the biggest could be coming from Samsung. It’s all-but-confirmed that the company will hold a virtual “Unpacked” event on January 14, which is the final day of CES. Samsung only does an Unpacked event for the big stuff — in this case, it’ll be the Galaxy S21 series.
This would be an interesting switch for Samsung, which has joined other companies in steadily moving away from showing mobile products at CES. Like other massive companies, it’s focused on its home entertainment products at the show instead, leaving the flagship Galaxy phones to dedicated events.
If the Galaxy S21 series does launch at CES, it would also be much earlier in the year than past models. While the timeline has shortened in the last few generations, Samsung has regularly picked early February for its Galaxy S launch. It seems as though with the reality of just having a virtual event no matter when in the year it happens, it makes sense to just launch the new phones when the tech world is all looking in one direction at CES.
A new round of foldables
CES 2020 was a real coming-out party for foldables of all kinds, from reasonable designs in consumer-ready form factors to crazy concepts with huge screens. Now at CES 2021, we’re expecting to see many of these foldables turn into actual products. Up to this point, only Samsung and Motorola (and Huawei … kind of) have launched foldables you can actually just go and buy, and that’s going to change this year.
Foldable OLED screen technology has come a long way in the last year, and it’s finally reasonable for companies to make the move from prototypes to real products. Samsung, LG, and TCL are all making the screens for these applications, and we can expect to see them shown off in other brands’ devices, as well as their own.
And of course, we’ll likely still see plenty of over-the-top and crazy foldable prototypes that will never make it to market. It is still CES, after all.
The latest wearables
New wearable technology is usually more plentiful than new smartphones at CES, but with the switch to a virtual event this year, it’s unclear whether any of the (sometimes smaller) wearable brands will announce new products at the show. Fossil has been a big player at CES for several years, introducing everything from the Kate Spade Scallop 2 to the Diesel On Fadelite X Mad Dog Jones special edition smartwatch in Las Vegas.
Fossil isn’t on the official CES 2021 list of attendees, so despite rumors of an LTE-equipped smartwatch from the brand, it may not have much to show us. Amazfit is registered though, and last year revealed plenty, including the T-Rex tough smartwatch. It has recently launched the GTR 2 and GTS 2, so it may be too soon for major announcements though. Garmin is also attending the show and may have new sports-focused wearables to launch.
Withings, which showed the ScanWatch at CES 2020, isn’t registered as an attendee, and neither is Fitbit or Mobvoi. It doesn’t mean these companies won’t have any new products to reveal in the near future, but it does indicate they may wait until after CES 2021 to show them off. Outside of the big players, CES is often the place to discover niche but exciting wearables, like the eSight Smart Glasses, but due to the scaled-down event, these devices may be even more of a rarity.
December 30, 2020 at 06:58PM
via Digital Trends https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ces-2021-what-expect-mobile/ Best TV Aerial Installations in Sheffield
Comments
Post a Comment