With 2015 rapidly coming to a close, our thoughts turn to the first big tech event of 2016: The Consumer Electronics Show. This is what we’re expecting to see come January 6.
Over the space of four days (January 6 - 9), many of the world’s biggest tech companies will roll up to Las Vegas to reveal what they have planned for the coming year.
Preceding the show, January 5 will likely act as a press day, with the likes of Samsung, Sony, LG and co all holding dedicated conferences to make major announcements.
Historically a show for the TV industry to show off its coming wares, CES has expanded to be so much more. It’s still too early to say exactly what products will be hitting the show floor come January, but here are some of the tech trends and rumoured announcements to look out for during CES 2016.
CES 2016 schedule
Tuesday January 5 2016
LG: UK time – 16:45 | Local time – 8.45am
Huawei: UK time – 18:00 | Local time – 10am
Panasonic: UK time – 18:00 | Local time – 10am
Qualcomm: UK time – 20:00 | Local time – 12pm
Samsung: UK time – 22:00 | Local time – 2pm
Sony: UK time 01:00 | Local time – 5pm
VR to become more real
We know, we know. Virtual Reality has been the next big thing for ages now. But CES 2016 is going to go particularly big on VR, and you don’t need to take our word for it.
The organisers of the conference have revealed that the Gaming & Virtual Reality Marketplace is being massively expanded for the 2016 event. It’ll be 77 percent bigger than 2015, with more than 40 exhibitors in the field.
Those exhibitors will include Oculus VR, Virtuix, and Sphero, among others.
Samsung Gear VR, Microsoft HoloLens, PlayStation VR, and HTC Vive are the other big players in VR, so it’ll be interesting to see which of these make a showing.
Related: PlayStation VR hands-on
Sneaky Samsung
It emerged following CES 2015 that Samsung had been showing off the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge behind closed doors at the event. This could mean that the Samsung Galaxy S7 will be at CES 2016 - albeit with little chance of making a showing.
In fact, some sources claim that Samsung is looking to bring its next flagship phone launch forward to January, which would make a public showing at CES 2016 a little more plausible. But not THAT much more plausible.
There’s a chance we’ll see some new classy new tablets from Samsung at CES 2016, too - possibly in the Note Pro and Tab Pro families.
Will LG be as flexible as before?
LG always makes a big splash at CES. Unlike its rivals, which tend to wait until MWC, LG often jumps in early with a major smartphone announcement.
Last year it was the LG G Flex 2, a bendy remix of the LG G3. Might we see an LG G Flex 3 at CES 2016?
It’s quite possible, though keep in mind that the company only recently launched a brand new line of premium phones in the LG V10. Can it cope with a third flagship phone in less than 12 months?
LG has also announced that it will be showing off its next update to the webOS TV platform at CES, webOS 3.0.
Related: LG V10: What's so special about it?
CPU showcase
While it’s never the best place to go for exciting new smartphones, CES is often the place to go if you want a sneak peek at the hardware that will be driving the next generation of smartphones.
At last year’s event we saw Qualcomm unveiling the Snapdragon 810 and Nvidia unveiling the Tegra X1. Don’t be surprised to see the successors of those two chips taking a bow at CES 2016.
The robots are taking over
Another massively expanded area for CES 2016 will be robotics, to which the event will devote 71 percent more floor
space than CES 2015.
The Robotics Marketplace will be home to around 20 exhibitors, all showing off how increasingly sophisticated robots are transforming business places, healthcare, and the home.
Mobile payments and eCommerce
With the spread of Apple Pay and the arrival of Samsung Pay and Android Pay, not to mention the efforts of individual banks, it looks as if the long-promised wallet-free future could be upon us.
Reflecting this, as well as the expanding use of online payments, CES 2016 will see the debut of the eCommerce Marketplace.
It’ll be home to mobile payment apps, shopping platforms, mobile concierge services and cloud solutions - anything to do with parting you from your money without opening your wallet, basically.
Related: Android Pay vs Apple Pay
TVs, TVs, TVs
CES is always the place to come if you want to see what’s cooking in the world of TV technology. Samsung, LG, Sony, Panasonic, and more tend to have their latest sets on display - as well as some prototypes that might not even be out by CES 2017.
4K is getting close to being a standard feature on new TVs, so we wouldn’t be surprised to see a few more manufacturers showing off TV prototypes or early adopter-aimed models with 8K resolutions.
Of far more practical concern in the immediate future will be HDR. It’s a feature that should be making its way into more sets in 2016, providing far greater contrast between dark and light areas of the picture.
Oh, and don’t think that we’ve seen the end of that curved screen phase. There’s always one (or two).
We’ll be interested to see what TV manufacturers have to offer on the UI and content streaming front, what with Apple launching its formidable new Apple TV at the end of 2015 and Amazon and Roku going full 4K with their latest efforts.
Lotta laptops
With Windows 10 finally out there, along with Microsoft’s latest wave of flagship Surface devices, expect CES 2016 to play host to a whole bunch of Windows 10 laptop and tablet devices - and everything in between.
CES 2016 could also see the belated responses to Apple’s super-slim MacBook, which will have been in shops for around 9 months by the time of the event. It’ll be interesting to see how many other manufacturers are willing to jump onboard the USB Type-C-only bandwagon - and whether they can wring any more performance out of the form factor.
