CES 2013: What to Expect from the Biggest Week in Tech

On Monday, January 7th, IGN will be shipping out to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas for a week of on-location coverage of new, never before seen hardware and gadgets from the world's biggest brands, including Sony, Samsung, LG, HTC, and countless others. For the uninitiated, CES is the biggest technology eventof the year, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors with the rare opportunity to check out hundreds of new smartphones, tablets, gaming devices, HDTVs, and more before anyone else.

So, what can you expect this year from the tech industry equivalent of E3?

Major Press Conferences

On Monday, all of the key players will be holding press conferences throughout the day, including Samsung, LG, Sony, and countless others. IGN will be on-hand bringing you a live blog of Sony's press conference at 5pm pacific time, and delivering the biggest updates from other events throughout the day. To follow along, please bookmark and revisit our live blog.

State of the Art Gaming Hardware

CES may be synonymous with big-screen HDTVs and tablets, but it has a rich history of major gaming product launches, including the North American debut of the Nintendo Entertainment System, original Xbox, Razer's Switchblade and Project Fiona prototypes. This year, we expect to see a vast array of exciting new gaming hardware and software. While we're unlikely to hear more about the next generation of consoles, Sony will have a huge presence at the show, showing off their latest and greatest for the PlayStation 3, PS Vita, and PlayStation Mobile.

Gaming hardware maker Razer has teased big announcements for the show — could we see the rebirth of their Project Fiona gaming tablet concept? Or, perhaps, a new incarnation of its Switchblade gaming handheld prototype? We'll have to wait and see.

But then there are the hidden gems, like this $6,000 gaming station:

Supercharged Smartphones and Tablets

While Apple and Google generally save their announcements for later in the year, CES has become the launching point for many of the year's biggest smartphones and tablets. With the battle for market share heating up, we will see an array of Windows Phone and Android devices packing the newest, most powerful mobile processors, high resolution displays, and ultra-thin designs. Speaking of power, Nvidia has a press conference scheduled for Sunday night — will we see the successor to the Tegra 3? Stay tuned to IGN.com/CES to find out.

4K, OLED, and Bendable Displays

Despite the increased emphasis on small screens, CES is still very much a show about massive, expensive HDTVs packing the latest display technologies. This year is going to be all about 4K — or Ultra HD as it has now come to be known — which boasts four times as many pixels as the current high-definition standard, 1080p. LG, Samsung, Panasonic, and Sony are all expected to show off their 3840 × 2160 displays. While films and television shot in native 4K or Ultra HS are currently few and far between, you can bet that it's going to be an increasingly common occurrence in 2013.

We'll also witness the resurgence of commercially available OLED (organic light-emitting diode) displays. Sony introduced the first and only OLED HDTV to reach North American retailers, the 11-inch XEL-1, in 2008 with an MSRP of $2,499. Now, five years later, OLED TVs are making a comeback with large models from Samsung, LG, and others. But with LG's first retail model already retailing for over $10,000 in Korea — will anyone be able to afford one?

CES will also give us a glimpse of the future, like prototypes of bendable smartphone displays from Samsung and others. Are real-life Pip-Boys be just around the corner?

Touchscreen PCs, Ultrabooks, and Convertibles

With the release of Windows 8 last year, 2013 is certain to be chock full of thinner, faster ultrabooks, Windows 8 tablets, and laptop-tablet convertibles. Last year we saw the introduction of Vizio's new computer category, including iMac- and MacBook-like Windows PCs, as well as awesome transforming products like Lenovo's IdeaPad Yoga. This year will likely yield improved performance, better displays, and even more compact form factors.

This is just a small peek at what to expect from CES, for all the latest from the show, keep it locked to IGN.com/CES and follow the editors on the ground on Twitter: @ScottLowe, @RichIGN, @ErrorJustin, and @ChrisCarle. And, for all things tech, follow @IGNTech.

Source : ign[dot]com