BERLIN -- For many consumers, rewinding cassettes, carefully placing a needle on a record or shaking dry a Polaroid photo may all feel like long-forgotten gestures from a bygone era.
But they're everywhere to be seen again at Berlin's IFA tech show, albeit it with an unmistakable digital touch.
The "new trends" section of the fair, which often showcases upcoming Christmas-season blockbusters, is dominated by a stand belonging to Polaroid, the household-name camera firm that not so long ago appeared near death.
Known as the One Step+, the snapper looks exactly like a traditional Polaroid from the outside -- but offers Bluetooth connectivity to sync up with Android and iPhone apps.
Competitor Kodak also has an instant camera, the Printomatic, on offer, claiming less than 40 seconds to develop a photo in color or black-and-white.
"For the new generation, it's totally new. They have no idea how to take a picture like this, without a screen, or to wait a week for it to get developed", said Polaroid spokesman Tobias Henze.
Unlike digital photos trapped under smartphone glass, "you can frame it, put it on the wall, offer it or put it in a scrapbook," he points out.
AUDIOSTALGIA
In the music world, audio purists and those looking for a more "instagrammable" way to listen are met with ever more options for playing cassettes and vinyl records.
Manufacturers have hard data to back up their turn to the past, with 33 RPM discs accounting for some 14 percent of US album sales in 2017, compared with 11 percent the previous year.
That's why IFA visitors can lust after Yamaha's Vinyl 500 turntable, which nods to modernity with a Wifi connection that also allows users to stream music.
Meanwhile, a slew of startups offer portable turntables that can be lugged around in a satchel or even clipped onto the edge of a speaker or a shelf.
For those with enormous digital collections, Sony vaunts the ability of its DMP-Z1 player -- priced at $13,000 -- to restore the sound quality and audio "grain" of a vinyl pressing.
Debate may rage forever in the audiophile world about whether the traditional discs truly offer superior sound.
But the trend towards the black record is firmly established across Europe, with small-scale publishers popping up in disused factory buildings across the continent.
Outside the air-conditioned halls of the IFA, hip young Berliners are spoiled for choice among shops offering vinyls and cassettes.
"Old formats, in audio, video, photo negatives or records have a very large user base, almost 50 percent of the market," says Klaus Boehm, of consultancy Deloitte.
"Our multimedia use will coexist in the coming years with these older formats, and I'd advise people not to throw away their old devices," he cautioned.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
BERLIN -- Europe's biggest tech fair, Berlin's IFA, opens its doors Friday with a flood of new product launches. Here are some of the top trends making waves along the aisles:
1. Future TV: higher resolution, bigger screens
With four times as many pixels as today's 4K ultra-high-definition (UHD) screens, the latest 8K TV sets have the potential to wow -- but the first compatible content will only reach viewers in 2020 with the Japan Winter Olympics.
In the meantime, Europeans are buying bigger and bigger TVs, hitting an average of 50 inches last year.
And wireless or wifi connectivity is moving from the "nice-to-have" to the "must-have" column, with many sets offering on-demand video that users can launch via voice command.
2. Earphones get cuddly
Many of the bulky headphones that dominated audio over the past decade have shed wires in favor of Bluetooth connections in the past two years.
And as listeners increasingly opt for smaller earbuds for everyday use, headsets are evolving to fit new niches -- like integration in soft neckbands that won't bother users as they drift off to sleep while bingeing on podcasts.
For shared sounds, TV-connected sound bars or multi-room speaker set-ups sport fewer and fewer buttons as voice commands become the control scheme of choice.
3. Laptop or tablet? Why choose?
While ever-lighter and thinner laptops are a constant feature of tech shows, the real action at IFA is elsewhere.
High dynamic range (HDR) monitors increasingly offer gamers and other power users more true-to-life images on their desktop computers, while "convertible" PCs -- useable as either laptop or tablet -- are increasingly popular for travel.
As for "classic" tablets, sales fell some 18 percent last year according to IFA organizers.
4. Wearables quit the gym
After a 2017 that saw wearable gadgets for monitoring fitness take off, this year they're increasingly present elsewhere, for example as trackers on the wrists of children or the elderly.
But authorities in some countries are leery of such developments.
Last November, Germany banned a smartwatch aimed at children that allowed parents to remotely activate a microphone to listen in on the playground.
5. Smog alert
White goods buyers are increasingly convinced that "big is beautiful," according to Norbert Herzog of consumer research firm GfK, opting for roomier fridges and ovens and higher-capacity washing machines.
Elsewhere in the home, cordless vacuum cleaners are gaining ground, making up some 40 percent of global sales of small home appliances.
Devices from dishwashers to lightbulbs can be networked and controlled remotely by voice commands.
And global demand for air purifiers is rising, stoked by health-conscious Chinese consumers worried about pollution in the country's smog-choked cities.
6. Virtual reality mirage?
Virtual reality -- whether the low-end headsets that use the wearer's phone as a screen, or ultra-powerful dedicated rigs for gamers -- faces a "chicken and egg problem," said IFA executive director Jens Heithecker.
"Consumers will rush to buy once there's great content to enjoy, while content production is slow as long as consumers are not buying in large numbers," he lamented.
That hasn't discouraged Taiwan's Acer from launching a standalone gaming headset in Berlin this year.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
BERLIN -- Electronics manufacturers are betting on artificial intelligence weaving itself ever more tightly into our relationships with their products on show at this year's IFA, the sector's annual trade fair here.
From Friday, "new releases in the artificial intelligence niche will be the ones everyone is talking about" at the industry event in the German capital, predicted Gartner analyst Annette Zimmermann.
South Korean giant Samsung, through a new connected speaker, Home Galaxy, equipped to respond to spoken commands, may send its voice assistant Bixby into battle with Google's Assistant, Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri for dominance of living rooms and kitchens.
Such devices made a splash at last year's IFA, making the 2018 show an opportunity to take stock of their reception among the public.
Research firm Gartner predicts that by 2020, some 75 percent of American households will use a voice assistant.
Meanwhile similar technology is extending its reach into connected devices from fridges to lightbulbs, gigantic televisions with ever-higher resolution, and wearables used to track fitness data.
Such mass-market products are the bread-and-butter of IFA, which traditionally contrasts with its nerdier Las Vegas-based American equivalent CES.
AUGMENTED REALITY
Also from Korea, Samsung rival LG is set to unveil its CLOi SuitBot, a powered exoskeleton that increases the user's leg strength and can be networked with the firm's other robots for complex tasks.
But visitors looking for novelty in their everyday tech companion, the smartphone, will be disappointed.
Apple has historically shunned IFA, while Samsung unveiled its top-end Galaxy Note 9 phone just a few weeks ago.
Neither is a major announcement expected from China's Huawei, a star of past years at the Berlin show.
Instead, the 2018 edition could be a breakthrough moment for augmented-reality applications that have so far left consumers unimpressed.
The technology superimposes digitally-generated elements like sounds or 2D and 3D images onto real-world scenes, for example in an Ikea app that allows users to virtually try out the furniture giant's sofas or bookshelves in their homes.
With new glasses, lenses and helmets, "there are more and more technologies available that include very high-quality content, whether it's augmented-reality Harry Potter or shopping applications", said Klaus Boehm of consultancy Deloitte.
Filling out the vast halls of Berlin's trade fair center will be a bewildering array of products from around the world that range from the practical to the -- in some eyes -- downright dangerous.
Under German law, items like hoverboards, powered "monowheels" and electric skates can only be test-driven away from public roads.
And there are certain to be thousands of exhibitors showing off the latest fridge that re-orders food when stocks run low or Bluetooth headsets with an extra hour of battery life -- jockeying for position in a relentless technology race.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
