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ZTE hopes the Grand S will be its big ticket into the U.S. market – we’re not so sure. We go hands on with one of the biggest, yet most disappointing, flagship handsets at CES.

New phones are fun. It’s exciting to hold them and try them out – to see what strange new innovations they’ve been packed with. I used a lot of cool new phones at CES this year. Sadly, the Grand S, while a competent phone on paper, wasn’t one of them. The official tagline for the ZTE Grand S is – and I kid you not – “There are so many S’s, but this one is different.” How it’s different, we may never know. ZTE doesn’t say and I don’t have a clue.

The Grand S is ZTE’s latest attempt to launch a competitive flagship smartphone in the United States and put some recognition behind its brand. It has the same specs as every other new flagship phone lately: quad-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, a 13-megapixel camera, and a 5-inch 1080p screen. Compared to ZTE’s previous flagship designs, it’s a huge step up. But sit it next to top phones by HTC, Samsung, LG, Sony, or even Huawei’s Ascend D2, and its clear that despite being the fourth largest phone manufacturer in the world, ZTE doesn’t yet have what it takes to compete in the big leagues.

The build quality still feels somewhat cheap, a problem that caused me to name ZTE’s Era the “least durable phone” at last year’s Mobile World Congress. Unlike the Era, at least the Grand S was working on the show floor. Unfortunately, the units we tested were laggy – unable to keep up with our modest swipes and app launches. This is likely because HTC’s Android skin is hogging too many resources, or there’s some underlying hardware issue. Regardless, it made an otherwise decent phone seem quite cheap. 

Part of the problem, as with all of these new 1080p phones, is that ZTE is trying to run Android on an insanely high-resolution screen. HTC figured out how to do it with the Droid DNA, as has Huawei with its Ascend D2, and Sony on its Xperia Z. Why, with almost identical specs, does the ZTE Grand S lag behind? It’s certainly doesn’t have anything to do with any innovative software features. So far as I can tell, there are none. It might have been smarter for ZTE to just run a vanilla, completely clean version of Android – it likely would have operated faster – but so far, ZTE is trying to play the same game every other Android phone maker is playing, but it’s not doing a great job.

In all fairness, the Grand S is a much better phone than I expected after seeing ZTE’s press conference earlier this week. It was one of of the most laughable press conferences I’ve ever been to; the company attempted to mimic recent Samsung press conferences by having a magician – except, unlike those press conferences, he appeared to have a budget of about $10, was in a 50-by-50-foot gray room with about 150 people crammed into it, and the only decoration on the wall was a CES poster and a home projector. The magician’s tricks were fine (and the dude gets around – I saw him at an HTC party a day or so later), but the whole press conference reminded me a lot of where ZTE is at right now. It wants to be a major player and ascend the ranks, but it’s still stuck. It doesn’t yet know how to create a great premium phone, nor does it know how to present one.

To sum up: Someone should be fired over ZTE’s CES press conference. Nobody should be fired over the Grand S. But if ZTE wants to break into the U.S. premium smartphone market, it’s going to need more than this. And please, dump the “S.” Samsung’s been there. It’s done that. Get a new letter, ZTE.

ASUS is launching a 150-dollar tablet for emerging markets and frugal customers everywhere, but is it worth the investment compared to other low-cost tablets?

CES may be done, but Asus isn’t. Two days after the annual trade show ended, it has announced the MeMo Pad, an Android tablet that will cost a mere $150.

The MeMo Pad, as stated in a Asus press release, has been released as an answer to “Changing market conditions”, which we think is a code word for lower prices. So far, several low-cost tablets are entering or already on the market in 2013, such as Acer’s own Iconia tablet.

At a modest $150, you could probably guess this tablet is not coming to a store near you with the latest and greatest hardware. Despite this, Asus has worked hard to cram a ton of features and fairly decent hardware into this device. With a 1GHz processor, the CPU of the MeMo Pad is certainly not turning heads, but Asus is throwing in a standard 7-inch display, 1GB of RAM, and your choice of 8 or 16 GB of internal storage, plus a microSD card to maximize your investment. The real treat is that this tablet will come with Android Jelly Bean, rather than the now-dated taste of Ice Cream Sandwich, not to mention three different casing colors for your own personal flair. With an advertised 7-hour battery life, Asus isn’t going overboard in the battery department, but still giving decent performance. This tablet may not catch glances anywhere beyond its price and color options, but certainly no complaints either.

Compared to other tablets on the market, the MeMo Pad certainly isn’t the cheapest you can get, but it certainly is (along with Acer and a few others) one of the cheapest tablets you can get with a real brand name. The MeMo Pad is probably a good choice against Acer’s Iconia or any other brand-name 150 dollar tablet – not that there are many others out there to begin with. You certainly can’t do much better with a price like that. Asus has plans to launch it sometime in January to emerging markets, but you can grab in America some time in April – even if it will be grossly outdated by then.

It’s impossible to leave a show like CES 2013 behind and not feel like you may have missed something. The same goes for reading through the news coming out of the event. We’ve compiled all the best stories from CES 2013 and give you a look at who left the show a winner and who’s going to be preparing for next year already.

There’s only one thing less effective than trying to make some news during CES while not at CES – Trying to make news by backtracking on news released during CES while not at CES (cough, Apple, cough). Whether or not there’s a cheaper version of the iPhone on the way is the least of anyone’s interest after the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. While we were surprised at how quiet mobile companies were during the event, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t plenty to talk about. Press conferences, press releases, devices on the show floor – a slow year for mobile still meant there was far too much to process over teh course of the week. This week, we’ll take a look at the winners and losers in mobile during CES while recapping the news from January 6-12, 2013.

T-Mobile: Winner

It’s no secret that in the contest between mobile providers, T-Mobile is playing with a chip on its shoulder. On stage at CES, the company did it’s best Kevin Garnett impression and trash talked even though it’s trailing on the scoreboard. CEO John Legere came out throwing haymakers in every direction. But then something crazy happened: He landed his punches. Sure, he was off the wall, but he was hilarious and offered customers something. T-Mobile is now offering unlimited monthly plans with no contract attached, is rolling out HD Voice for compatible handsets, expanding 4G coverage across the country, creating a partnership with Major League Baseball, and calling itself the “Uncarrier.” While I’m personally opposed to giving yourself a nickname, I was oddly ok with this. Maybe it was the cheap shot at Verizon’s “[covering] the dust bowl with LTE” made it all ok. Regardless, this guy needs to hold weekly fireside chats purely for our enjoyment. What a fascinating new CEO.

 Carriers Not Named T-Mobile: Losers

Way to phone it in, guys – pun intended. We know next month will hold a little more importance for some of the big mobile players as Mobile World Congress will take place in Barcelona, but they could have at least broke us off with a little something. Sprint made the bold decision of finally committing the third biggest mobile OS in the world by announcing Windows 8 phones. AT&T brought out a bunch of its high profile partners and talked about how great all of its current relationships were going, but basically said nothing. Verizon said enough to fill a single page press release: the Ativ Odyssey and Galaxy Note 10.1 are coming to Verizon.

Big Screens: Winner

Bigger might not always be better, but it was sure viewed as a selling point during CES 2013. Smartphones are getting a step closer to being tablets and tablets are getting a step closer to being actual tables. Chinese phone maker Huawei showed off the Ascend Mate and it’s 6.1 inch screen now completely bridges the world of 5-inch phones and 7-inch tablets (Nexus 7). Vizio decided to make the standard screen size for tablets expand a bit, announcing a Windows 8 tablet with an 11.6 inch display. To push the boundaries for the definition of what’s considered a tablet, Panasonic pulled out all the stops and unveiled a 20-inch tablet running Windows 8. To complete the one-up contest, Lenovo rolled out a 27-inch tablet that really is just daring someone to top it. I’m not sure if every mobile developer is inviting Shaquille O’Neal into the design lab, but some of us have tiny hands, guys. Stop it.

The United States: Loser

CES 2013 was held in Las Vegas. Last time I checked, that was still in the United States. So why do you have to come and show off stuff that we can’t have? I’m looking at you Huawei. The company rolled out two great looking handsets with the Ascend D2 and Ascend Mate, its first Windows 8 phone, and the world’s smallest USB card but only announced their availability in China. Fellow Chinese phone maker ZTE brought over its Grand S and also never spoke of a release date outside of its home country. ZTE did make one notable overseas offering by promising to bring a phone running Firefox OS to – wait for it – Europe in 2013. Did no one inform these companies that we need phones in the U.S. too? 

New Operating Systems: Winner

While only two of the operating systems that intend to challenge the current champs were on hand at CES 2013, they both certainly made good impressions. Though it comes from a long line of mobile OSes, Blackberry 10 looks like it may actually be the thing that puts Research in Motion back in contention. With a promising showing and popular demo that impressed most who got their hands on it and a thorough launch with plenty of options available in 2013, Blackberry 10 may make those belt clip phone holders socially acceptable again. The total newcomer, Firefox, is breaking away from the standards of mobile operating systems and seems to be doing a pretty good job at it. Plans to have the OS installed on phones and available to the public this year are in place, so we won’t have to wait too long to see if it catches on.

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Vizio’s first Windows 8 tablet PC is impressive, but suffers from some of the same drawbacks as the company’s laptop PCs.

Vizio only started making computers recently, but it’s already getting into the Windows 8 slate market with a new 11.6-inch model. The idea behind the product is to offer an uncompromised Windows experience, a full HD display, and a fanless design. It achieved this by going with an AMD chip inside. The result is a solid Windows 8 tablet that we’re interested to see once it comes out in the spring. However, there are some aspects that concern us.

This tablet is clearly a Vizio product and shares a lot of elements with the laptop line, from the ultra generic name – Vizio 11.6-inch Tablet PC featuring Windows 8 – to the somewhat sharp edges. Overall, the design looks quite nice; minimal but not bland. At 1.8 pounds, it’s not too heavy for an 11-inch slate and the body is a thin 0.4 inches. We’re also fans of the rubberized, soft touch back which helps with grip and comfort. Sadly, with the edges so sharp, it’s not a completely comfortable tablet to hold. This can be an issue with aluminum frames, we know. Still, we’d love to see Vizio find a way to minimize this problem.

Up front, the IPS display offers impressive viewing angles and color depth. It goes perfectly with the full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution – watching video on this will be pretty sweet. Speakers sit on the sides of the unit and can be obscured by the hands, but you’ll want to set it down for extended video sessions, anyway. The screen offers 10 points of touch and didn’t seem too prone to smudges during our hands-on time.

Vizio wanted to offer full Windows 8 and not Windows RT (and for that we’re thankful) along with this high resolution and it wanted to go with a thin, fanless design. That took Intel’s processors out of the running. Instead, the company is going with an AMD Z-60 APU backed by 2GB of RAM. This chip combines processor and a Radeon HD GPU in one, and this drives the 1080p display. AMD’s performance doesn’t always impress next to Intel, but for a tablet of this type the balance may be just right.

This is very likely to be the case for the target audience. Though it runs full Windows 8, this tablet isn’t for power users. There are only two ports, micro HDMI and Micro USB. Internal storage tops out at 64GB on an SSD. Mainstream users who pull most of their data from the cloud will be fine with this setup.

Vizio expects to start selling the 11.6-inch Tablet PC featuring Windows 8 around the end of March. It hasn’t settled on pricing yet, so we’ll have to wait until later this spring to find out how much it will cost.

Microsoft recently applied for a patent that has the potential to eradicate the annoying part of smartphones at the movies by turning down the brightness and minimizing the user interface.

Just because a company applies for or even receives a patent, it doesn’t necessarily mean the feature will end up in a future product. As Microsoft does from time to time, the company applied for a new patent recently. This one is called “inconspicuous mode” and if it ever makes it to Windows Phone, the world will be a slightly happier place.

“Inconspicuous mode” works by not only turning down the brightness but also minimizing the user interface on screen. It’s best to describe this patent with an example. Smartphone brightness in general is at an optimal level, offering enough light to make our screens visible in direct sunlight. However, in certain environments that brightness can cause some bothersome issues.

Take the theater for instance. Like illustrated in the photo, most users take out their smartphone during a movie to check the time or perform a similar, quick action. But in a darkened room, even the lockscreen can be an annoying distraction to fellow audience members. Microsoft proposes then that the interface be stripped to the bare minimum and show only the current time, removing the notifications and bright background image. The patent is a really neat idea and the software’s ability to detect certain conditions automatically, like a darkened room, make it even more promising. Since it has such an obvious real-world use and doesn’t seem too difficult to implement, we could definitely see “inconspicuous mode” making its way to a future iteration of Windows Phone.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has no official plans to roll out the feature. A spokesperson for the company responded to an inquiry from Engadget with the type of canned response expected in this situation, stating Microsoft “regularly applies for and receives patents” and “not all” of them show up in shipped products. Fortunately for Windows Phone fans, a typical response like that proves nothing. Microsoft could very well be working on the feature but unwilling to talk about it at this time.

With any luck, Windows Phone could usher in a new era of smartphones that know when it’s polite to be discreet. It could also help minimize the shock of an incredibly bright screen assaulting your vision in the morning. Like the concept Surface Phone, we’d like to officially add this to our wish list.

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The Camelio tablet for kids will feature their favorite characters from Nickelodeon, the Hub, and Sanrio and come at a budget price, but will it be worth the money?

Vivitar and Sakar aren’t company names most people know even though plenty of consumers own their products. That’s because the company specializes in licensing deals, creating electronics and accessories, then selling them under brands like Hello Kitty, Nickelodeon, Barbie, and more. Sakar is all about the low-cost electronics, and the quality is about what you’d expect. Still, many kids’ first gadgets are made by the company with cameras and camcorders sometimes selling under the Vivitar house brand. At this year’s CES Sakar stepped into a new market: low cost tablet maker. The Vivitar Camelio 7-inch slates are due to come out around back to school time and entice kids with the same brand power as the company’s other devices.

The Camelio tablets aren’t all that exciting at first glance. The prototypes on display at CES weren’t running very well since they’re still early in the production phase, so we weren’t able to determine if performance is sufficient. The weight is light and the design balanced and comfortable, at least. Running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the Camelio is powered by a single-core processor and has 8GB of internal storage. Ports include mini USB and a microSD card slot. Reps at the booth didn’t know the resolution on the display – to our eye it looked to be 800 x 480. Viewing angles and brightness aren’t the best. We can only assume no Gorilla Glass was involved, either.

None of this is surprising given the source. Plus, specs aren’t really the point here. After all, when consumers buy a Transformers camera for their kid in Toys R Us they don’t look for a Car Ziess lens. It will be the same here. Kids and parents will key in on more important factors like price and branding. Right now the Camelio is slated to cost $130.

Instead of creating a bunch of different tablets for each brand, Sakar will instead release it under the Camelio name and sell branded theme packs separately. The theme packs will include a protective rubber case and access to wallpaper and icons that match the brand kids want. Choices run the gamut from My Little Pony, Hello Kitty, and Barbie to Hot Wheels and Thomas the Tank Engine. The nice thing about this strategy is, if your child stops liking Barbie or Hot Wheels, you can just buy a new theme instead chucking the entire tablet. Or they can change it up themselves whenever they want.

On screen, the themes are essentially a skin over Android, but kids can also choose to ditch them and run stock Ice Cream Sandwich. No word on whether the Camelio is Google Certified, thus giving access to the Google Play store and other core Goolgle apps. The tablets aren’t coming out until the fall, so there’s still time.

Right now it’s hard to tell if the Camelio Android tablet is worth your time and money. We like the concept; it’s the execution that will matter. There’s no point in buying a tablet, no matter how cheap, if it’s slow or will break after three months. We’ll try to get this one in for review when it’s ready to test it’s performance and durability.

Now that CES is over, it’s good to see the little guys are still doing well. According to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the $35 micro-computer is close to reaching one million units sold.

If there was ever a product that truly deserved vindication for all its promise, the Raspberry Pi might be it. The $35 mini-computer suffered delay after delay before finally launching last year. But things appear to be paying off. According to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the credit card-sized computer is well on its way to selling one million units.

The news comes courtesy of Raspberry Pi distributor 14/Premier Farnell, which announced last week that it had officially made and sold more than half a million units. 14/Premier Farnell is one of only two official distributors for the system. When RS Components releases official sales figures, fans of the tiny computer brain will know how well the system has sold since it first hit the market last April.

The Raspberry Pi is a surprisingly capable computing system that, despite having the power of a Pentium 2, can handle HD videos and high-quality graphics. It was designed as a low-cost solution for schools interested in teaching its students programming skills. However, the device suffered a number of production delays. With demand hitting 700 orders per second shortly after the project was announced last February, Raspberry Pi is definitely a hot device right now.

Now that the Raspberry Pi has its own app store, it’s good to see that mini computers have a place in this world alongside the best of what CES has to offer.

The annual CES trade show always brings a host of allegedly world-changing products, but if history is any indication, many of them will never be seen again.

CES is over. We’ve spent plenty of time over the last few days enumerating all the winners of this tech spectacle, but what comes next? Are the brightest stars of CES destined for retail greatness as consumers snap up the most eagerly anticipated gadgets when they hit stores?

Well, if history is any guide, no. Making a splash at CES doesn’t guarantee success – or even mean products hit the market. With this year’s show behind us, let’s look back at some major products from past CES show that aimed to change the world … and failed.

Windows slates

In a keynote at the 2010 CES, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer once again tried to usher in the era of tablet computing, touting “slate”-style tablets running Windows 7 during his highly visible keynote address. Ballmer demonstrated three touch-oriented slate products during the keynote, including a famously fumbling effort to touch and tap his way through Windows 7 on an HP Slate.

Where are they now?

Windows slates were quickly eclipsed by the Apple iPad (announced a few weeks later). HP did eventually release its Windows 7 slate in late 2010 - with an $800 price tag and an enterprise-only focus. Microsoft is making another go at Windows tablets with Windows 8, but despite repeated chest-thumping from Microsoft, as a rule Windows 7 tablets went nowhere with consumers.

Palm Pre and webOS

Skip back to CES 2009, and a darling of the show was a resurgent Palm and its new Palm Pre running a brand-new mobile operating system: webOS. The mobile industry was still looking for it’s “iPhone killer,” and at CES 2009 all eyes were on Palm. After the misstep of the Palm Foleo, the company seemed to have everything going for it: a Web-savvy mobile operating system in webOS, a slick touch-oriented smartphone (with a business-friendly QWERTY keypad to boot) in the Palm Pre, oh-so-cool wireless charging, and (by the time the Palm Pre launched) a CEO who had helped engineer the iPod revolution.

Where are they now?

Palm tried to make a legitimate run at the smartphone market, but the Palm Pre simply didn’t sell. By mid-2010, the company had been acquired by HP. HP had grand plans for Palm, its intellectual property, and particularly webOS, which it planned to put into everything from smartphones to printers and even a touch-oriented tablet (which the company killed after only a few weeks on the market). HP did release webOS to the open-source community, and it’s showing a bit of momentum, but Palm (and HP) smartphones are now historical footnotes.

3D TV

Remember Avatar? How it was supposed to herald a revolution in 3D filmmaking and create mammoth demand from consumers wanting bring 3D HDTVs into their living rooms?  Manufacturers beat this drum hard at CES 2010, flogged the dead horse at CES 2011, and drove it into the ground at CES 2012. Movie studios and consumers electronics manufacturers desperately wanted consumers to embrace 3D, particularly as the price (and profit margins) on plain-old HDTV systems dropped through the floor.

Where are they now?

While sales of 3D-capable televisions have gradually picked up worldwide, the NPD Group found they declined in North America during 2011. Furthermore, content providers have scaled back 3D offerings, and while Hollywood still seems to think 3D is the next big thin, some major filmmakers simply disagree. The bottom line for consumers is that they consider 3D to be a gimmick: Some are happy to try, or buy it if it doesn’t cost much extra, but it’s not a must-have feature and most won’t embrace 3D full-time. After all, 3D glasses make it hard to tweet on your phone, or cruise Facebook with your iPad. Plus, if you’re among the as many people (anywhere from 5 to 30 percent of the population, depending who you ask) for whom 3D technology simply doesn’t work or induces headaches or nausea … it’s just a non-starter.

E-readers

Amazon wasn’t the first to the market (that would have been, uh, Sony back in 2006), but the Kindle ignited a flurry of would-be competitors, starting as soon as 2008 but blossoming in 2009 and 2010. Remember the eSlick? Maybe the Skiff? The enTourage eDGe? Plastic Logic’s Que proReader? The Copia Ocean and Tidal? No? Surely you recall the iRiver story, Bookeen Cybook, and e-readers from Samsung and even RCA? How about the dual-screen Spring Design Alex and the folio-like Kno aimed at students?

Where are they now?

The e-reader market isn’t dead. Amazon says Kindle e-readers are still two of its the top four best-selling charts this year, and Barnes & Noble is still making a run with its Nook line (although it just revealed Nook sales dropped 3.1 percent in 2012 compared to 2011). However, most e-reader products that tried to capitalize on the Kindle boom have fallen by the wayside, and the entire category is being increasingly capitalized by media tablets (like the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablets) along with full-featured tablets like the iPad and iPad mini. In a few years, E-Ink readers may be little more than a niche product.

Netbooks

Another favorite of CES 2009? Netbooks. The basic idea was to pack a low-powered Windows XP PC into a package as small and cheap as possible and call it a revolution in mobile computing. Microsoft helped spur the category on with Windows 7 (which could run more acceptably than Vista on under-powered machines), and for a while it looked like the category might reverse the fortunes of the PC market: Asus and (particularly) Acer bet heavily on mass-producing inexpensive netbooks and saw direct benefits to their bottom lines.

Where are they now?

Netbooks are no more. They’ve been usurped by tablets (or, more properly, the iPad) and higher-priced ultraportable PCs like Apple’s MacBook Air and its competitors. It turns out that most cost-sensitive consumers who were willing to put up with tiny screens and cramped keyboards on netbooks were quite eager to jump ship to tablets like the iPad, which were more capable and in the same price range. Folks who couldn’t put up with tiny screen and cramped keyboards but who wanted a proper computing experience gravitated toward ultraportables. As of 2012, the netbook market was dead: Dell, Lenovo, and Toshiba bowed out a long time ago, and stalwarts Asus and Acer pulled the plug on their netbooks a few months ago. Almost nobody misses them.

HD Radio

Another CES darling over the last few years has been HD Radio. Developed by iBiquity, HD Radio is a digital radio technology that’s designed to offer better audio quality than traditional analog AM/FM, enable stations to broadcast digital data along with audio, and offer multiple digital programming choices alongside a standard analog broadcast signal. Would-be listeners have to buy new receivers to tune into HD Radio, and some HD Radio broadcasts are now available to the majority of the U.S. population.

Where are they now?

HD Radio is still around: Consumers can buy receivers and plenty of new automobiles offer HD Radio as optional or standard equipment, usually incorporated into onboard electronics systems. However, the technology has not seen widespread adoption for two reasons. First, unlike analog television, the FCC does not plan to shut down traditional AM and FM spectrum and require consumer switch to digital radio receivers. The result is that most radio stations continue to broadcast on AM and FM, same as they’ve always done. Second, consumers are more keen to hook up smartphones (or tablets) into their home or car-audio systems than they are to embrace a new radio technology: HD Radio can’t bring in their customized streams from services like Pandora, play audiobooks or podcasts, or tap into their media libraries. For better or for worse, consumers who are even aware of HD Radio treat it much like they treat AM and FM radio: a non-interactive, non-customizable, chunk of dashboard real estate they mostly ignore.

Beware the hype

CES is always a good source of entertainment and high-profile launches – along with some genuinely useful and even goofy products. And the technology and consumer electronics industries love to go to Vegas for a wing-ding. But it’s important to take any purportedly earth-shattering announcements from CES with a grain of salt. After all, companies have been shattering the world at CES for years … and the world is still here.