July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The sad but undeniable reality about smartphone displays is that they shatter — and often.

Manufacturers, however, may have a fix: Sapphire, the second-strongest material on earth, which could be used to up the protection factor in smartphones, MIT Technology Review reports.

That’s not glass that’s covering the iPhone’s camera.

The idea isn’t entirely new. Apple already uses sapphire to protect the lens on the iPhone 5, and absurd luxury smartphone maker Vertu uses the material to protect the display on its latest device. (Sapphire is also a really common material in high-end watches and grocery store barcode scanners.)

The problem? This stuff ain’t cheap. As Technology Review points out, a sapphire display currently runs for $30 — roughly ten times the price of a Gorilla Glass display. This means its going to be a tough for the material to be used widely in smartphones until it gets a bit cheaper.

There are options, though. Rather than create a display entirely out of sapphire, manufacturers could place a thin layer of the material on top of another transparent material, reducing price. The drawback there, though, is that while a thin layer of sapphire will protect devices from surface scratches, it would have a tough time keeping your phone display intact if you dropped it. Just like with Gorilla Glass today.

While the future of sapphire is smartphone is still largely uncertain, I do know this: Lots of smartphone owners would be glad to pay a premium for their phones that don’t explode on impact. Let’s make it happen, guys.

Photo: Flickr/gemteck1

Hey look! It’s a Photoshopped image with a gorilla.

That’s Corning’s way of showing off its latest scratch- and breakage-resistant glass, Gorilla Glass 3.

It’s three times tougher than the previous material, Gorilla Glass 2, according to a Corning exec interviewed by PC World. It should show 40 percent fewer visible scratches. And even if it does get deeply scratched, it’s far less likely to shatter.

Interestingly, Gorilla Glass can also now be molded onto curved surfaces, so if a manufacturer wanted to extend its device’s display out around the curved edges of the bezel, it can do so, in theory at least.

Gorilla Glass is a chemically-strengthened glass, with a surface toughened through an “ion exchange” process originally developed in Corning’s laboratories in the 1960s. The invention lay dormant for decades until Apple CEO Steve Jobs helped revive it, when he was on the hunt for a scratch-resistant surface to cover the iPhone. The stuff, which is made in Kentucky as well as in Taiwan and Japan, has become phenomenally successful, and is included in more than one billion devices worldwide.

And, yes, I feel for the Corning marketers who had to figure out how to illustrate something transparent whose special property is that it doesn’t show marks. Gorillas are awesome.

Fortunately for the rest of the smartphone-owning population, Corning is working hard to make that experience the exception rather than the rule.

In its latest earnings report, the glassmaker announced that its scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass is now available in over a billion devices worldwide. While that number doesn’t include the Nexus S, it does include countless devices from essentially every major consumer electronics brand.

Corning launched Gorilla Glass alongside the first iPhone in 2006 and has since then marketed the technology as the perfect solution for scratch-prone mobile devices. Earlier this year, Corning announced Gorilla Glass 2, which is 20 percent thinner than the original while still preserving the same strength and scratch resistance.

But while the Gorilla Glass numbers continue to climb, Corning’s larger financials are slightly less promising. Its sales have slipped 2 percent since last year, and it may execute “modest headcount reductions” (aka layoffs) to cut costs.

Corning says its next big development will be Willow Glass, a flexible glass that the company says will be a significant part of the next generation of mobile devices.

Photo: Flickr/ Just Chaos

Now that we’ve returned from Vegas, pounded enough Emergen-C cocktails to get us back into a semblance of health, and compared notes, we’ve settled on this list of the show’s top products.

Read on to see the most promising hardware that will be hitting store shelves in the coming months.

10. Samsung Galaxy Note

Samsung Galaxy Note

Less a technological breakthrough than a form-factor experiment, the Galaxy Note is notable primarily because, well, it actually works.

Up to now, phone and tablet manufacturers have been careful to separate their lines: Phones have 4-inch screens or smaller, while tablets have 7-inch screens or larger. The embarrassing failure of Dell’s 5-inch Streak confirmed the wisdom of that approach.

But in truth, there’s little difference between a tablet and a smartphone, other than size, and for those of us who habitually use 3×5 cards or similar-sized pocket notebooks, a 5-inch diagonal screen is actually just about perfect for holding in one hand while jotting notes with the other. By adding a stylus and some note-taking and handwriting recognition software to the Android OS, that’s exactly the use that Samsung has in mind for the Galaxy Note.

And yes, it’s too big for a pants pocket. It might be more attractive to female customers, who can stash it in a purse, or to more stylishly dressed men, who could put it in a jacket pocket. We spent some time with the Note on the CES show floor and came away favorably impressed.

One downside: It’s running a sadly outdated version of Android (2.3, aka Gingerbread).

It will be coming to AT&T Wireless later this year, and should be a strong contender of AT&T and Samsung give it a decent price and find the right audience for their marketing message, which is basically that writing and drawing are still fun. –Dylan Tweney

9. Gear4 Sleep Clock

Gear4 Sleep Clock

If you sometimes wake up feeling drained, the Gear4 Sleep Clock may help you. The clock uses an iPhone app, a dock and Doppler radar to sense your sleep pattern and wake you up at the lightest point in your sleep cycle.

The radar senses your movements and determines exactly when you fall asleep. It also senses if you wake up during the night and detects your breathing so that it can figure out if you are in a deep sleep or not. When you wake up the next day, you can see the results on your iPhone app. It will tell you exactly how many hours and minutes you slept. And it will say how long it took to fall asleep and how many times you woke up. After you use it for a while, it will come up with averages and recommendations so you can get better sleep. You don’t have to wear anything on your wrist, as you do with rival solutions from Basis Science or Jawbone. The Gear4 device will go on sale soon for $199. –Dean Takahashi

8. HP Envy 14 Spectre Ultrabook

HP Envy 14

The distinctive feature of this Ultrabook is its cover. It is made out of black Gorilla Glass, a damage-resistant glass from Corning that is normally used for screens. It certainly makes this laptop design stand out amid a sea of Ultrabooks at CES. The machine carries the Envy brand established by Voodoo PC, which HP acquired. It has a high-definition HP Radiance display (1600 x 900) with 300 Nits of brightness. It has nine hours of battery life and a row of connection slots. It also has an HD webcam and HP’s Beats Audio technology. The Spectre also has an analogy roller control for changing the sound volume and it has a mute button on the side for when you have to stop the music fast. It comes with 128 gigabytes of flash memory and Intel’s Rapid Start technology. The height is 20 millimeters and it weighs 3.79 pounds. It will cost $1,399 and will start selling on Feb. 8. –Dean Takahashi

7. OLPC XO 3.0 tablet

OLPC XO 3.0

This tablet has been in the works for a long time and its true cost remains to be seen. But One Laptop per Child has done a good job of researching what children in developing countries need and then tailoring it for them. It’s not just an iPad with a different label slapped on it. It has a dust and waterproof cover. It has its own Linux operating system (and it can also run Android) and its Sugar user interface has been adapted for touchscreen use. You can charge it with a wall outlet, a solar panel, or a hand crank. And the screws for the cover line up as power pins when you are getting power from the solar panel. And it has an eight-inch display that works inside or outside in bright sunlight. That’s a lot of innovation in a small tablet whose target cost is around the $100 mark. Overall, the OLPC XO 3.0 has an appealing design that promises to reach a wider market than previous OLPC XO laptops. –Dean Takahashi

Click here to see products 6 through 4.

Pages: 1 2 3

The cover of the sleek laptop, known as an Ultrabook for its thinness and responsiveness, is made out of Corning’s Gorilla Glass, a damage resistant glass that can be used to protect the screens of smartphones, tablets, PCs and TVs. But the laptop isn’t convertible into a tablet computer. You open it up and it looks like any other cool and thin Ultrabook. The laptop carries the Envy brand, created by HP’s (now-defunct) Voodoo PC division, to catch the enthusiasm of hardcore users.

“We think this has shock appeal and everything that an Envy user wants,” said Page Murray, vice president of marketing in HP’s personal systems group. “It has fantastic no-compromise performance.”

The laptop is so cool that it will be highlighted at a couple of keynote speeches at the Consumer Electronics Show — Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s opening keynote on Monday night and another keynote by Intel CEO Paul Otellini on Tuesday.

The high-definition HP Radiance (1600 x 900) display has an intensity of 300 Nits, a measure of brightness, which makes it about 50 percent brighter than similar screens. It also has nine hours of battery life and a row of slots for connecting various devices (HDMI, Ethernet, USB 3.0, mini DisplayPort, and headphones). It has an HD webcam and HP’s signature Beats Audio technology. On the side, it has a roller that can be used as an analog control for changing the sound volume. It also has a mute button on the side for when you need to stop the music fast.

The screen has a wide viewing angle. And the screen’s not the only part of the device protected by Gorilla Glass — there are a couple of slabs of glass on the palm rest of the computer. The keyboard is raised slightly so that you can really feel the keys when you type. And each key has an individual light-emitting diode (LED) light. The touchpad has pinch and zoom or rotate functions. The glass looks cool and will appeal to fashionistas, but you’ll have to keep wiping your fingerprints off the cover to keep that cool look.

The machine comes with 128 gigabytes of flash memory and Intel’s Rapid Start technology. That means you can tap the screen and turn on the machine instantly, without having to wait for a hard drive to spin up. HP has an 800 number for concierge-style support service. It also comes with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Elements, and two years of Norton Antivirus protection. It uses Intel’s Core i5 or Core i7 microprocessors and will ship on Feb. 8 for $1,399 in the U.S. You can double the flash memory to 256 gigabytes as an option. It comes with four gigabytes of main memory, expandable to 8 gigabytes, and it has built-in WiFi.

That’s a high-end Ultrabook, as many others will be cheaper. But it’s not as expensive as other laptops on the market. The height is 20 millimeters and it weighs 3.79 pounds. It has HP’s CoolSense technology, which slows the processor down and keeps the machine from getting too hot if you are using it on your lap.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Corning, the manufacturer of ultra-tough glass for consumer electronics, will introduce the next generation of Gorilla Glass at the Consumer Electronics Show next week.

The first generation of Gorilla Glass is already featured on popular devices like the iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire and Android phones from Motorola and HTC, so a new form of this scratch-resistant and hard-to-break glass could be a big win for smartphones, tablets, TVs and more.

The company hasn’t yet announced how much stronger Gorilla Glass 2 is than its predecessor, but Corning will reveal more details next week on the CES floor. The company has said it will take its product a step further with new implementations, including large HDTVs. At CES, Corning will show off Gorilla Glass on an 82-inch advanced multitouch LCD display, automobile interiors, home appliances and a massive video wall.

“Handset and tablet device manufacturers are clearly driving toward higher functionality from thinner designs,” said Corning senior VP James Steiner in a statement. ”Corning’s latest innovation in Gorilla Glass technology is very well positioned to meet these challenges and enable broader touch technology penetration.”

Corning has been around in some form since 1851 and focuses on specialty glass and ceramics. It manufactures Gorilla Glass in the U.S. and Japan.