As the cornucopia of gadgets on display demonstrated, steady advances in key components such as flash memory, digital signal processors, charged coupled devices and liquid crystal displays have made the consumer electronics industry ripe for experimentation.

Some devices showed gradual improvements over existing technologies, such as digital cameras with finer picture quality, or ultra-small MP3 players or PDAs crammed with more gee-whiz features. The few off-the-wall products included a sewing machine from Brother that can download patterns from a PC and stitch a shirt logo automatically.

In terms of sheer quantity, it was the digital cameras that stole the show. Some emphasized lighter, smaller form factors, while others pushed the envelope with sharper pictures or other features such as zoom lenses.

Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd. showed its FinePix 1700Z camera, which is said achieves a new milestone in compactness and functionality. Measuring 79 x 97.5 x 33.4 mm, and weighing 270 grams, the camera sports a 2-inch TFT LCD, a 1.5-million pixel CCD and a SmartMedia flash card slot. The camera can link to a PC or directly to a TV via an RS-232C/RS-422 connector.

Pushing the envelope for photo-quality digital images, Ricoh showed off its latest RDC-5000 digital camera, which can achieve a resolution of 200 lines per millimeter by combining a 2.3-million square pixel CCD and an aspherical 2.3x optical lens, the company said. Other features include a SmartMedia card port and a 1.8-inch TFT LCD.

Along with smaller sizes and better picture quality, optical zoom is another feature that's being added to cameras. Casio, for instance, announced a 1.3-million pixel camera with an 8x zoom lens and 32x optical zoom. The QV-8000SX also features an x-y axis pivoting lens, a 2.5-inch LCD, a remote control unit and a USB port for connection to a PC.

Sharp, meanwhile, demonstrated a hybrid digital camera with video recording capability. Positioned as a PC appendage, the VN-EZ1 takes still and MPEG-4 video that can be downloaded and played back on a PC's Windows Media Player. The camera, which measures 78.8 x 88 x 42-mm and weighs 240 grams, uses the SmartMedia flash card format.

Solid-state audio players have also started to trickle in, though most major Japanese consumer electronics companies are not expected to enter en masse until the end of the year or early next year. Even so, some smaller vendors are rushing into the market. I/O Data Device Inc., for one, showed off its tiny Hyper Hyde player that has a form factor of 47.2 x 53.5 x 16.6-mm, which is small enough to fit into any shirt pocket with room to spare for the MultiMediaCard flash storage cards.

In some cases, vendors are cramming many or all of these functions into one handheld device. Taking the all-in-one approach to the max, Casio showed off its newest Windows CE Cassiopeia E-500 series palm-size PC, which includes a 350,000-pixel CCD camera that plugs into a CompactFlash Type II slot; a wireless phone connection for sending e-mail; a proprietary Hyper Amorphous Silicon TFT for displaying still pictures and video formats such as QuickTime, AVI and MPEG-1 movie-playback; and an MP3 player.

Sharp, meanwhile, showcased its latest Zaurus handheld device that includes a plug-in 850,000-pixel CCD camera, wireless e-mail functionality and an Internet browser.