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The Morning After: Introducing the Best of CES 2020 finalists

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Here’s our list of nominees for all 15 categories.
Presenting the Best of CES 2020 finalists!

Our editors have been hard at work the past few days finding the latest and greatest gadgets here at CES 2020. Now we’re ready to announce our finalists for the official Best of CES awards. Below you’ll find our selections for all 15 categories, which range from best TVs to the most sustainable products we’ve seen at the show. We’ll announce our category winners tomorrow, which is also when we’ll reveal the recipient of our Best of the Best award, the most coveted prize of all. That special award is selected from our pool of category winners.

And if you want your voice heard, too, no worries! There’s an additional category for the People’s Choice, where you can vote for your favorite of our compilation of finalists. Check out all the finalists right here.


Finally, mobile videos that look good either way.
Quibi’s secret weapon: Videos that work in portrait and landscape mode

What the heck is Quibi? That’s the question we’ve all been asking. This mobile-centric streaming video company steadily amassed a whopping one billion dollars in funding, with notable names like Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro signing up to make some very short shows (up to 10 minutes) for the service. What did all of Quibi’s supporters know that we didn’t? Devindra tries to find the answer.


But it wasn’t entirely the company’s fault.
Neon’s ‘artificial human’ avatars could not live up to the CES hype

The big story ahead of CES even opening was a Samsung-backed company that was barely half a year old, pitching incredibly realistic ‘artificial humans’ that not only looked the part but had intellectual and emotional wisdom to match. The reality, at least at this early stage, is relatively impressive, but not quite close enough to the heady conceptual showreel. Neon might have played its hand a year too early. Mat tries to figure out why everyone got so excited.


That’s nearly twice as long as most other consumer drones.
V-Coptr Falcon is a bi-copter drone with a 50-minute flight time

You may not be familiar with the name Zero Zero Robotics, but its foldable Hover Camera may ring a bell. Having finally started shipping the Hover 2 to beta testers last month, the company is already showing off a different kind of drone at CES. As the name suggests, the V-Coptr Falcon is a V-shaped bi-copter that boasts an impressive 50-minute flight time — something that should scare the competition. There are plenty more intelligent touches, too.


Daredevil eat your heart out.
Phonak Virto Black hands-on: A hearing aid that gives you superpowers

You might not have heard of Phonak, but the Swiss company’s been around for decades. It makes a range of hearing aids, but the Virto Black is its latest and greatest. Unless you suffer from hearing loss, hearing aids are probably not that interesting, but there’s enough going on in the Virto Black that it almost feels like a smart wearable as much as an accessibility tool. James Trew is a convert.

But wait, there’s more…


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LG vows to make its failing mobile unit profitable by the end of 2021

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The CEO didn’t elaborate exactly how LG will expand its phone lineup, nor give any details on its proposed “wow factors,” but reiterated the company’s ambition to boost its competitiveness in an already saturated market.

LG has faced its fair share of challenges in recent years. At the beginning of 2019 it reported an overall loss of $72.5 million in the three months prior — much of that driven by its failing mobile division which saw sales drop by 40 percent throughout 2018. The company had taken a bullish approach to its smartphone arm — in particular launching the five-camera V40 ThinQ at the end of 2018 in a bid to turn things around — but that’s not been enough to pull it back into profit.

The company has since seen a number of staff shakeups — presumably in a bid to save the troubled division. Brian Kwon — formerly the company’s home entertainment boss — took over the smartphone arm at the end of 2018. At the end of 2019 the role was handed to Morris Lee. In that period, its mobile division did manage to narrow its loses by a reasonable amount, citing increased production efficiencies and cost improvements, so an expanded product lineup and some wow factors could well help to accelerate this positive trajectory.

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Ring confirms it fired four employees for watching customer videos

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In addition to terminating the employees, Ring said it limited data access to smaller number of staff members. At the moment, only three employees can access stored customer videos. The company also clarified in the letter that while it gave an R&D team in Ukraine access to video data, that team can only watch publicly available videos and videos from employees, contractors and their friends who consented to be part of the program.

Ring recently pledged to beef up its security measures, most likely in response to all the flak it’s gotten over various security issues. Motherboard discovered last year that Ring makes its security video footage available to local police, and it’s also facing a lawsuit due a series of hacks that allowed infiltrators to digitally harass device owners. One of its recent efforts is requiring new signups to activate two-factor authentication — a move that’s nowhere near good enough for Senator Ron Wyden.

The Senator said in a statement:

“Requiring two-factor for new accounts is a step in the right direction, but there are millions of consumers who already have a Ring camera in their homes who remain needlessly vulnerable to hackers. Amazon needs to go further — by protecting all Ring devices with two-factor authentication. It is also disturbing to learn that Ring’s encryption of user videos lags behind other companies, who ensure that only users have the encryption keys to access their data.”

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CBS All Access is coming to Xfinity X1 and Flex set-top boxes

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With the agreement, Comcast says it will become the first cable or satellite television provider in the US to offer a CBS All Access app. As with a lot of the other streaming services that are available through Xfinity X1 and Flex, you’ll need to subscribe to CBS All Access to watch the content it offers on your Comcast box. The good news is that there’s no longer a $5 per month fee to use Flex.

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Steam makes it easier to find and download game soundtracks

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The audio itself is getting a boost. There’s a new interface for soundtracks, and producers can offer high-quality versions of tracks (such as in FLAC or WAV) in addition to the usual MP3s.

The revamped soundtrack features should debut on January 20th. And don’t worry about any soundtracks you already own — Valve is giving developers a tool to convert their DLC-oriented music releases as standalone versions, and the new editions will still be part of your collection.

This doesn’t amount to Valve launching a music store. However, it is an acknowledgment that game soundtracks are increasingly popular in their own right, rather than nice-to-have bonus items. It’s also a recognition that where you play games and where you listen aren’t necessarily one and the same, and that it’s better to get some money from a soundtrack than to let other music services fill in the gap.

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Samsung’s rugged Galaxy XCover Pro includes a swappable battery

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The specs won’t make you rush out to replace a Galaxy S10. Apart from the screen, you’re looking at an unspecified 2GHz octa-core chip, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of expandable storage and cameras that include a 25-megapixel selfie shooter along with 13MP and 8MP cameras on the back.

Finns can buy the XCover Pro starting on January 31st for €499 (about $555). There’s no word yet on whether or not the phone will come to other markets, let alone bigger markets like the US or UK. For now, you’ll either have to import the phone or stare at it lovingly from afar.

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Facebook is still running anti-vaccination ads despite ban

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The ads appear to violate Facebook policies that ban ads with claims debunked either by outside fact checking teams or “organizations with particular expertise,” including anti-vaccination content. In the case of these ads, the World Health Organization would be one of those groups. Earthley also promotes anti-vaccination myths through its public accounts and groups, although Facebook already tends to downplay this content.

However, Facebook disagrees with that interpretation. A spokesperson said the ads represented “no violation” of its policies, and the social network was still running the ads as of this writing. It didn’t tell Engadget why it believed the ads were acceptable.

The presence of the ads highlights both the limitations of Facebook’s ad policies (including its willingness to let politicians lie) as well as the challenges of stopping bogus claims. It doesn’t take much for an ad to avoid Facebook’s ban on anti-vaccination ads, even when it’s clearly violating the spirit of that ban. And no matter how stringent Facebook’s policies are, there may be only so much it can do. It can’t possibly guess every possible anti-vaccination hashtag, as BuzzFeed observed. It’s just a question of whether Facebook’s approach is thorough enough to tackle problems like this.

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Hands-on with Intel’s Ghost Canyon NUC and Tiger Lake Xe laptops

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All of Intel’s NUC (which stands for “next unit of computing”) devices have been relatively small DIY kits for enthusiasts. They ship with a CPU, but it’s up to you to provide RAM, storage and an OS. I was intrigued by its more gaming-oriented “Hades Canyon” NUC from from a few years ago, which featured Intel’s short-lived collaboration with AMD to bring Radeon graphics to a core CPU. But with Ghost Canyon (officially called the NUC 9 Extreme), it’s going bigger to pack in even more power. It can hold a desktop GPU up to 8-inches long, which means you can plug in a NVIDIA RTX 2070 card for some serious gaming.

While it’s a bit disheartening to see the NUC line get even bigger, the NUC 9 Extreme is still much smaller than any other tiny desktop out there, with a volume of 30 liters. It’s also a bit more upgradable than previous NUC kits: Intel has developer a Compute Unit which holds the system’s CPU, which you can swap out for a newer kit down the line. Even better, you could also take a Compute Unit and move it over to another “Ghost Canyon” kit from a third-party, like Razer’s Tomahawk. Intel is clearly trying to build a tiny desktop ecosystem, which may end up making the NUC 9 Extreme more influential than any of its tiny siblings.

On the laptop front, Intel gave us a glimpse at some of its upcoming hardware: that new H-series 10th generation chip, and its next-generation Tiger Lake platform with Xe dedicated graphics. I was able to play Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order on an upcoming system with the H-series processor (and an unnamed third-party GPU), and the experience felt very smooth. Of course, the GPU was doing the heavy lifting there, but it’s nice to see that Intel’s high-performance 10th gen mobile chip actually exists. (Unfortunately, I couldn’t actually test it to see if it was going beyond 5GHz.)

Intel CES 2020

While we were impressed with Intel’s 10th gen Iris Plus integrated graphics, which made games like Overwatch very playable on ultraportables, the company is making another significant leap forward with Tiger Lake. I demoed two systems running the new platform, an ultraportable and a slightly chunkier mid-range laptop, and they both performed surprisingly well. The unbranded ultraportable, which looked like the vast majority of thin and light systems we see today, was able to run MechWarrior 5 in 1080p with low graphics settings. It wasn’t exactly silky smooth, but it generally felt around 30 FPS, which was playable enough for such a tiny system.

The mid-range Tiger Lake machine, meanwhile, managed to run decently Destiny 2 in 1080p. The game felt a bit sluggish, and there was a bit of a delay between mouse movements and shooting, but the machine handled realistic shadows surprisingly well. Again, it didn’t feel like a gaming machine, but it was playable enough for a mainstream laptop. At the very least, Intel’s Xe graphics puts it in a better spot to compete with AMD, which is planning a bigger push for Radeon mobile graphics this year.

Intel hasn’t given us many details about these upcoming products, but we expect to hear more soon. You’ll probably have to pay a pretty penny for the NUC 9 Extreme — one Intel rep said the high-end Core i9 kit might sell for around $2,700. As for the new laptop tech, you’ll likely see the H-series 10th gen chip before Tiger Lake.

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Segway’s S-Pod is a ridiculous lounge chair on wheels

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The Segway S-Pod is a vehicle designed for future smart cities, when cars are less common but folks still need to get around comfortably. The pod itself is suspended between two wheels, giving the entire chair a floaty feel when you’re nestled in its suede seat. It’s controlled with a flat, round joystick on the right armrest: press it in the direction you want to travel and release it to brake. Holding the joystick all the way in one direction makes the chair spin (whee!).

Segway showed off the S-Pod at CES and I took it for a ride around a short track, helmet and all. It was smooth — the joystick is sensitive and it doesn’t take much for the pod to shoot forward, but once you’ve dialed in the correct amount of pressure, it moves like butter and turns easily. The chair automatically slows down just a little bit as it turns.

The CES model was capped at 7mph, but the final version will hit speeds of 24mph. It’ll travel up to 43 miles at a time, and it takes just two hours to fully charge. The S-Pod is scheduled to launch commercially at the end of the year, with a consumer version coming soon after. There’s no word on price just yet.

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A very Japanese virtual companion is being westernized

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A company called Keyshare Innovation Group partnered with a New Zealand to essentially rebuild Gatebox’s AI assistant from the ground up. Now, instead of an anime character, Keyshare’s assistant can take the form of a more realistic woman in a sharp uniform, or a beefy, bald man in gym attire. Obviously, these potential models are geared toward very different situations — the former would suitable for working as 24/7 concierges, and Keyshare (nearly) has contracts in place to install these AI assistants across a fleet of cruise ships by the end of the year.

The software isn’t the only facet of the experience that’s getting a revamp. While the original model relied on a projection tube to give Hikari a more pronounced sense of presence, the models Keyshare are working on use tablets mounted inside a similar, semi-circular glass chassis. The whole package is a little smaller as a result, but it retains the same slew of motion sensors and cameras to ensure these new virtual avatars can still convincingly interact with humans. Sure, it might not be quite as impactful as the original, but it seems a whole lot more practical for a company trying to get these things out into the wild fast.

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