Zhidong January 6 news, today, is the second day of the opening of the International Consumer Electronics Exhibition (CES), although many technology giants have not chosen to go to the United States Las Vegas offline exhibition, but they still showed a lot of blockbuster products and technological innovation through online release.
From left to right: Intel 12th Generation Core Mobile Processors, Nvidia RTX 3090Ti, AMD Ryzen™ 6000 Series Mobile Processors
Samsung's various folding screens and various postures "roll out the flowers"; Sony not only does VR headsets for games, but also engages in smart cars; Intel, Nvidia, AMD "blue, green and red" three chip giants have thrown out the most important flagships of the year in the CPU and GPU fields, and the piggyback hand has also "hung" Apple.
Samsung Flex S series products
After acquiring Boston Dynamics, South Korea's Hyundai also released its own "robot vision" at CES, saying that it will further expand the human mobility experience through the "Metamobility" technology that combines robots and metaversics.
A prominent feeling of this cloud exhibition is that although there are fewer novel products, some technologies that were not mature last year have been mass-produced this year, and the real can be seen, touched, and used products have become more.
Following the first online exhibition last year, CES 2022 has returned to the offline against the pressure of the epidemic this year.
Just three days before the opening, on January 2, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) announced that the original four-day exhibition would end ahead of schedule on the 7th.
The new round of confirmed outbreaks brought about by the new crown pneumonia variant Omicron coincided with this year's CES, which was held in Nevada, las Vegas, where the number of confirmed cases exceeded 520,000 on the opening day.
Even in this case, according to the data given by CES organizers, more than 170,000 people still attended the CES conference in Las Vegas on the opening day.
CES 2022 conference opening ceremony site map, image source: latimes
From the photos on the scene, we can see that the crowd at the scene is still very dense, and most of the participants are wearing masks.
Of course, this CES conference is also divided into online and offline two forms, the current Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Intel, AMD and other companies have cancelled the plan of offline exhibition, but through the form of online release to participate, it is understood that the total number of exhibitors exceeded 2200.
What exactly are the hardcore technologies and products that cess 2022 deserves attention to? And is CES, the former "weather vane" of the technology industry, still strong? We'll go through the CES conference in one article and try to find the answer.
First, the hot meta-universe concept has not been "rubbed" by anyone?
Today, the meta-universe of everything seems to have become a kind of "consensus" in the science and technology circle, there are reports that the domestic A-share meta-universe related concept stocks will rise by more than 50% in 2021, and even Li Jingren, general manager of Moutai, shouted out the slogan of "drunken beauty 'meta-universe'" today.
However, to my surprise, at this year's CES, few technology giants mentioned the concept of metacosmity when releasing products or technologies, and most manufacturers focused on their own products.
The only one that seems to be more "jumpy" may be Samsung. On the first day of CES, Samsung threw out a "metaverse platform" called My House, which users needed to log in to through the Zepeto app.
What can this platform do? In fact, Samsung provides users with a virtual space to experience Samsung's 18 products, including some new products exhibited at THIS YEAR's CES.
Of course, you can also talk to other exhibitors in this virtual space, or buy an ice cream and set up your TV, vacuum cleaner or refrigerator.
Doesn't it feel like a mini-game? Yes, it really is. Samsung actually began working with Zepeto developers as early as last August to launch an experience game called Galaxy House, and the version shown at CES was upgraded accordingly.
Overall, Samsung's metaverse platform is a bit "embarrassing", and more manufacturers have not chosen the concept of "hard rubbing", which seems to be for a reason.
In addition to the software platform, another large piece of the metaverse is the hardware, from the underlying chip to VR and AR devices, all involved.
Intel executives have said that to achieve the meta-universe, the current computing power should be at least 1,000 times, but in the eyes of many practitioners, the number of 1,000 times is a bit less. It can be seen that the computing power is of great significance to the realization of the metaverse.
This time Qualcomm announced its plans to cooperate with Microsoft to develop a special chip for AR glasses, which is a custom chip specifically for light AR glasses, mainly for consumer and enterprise "meta-universe applications".
Even in some reports, some media directly call this chip a "meta-universe chip", and people who watch it directly call "good guys".
However, Qualcomm still introduced the chip more objectively, and looked forward to the future AR device, Qualcomm CEO Anmont said that in the future, this AR device can achieve "realistic projection", even if the user who is far away, can also get the feeling of "being in the same room".
Over the past few years, Qualcomm has been one of the major mobile chip providers in the VR/AR glasses field, and its XR platform has been used in many mainstream headsets.
As Qualcomm said at this year's Snapdragon Technology Summit, Qualcomm's core advantage is the accumulation of various underlying technologies in the mobile field, from chips to algorithms. The future meta-universe era will revolve around various mobile devices, the most core of which is the smart phone.
Obviously, Qualcomm is a player with high potential on the meta-universe track.
The taste of the metaverse on CES this time is not strong, and the absence of Microsoft and Meta should also have a certain relationship, after all, these two are the main driving force of the metaverse concept.
If you insist on saying it, Sony's PlayStation VR2 device based on the PS5 also has a certain "meta-universe attribute", but Sony is very clear that their device is born for the game. For example, by supporting 3D surround sound and vibrating on the head monitor, it increases the player's sense of immersion.
Sony also announced in particular that they are developing their own VR game for this product.
Second, CES flooded by the "screen universe"
At the level of hardware products, the various products exhibited at CES this time give me a very intuitive impression that most of the core features are related to the "screen". Whether it's a folding screen phone, a folding screen computer, a Mini LED TV or a Mini LED display.
1, Samsung is to play the screen this thing clearly
After the technology giants have canceled offline exhibitions, Samsung seems to have become a "life-saving straw" for CES, and the reason why it is said is because Samsung is a company with almost all-encompassing business. In all areas of CES's attention, Samsung is involved in almost all areas.
But what impressed me most this time was Samsung's dedication to screen technology. It can be said that Samsung has brought its advantages in the field of screens to the fullest.
The folding product family on display at Samsung CES
At present, the two leading enterprises in the field of global OLED technology are South Korea's Samsung and LG, Samsung mainly focuses on small and medium-sized AMOLED, while LG focuses on the layout of large-size OLED panels, and the two are basically staggered the main products.
Speaking of screens today, flexible and foldable seem to be two keywords that cannot be avoided. This time at CES, Samsung showed the two folding screen series of Flex S and Flex G.
Samsung Flex S
What is more interesting is that the folding form of these two series of products is like the two letters of "S" and "G", which we can intuitively see through the GIF.
Samsung Flex G
These two folding screen series products are "double fold", compared with the current folding folding screen products, an additional foldable part. In fact, this kind of double-fold folding screen product is not the first time to appear, but from the video we can see that Samsung's several display products have really been made, not "PPT" products.
As we can feel, the folding process is very smooth, and the screen display effect is also good.
At present, a major pain point of folding screen mobile phones is that there is no particularly irreplaceable "killer application", on the one hand, it is also because the screen size after expansion is more "awkward", larger than mobile phones, but not as good as tablets or computers.
With Samsung's double-fold scheme, it is obvious that the screen can extend more space.
Why not say whether these two series are mobile phones, tablets or computers? Because the boundaries are actually blurred. Once the device is no longer stuck to the original screen size, the screen size becomes "variable", then the boundary between devices seems to lie in the software ecology.
Recently, whether it is Google, Samsung or Apple, are committed to opening up the separation experience between mobile phones, tablets and computers from the system level, with the further opening of the screen form, whether the future smart devices will move towards "great unification", the question seems to be one step closer to us.
In addition to the small size folding screen device, Samsung shows the Flex Note "laptop" is also more eye-catching, after the screen is folded, one of the sides can be used as a "virtual keyboard", and after expansion, it can be used directly as a monitor or a large tablet.
Samsung Flex Note
Since it comes to screens, displays are also a major area that Samsung has been focusing on. In the field of displays, Samsung has always been very obsessed with curved ultra-wide screen proportional displays, which is what we often call "fish screens".
This time, Samsung actually made an "upright" display with a fish screen, called "Odyssey Ark".
Samsung Odyssey Ark
The size of this monitor reaches 55 inches, and the screen ratio is not 16:9 that we usually have, but 9:16, just "vertically" over.
From the display of Samsung, we can see that this display can display different content in three areas, games, live broadcasts, and videos. Of course, it's also more immersive, and users leaning back in their chairs to use the monitor seem to feel like they're in the cockpit.
In addition, Samsung also launched an ultra-thin smart display M8, which looks similar to Apple's new iMac, but has an independent camera on top. In addition to looking like Apple, M8 also supports Apple AirPlay, and the intention is obvious.
For the field of e-sports, Samsung launched a 4K 240Hz curved gaming display, using a Mini LED panel and supplemented by quantum dot technology, this display can reach the standard of HDR 2000, that is, its peak brightness can reach 2000nit, which has far exceeded the peak brightness of the current flagship AMOLED mobile phone.
From these more amazing products, we can see that in the field of small-size AMOLED, Samsung's focus is on foldable screen technology, while in the field of medium-size panels, Samsung focuses on the layout of Mini LED technology. These two technologies are also the focus tracks of the current competition in the screen field.
I have to say that Samsung has played the screen clearly, and has empowered the technical advantages it has accumulated in the field of screens to various product lines, from mobile phones, tablets, computers to monitors and televisions.
2, Mini LED blooming everywhere, Micro LED may not be far away
Over the years, all kinds of cool large-screen TVs are indispensable, and this time Sony has also released a number of new TV products, from 8K, 4K Mini LED TVs to 4K QD-QLED TVs.
In fact, we are no stranger to Mini LED technology, and we have seen all kinds of products based on Mini LED technology at CES in previous years. In simple terms, Mini LED is an upgraded version of the LCD screen, by making the LED lamp bead smaller, increasing the backlight partition of the screen, so as to achieve more delicate brightness adjustment, higher peak brightness, contrast and color performance.
When the LED lamp beads are small enough, as small as a pixel, Micro LED technology is not far from us, and Micro LED is the future direction of screen technology.
LG, as the leader of large-size OLED technology, has also released a number of new OLED TVs this year, but what impressed me more was that they showed a 136-inch 4K Micro LED TV, and its visual effects are still relatively shocking.
However, the size of 136 inches is only 4K resolution, the picture detail is relatively general, and it can be seen that there are still many technical challenges in the specific implementation of Micro LED technology.
In addition to the application in the field of television, the application of Mini LED technology in the field of notebook computers and displays has also begun to become more popular.
For example, this year, ASUS's ROG released a number of new notebook products, and what impressed me more was that they used a Mini LED screen with a peak brightness of more than 1100nit in the flagship machine royal notebook, compared with the brightness of the traditional notebook about 300-400nit, the improvement is very significant.
ROG Ice Blade 6 Dual Screen
In terms of large-scale mass production, in fact, Apple is the first manufacturer to bring Mini LED technology to consumers, and its new iPad Pro has also driven the development of the Mini LED industry chain.
In the past year, with the continuous maturity of LED chip technology and Mini LED panel packaging technology, the cost has gradually declined, and the yield rate has been improved, Mini LED technology has the opportunity to be applied to more terminal products.
It is undeniable that the screen has become a key component behind the core features of more and more intelligent terminal products.
Intel, Nvidia, AMD love and kill each other, Apple: I'm lying on the gun again
At this CES conference, chip competition is still a classic theme, still full of gunpowder, and the protagonist is still "blue, green, red" three.
AMD threw out 7 blockbuster new products in one go. From the Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D processor, which has the performance of Intel's strongest CPU 12900K, to the latest Ryzen™ 6000 series mobile processors with GPU performance soaring 100% and giving laptops a battery life of more than 24 hours on a single charge.
In addition, AMD also released a number of products such as the "thousand-yuan dessert-level graphics card" RX 6500XT, the new Zen 4 architecture using TSMC's 5nm process, and the Ryzen 7000 series CPU, and the 3D V-Cache storage technology previously demonstrated by AMD has also been officially landed, which has brought significant improvements to the game frame rate.
It can be said that AMD is "merciless" to the two old rivals of Intel and Nvidia, and several new products have caused a lot of pressure on these old opponents.
However, just when consumers chanted "AMD Yes", Intel also released its own 12th generation Core processor mobile terminal products, from low-voltage U series to standard voltage H series, the product line is very rich.
And it is worth mentioning that Intel has specifically taken out apple and AMD's current strongest mobile processors for a direct comparison.
From the performance comparison given by Intel, we can see that in some content creation productivity tests by Adobe and Autodesk, the performance of the 12900HK is 44% ahead of the AMD 5900HX, even compared to the Apple M1 Max.
Intel 12900HK compared with AMD, Apple's top processors in terms of content creation performance
At this time, someone is going to say, that than the power consumption to see?
Interestingly, Intel also deliberately came up with a graph of power consumption and performance, if Intel's data is accurate, then this graph means that 12900HK is better than Apple M1 Max in terms of performance and power consumption. Apple's big move released a few months ago was successfully taken over by Intel.
Intel 12900HK compared with AMD, Apple's top processor in terms of power performance
Of course, this is only the theoretical achievements given by Intel officially, and the actual performance will not be tested until the actual mass production of notebook products is landed.
But don't worry, at this CES conference, HP, Dell, Asus and other mainstream PC manufacturers have released a variety of new notebook products, and most of these notebook products are equipped with Intel 12th generation Core processors or AMD Ryzen™ 6000 series processors.
Can Intel and AMD make the Windows notebook camp have the ability to compete with Apple's Mac computers this time, or even successfully turn over? 2022 will be a key test year.
The highlight of Intel and AMD is the CPU, while Nvidia's main work is a variety of new products for 30 series graphics.
Among them, on the top flagship side, NVIDIA showed the RTX 3090Ti " super nuclear bomb "super nuclear bomb", the reason why it is called a nuclear bomb, on the one hand, is because of its strong performance, but on the other hand, it is also because its power consumption has also reached a new height.
According to the officially released parameters, the simple understanding, RTX 3090Ti is equivalent to the "overclocking version" of RTX 3090, whether it is the operating frequency of CUDA core, or the frequency and bandwidth of video memory, there is a certain increase, and the TDP power consumption has also increased from 350W to 450W, and the power consumption increase has reached 28%.
RTX 3090Ti Parameter Specifications, Source: VideoCardz
Compared with this "nuclear bomb", RTX 3050 graphics card is obviously more concerned, in fact, the current 30 series graphics card is not friendly to the entry-level market users, from the GTX 1650 graphics card directly jumped up to RTX 3060, and the common price of RTX 3060 has come to about 4000 yuan, which is obviously "over budget" for the entry-level market.
The RTX 3050 is priced at 1999 yuan this time, and the performance is much stronger than the GTX 1650 graphics card that is also located around 1900 yuan, plus the RX 6500XT entry-level graphics card that AMD has just released at 1599 yuan, and players may usher in their own "spring" in 2022.
As we all know, due to the shortage of chip production capacity, the hot virtual currency caused by the high demand for "mining" and other factors, from 2020 to 2021, the supply of the graphics card market is very unstable, and the price of graphics cards has also risen all the way, and ordinary consumers are "difficult to find a card".
Whether the release of this new product can effectively alleviate the needs of the entry-level market is worth looking forward to. However, some PC hardware practitioners told Zhidong that the RTX 3050 and 1599 yuan RX 6500XT of 1999 yuan may be difficult to get at this price, and the market expectations are not optimistic.
Fourth, Google "group" hard Apple ecology, smart home products can be smart?
At this CES conference, although Google did not participate in the exhibition offline, as one of the main players in the global Android camp and one of the main players in the smart home market, it still released a lot of information worth paying attention to.
Google introduced a feature called "Fast Pair", and as the name suggests, its role is to make pairing between devices more convenient. For example, let the headset and Android mobile phone, tablet, TV to achieve a smoother automatic switching experience.
At the same time, Fast Pair will also open the underlying layer to smart home device manufacturers, compatible with the upcoming Matter industry standard, that is, more intelligent hardware products in the future will be able to interconnect more efficiently with the Android ecosystem.
Easily configure smart home products with Google Fast Pair
Google's goal is also very clear, that is, through a series of software-level upgrades, the Android ecosystem develops more rapidly, so as to compete with the Apple ecosystem. Here, Google uses the word "Better Together," which seems to have a lot of unity.
In addition, Google will also support smart watches equipped with WearOS to unlock Android phones and Chromebook laptops, just like Apple Watch unlocks the iPhone.
Google's new features will be implemented within this year, which is still worth looking forward to. Of course, the advantage of the Android ecosystem is also a disadvantage is the complexity of the manufacturer, each product category has a very large number of manufacturers, so the adaptability of the software, compatibility and other issues are more headaches.
Obviously, Apple has nothing to worry about in this regard.
Since smart home products are mentioned, some interesting products can also be seen at CES this time. For example, Wemo launched a smart doorbell, which not only carries a 4-megapixel resolution camera, but also supports night vision function.
Sengled launched a smart light bulb, this light bulb in addition to lighting up your room, but also for health monitoring, can track the user's sleep information, measure heart rate, body temperature and other indicators, and through Bluetooth or WiFi to transmit data to your mobile phone, the official claim that this light bulb can also detect whether someone has fallen at home.
Doesn't that sound amazing?
In essence, Sengled added the relevant sensor hardware and lidar components to the bulb, but this product is still in the research and development stage, and the price and other details have not been specifically announced.
In addition, I was also concerned by a smart scale launched by Withings, which can not only determine the composition of your body through bioelectrical impedance analysis, but also measure the age of the user's blood vessels, the health of the arteries, and even come with ecgogram monitoring.
Conclusion: The consumer electronics industry in the epidemic has both persistence and compromise
After "cloud shopping" this year's CES, I always feel that the amount of information is very large, but there is something missing, all kinds of strange styles of robots, chic and novel products, AI technology landing more representative products, it seems to have lost the high volume of previous years, and even can not find heavy products.
It is undeniable that from the intuitive point of view, this year's CES has shrunk compared with the previous year in terms of exhibition categories and scale.
Although this year's CES adopts both online and offline forms to carry out simultaneously, for most domestic consumers, the channels for participation are basically only online. This is a significant reduction in the sense of personal experience, and there are also some restrictions on access to information.
The epidemic has reduced the number of participating manufacturers on the one hand, but have innovative breakthroughs in the field of science and technology also encountered a "severe winter" or a "bottleneck period"? The screen is getting bigger and bigger, the performance is getting stronger, the price is getting higher and higher, and consumers seem to have some "aesthetic fatigue".
In the long run, the persistence of CES has injected new vitality into the consumer electronics industry, and the blockbuster products shown by these manufacturers will eventually determine the main technological development direction in the field of science and technology in 2022, which is worth digging into.