CES 2011: Press Day Highlights

Las Vegas - The CES pre-show yesterday revealed a lot of surprises. From Samsung's new Galaxy S inspired media player and the announcement of a Wi-Fi only Galaxy Tab to Motorola Mobility stunning new dual processor-powered Android Atrix smartphone (coming to Bell in Canada "sometime soon") to the unveiling of the BlackBerry PlayBook, the dual-core and Honeycomb slathered Xoom Tablet, to Microsoft's Kinect and Windows 8 running on SoC (Systems on a Chip). 

Motorola Xoom: The first Honeycomb powered Android tablet is also te first generation of dual-processor challengers to the iPad

New Cliq- Motorola Mobility proves it is in it to win it with a host of new phones including the new and improved Cliq 2

Showstopper: Motorola's Atrix pushed the boundaries of smartphone specs and came with a cool dock that doubles as a notebook which is powered by the super smartphone

 Tablets in all shapes and forms: This folding tablet from Samsung runs desktop variety Windows 7Resurface: Microsoft's Surface 2 is made of millions of tiny cameras that can scan and interact with anything they come into contact with. Part of the demo was a cool RBC app for banking customersThe incredible shrinking motherboard: A tiny System on a Chip motherboard (extreme left) poses next to a full-sized mobo and offers similar performance but way less power consumption. Perfect for tablets and smartphones

Microsoft obsoletes the remote control: Kinect now controls movies, music, Netflix and Hulu with voice and gestures.Going strong: Windows Phone 7 has 5,500 apps, not bad for a two month old OS. Copy and paste plus multitasking said to be coming soon

Samsung targets iPod Touch and Wi-Fi iPad with new models

Las Vegas - Samsung's aggressive mobile salvo continued today as it announced new products within it's emerging Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets.

Most notable was a Wi-Fi enabled (without 3G) variant of the successful Samsung Galaxy Tab as well as Galaxy music player that has many features of the Galaxy smartphones but without the carrier and phone plus data plan requirement.

These decidedly consumer oriented devices are expected to be more affordable than the Galaxy Line of phones and tablets plus will have the added advantage of being sold in more outlets.

Pricing and availability are two key factors that were not yet discussed during the preview.

CES 2011: World’s First iPhone Connected Blood Pressure Monitor launched

With hypertension affecting almost 25% of the world population, blood pressure measurement can help to save lives. Now, iOS device users can tap into technology and cloud to record and monitor their blood pressure with a simple to use yet innovative product.

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Virgin Mobile offers tablet-specific prepaid data plans

Virgin Mobile is introducing a new postpaid flexible rate plan for the Apple iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab. With no activation fee, Virgin Mobile Members can choose from two plans. For only $20/month, Members get up to 500 MB of data – and for $35/month, they can access up to 5 GB.

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