—Parker Hall
Reachy the Robot
He reaches. He grabs. He plays tic-tac-toe.
—Lauren Goode
A Cheaper Foldable Phone, Maybe
Foldable phones, like 5G phones, are very expensive at the moment. The Samsung Galaxy Fold, for example, costs almost $2,000. As all tech, these phones will get cheaper over time, and TCL thinks it can make and sell one for around half the price of Samsung’s before 2020 ends; that would make it cheaper than Motorola’s $1,500 folding Razr.
The phone, pictured above is a concept. It looks like a miniature book, but unfortunately there’s no screen on the exterior (just a neat crystal shard-like pattern), so you would have to open it up every time you want to use it. Like Motorola’s upcoming Razr, TCL’s phone doesn’t have a gap when you fold it up, so the screens sit flush against each other.
—Julian Chokkattu
Kindle + Laptop
Lenovo’s getting weird at CES this year, and we’re here for it. In addition to its new foldable ThinkPad, the PC maker is showing off a laptop with an E Ink top cover. Yup, you read that correctly.
The ThinkBook Plus has an 11-inch monochromatic E Ink touchscreen (like a Kindle) on the outside of it—the part of the laptop where you’d typically see a backlight logo or choose to display a garish assemblage of stickers. You can catch a glimpse of your upcoming calendar appointments while running from meeting to meeting, scribble something on the top of your laptop with a stylus, or even read a Kindle book when the laptop is closed on your lap. The rest of the ThinkBook is pretty standard. It’s made of anodized aluminum, has a matte finish, contains a 13-inch diagonal Full HD display, is powered by a 10th-generation Intel Core processor, and runs Windows 10 Pro out of the box. It will start at $1,199 when it ships this March, although the charging stand will cost extra (it ships later in the year).
