News & Analysis
Top 10 smartphone gadgets & apps
Junko Yoshida
12/10/2012 12:15 PM EST
NEW YORK – Smartphones are turning the CE industry upside down.
Back at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, 2012, I wrote: "Brace yourself for the dawn of a new consumer electronics era, one in which TV no longer defines itself. Evident in this year’s Consumer Electronics Show was the notion that mobile devices are beginning to redefine what TV must do next – in terms of apps, services and connectivity that hardware will need to accommodate."
That trend has now spread to everything from TV, cameras and car entertainment systems to headsets, set-tops and lighting systems to personal health devices. It is morphing the consumer-electronics industry into something we’ve never seen before. Developing an easy-to-use mobile app to control your new CE device is already a given.
There’s no need to duplicate what a smartphone already does in a new CE device under development. In some cases, there’s no need to develop hardware at all. A smartphone already exists as a hardware platform, on which you can design -- in software -- whatever functions you want it to perform.
What follows are 10 new gadgets, developed with the same design objective: They are meant to function side-by-side with a smartphone.
Smart glasses: Over-the-eye display for your mobile phone
Text, video, audio and all consumers have come to expect from smartphones and the Internet can be displayed on Vuzix’ new smart glasses
Vuzix offers smart glasses M100, billed as “the world's first enhanced ‘hands-free’ smartphone display and communications system." The monocle contains a virtual display with an integrated camera and a processing engine that runs on Android OS. It wirelessly connects via Bluetooth or WiFi to a user’s smartphone (iOS or Android).
The M100, while designed to work in harmony with a smartphone, is powerful enough to connect to the Internet, run applications and games on its own.
Beyond letting a user answer the phone, the M100 enables text messages, email and visual navigation, while allowing video recording and running other basic augmented-reality applications.
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junko.yoshida
12/11/2012 6:51 AM EST
I see a wave of new-generation CE vendors flooding the market by developing products that truly leverage smartphones consumers already have. Connectivity to mobile phones is no longer an afterthought for these companies.
Share your favorites -- gadgets and apps built for smartphones -- that are not listed here!
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Don Scansen
12/11/2012 12:26 PM EST
A nice list...and just in time for Christmas!
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pburger3
12/11/2012 2:05 PM EST
Whose editing on the baby monitor included "when the brat starts crying." Is this a Belkin quote?
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GPBobby
12/12/2012 7:29 AM EST
...sounds like one of those 'mic off' comments to me.
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Batman
12/12/2012 1:27 PM EST
I own a Roku HD and last week I installed their remote control app on my Razr M phone. It found the Roku on my Wi-Fi home network immediately and it works amazingly well indeed. There is no perceivable lag between touches on the screen and corresponding action on the TV screen.
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GREAT-Terry
12/13/2012 9:54 AM EST
Good list! I like the Parrot headphone.
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selinz
12/13/2012 12:57 PM EST
It's true that smartphones are becoming the center of our personal universe. I dropped off my son for an interview and he had a couple hours to kill. I suggested that he bring is relatively new laptop. "No, I can do anything I want to do with my phone." Because of the screen resolution packed into smartphones, the only headset that is really needed for me is a set of reading glasses!
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MClayton
12/14/2012 1:12 PM EST
Agree with Selinz: At age 76 I cannot easily read the my smartphone "stuff" unless I ban the banners and most web pages and stick to making phone calls and reading email without attachments. I can use 10 percent of smartphone features perhaps, and its much slower than answering my old phone so far, and bulkier. But that's a senior view. Grandkids love it, so no more PC's for them. Just games.
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Sparky_Watt
12/31/2012 1:28 PM EST
The main problem with these burgeoning apps is finding them. Search engines haven't kept up with the huge amount of data out there. Digging through 1500 apps in hopes of finding one that meets my needs is not an option. Especially when 90% of what comes up is useless or off-topic. A lot of them are malware, too. They report things about you and your phone without telling you. When you can search "certified safe" apps accurately by topic (i.e. a search for "weather" doesn't turn up "pretty girl" apps), these apps will have arrived.
The potential is great! Too bad that there is so much clogging the works.
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