Consumer electronics used to mean TV sets, VCRs and DVD players, audio systems, cameras, and home computers. Today, mobile products aren’t just part of the consumer electronics space, they’ve taken the spotlight. That was certainly true at the Consumer Electronics Association’s 2012 International CES in Las Vegas last week, which was awash with mobile products like smart phones, tablets, and laptops.

It was an enormous show. Attendance topped 153,000, which was considerably more than expected. Add to that 3100 or so exhibitors showing more than 20,000 new products in 1.851 million square feet (42 acres) of space, and you have an event that defies comprehensive reporting. At best I got a very short look at multiple things, but some products broke out from the pack.

The Hot Mobile Market

All of the major cell phone vendors were there, including Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola, and Nokia. There are too many new models to enumerate, but a few stand out. I love the Nokia Lumina 710 available from T-Mobile and the forthcoming Nokia Lumina 900 to be available from AT&T. Another real standout was the Samsung Galaxy Note smart phone with a 5.3-in. (diagonal) screen. It’s really a mini-tablet but still a phone. For more, see the video at www.engineeringtv.com/video/The-Galaxy-Note-from-Samsung;Only-Engineering-TV-Videos.

New tablets were everywhere too—dozens of them, mostly from companies you’ve never heard of, like ViewSonic and Coby. Apple was not there. These tablets all look alike and have nearly identical features. There does not seem to be a way to differentiate between them. Nevertheless, it was the “hot” category this year. Amazon’s Kindle Fire is still the main force to be reckoned with.

Another hot category is ultrabooks, which are thinner and lighter than laptops but offer a solid-state drive (SSD) rather than a conventional magnetic hard drive. All of the new ultrabooks are emulating the Apple AirBook and doing a fine job. Asus, Lenovo, and other companies had new models. Ultrabooks are keeping the laptop format alive and well, despite the growing tablet trend.

Inside The End Products

Murata demonstrated its new capacitive charging technology. All current wireless charging products use transformer induction for charging. The Murata product uses capacitive coupling of a 200 kHz signal that is rectified and conditioned to provide dc charging for cell phones and other products. This arrangement is not as critical as inductive methods of alignment of charger and product. For more, see the video at www.engineeringtv.com/video/Capacitive-Charging-from-Murata;Only-Engineering-TV-Videos.

Fresco Microchip showed its FM5150A TV tuner, which works with any analog or digital TV standard and covers the 42- to 865-MHz range (Fig. 1). Its IF output connects to any baseband demodulator and eliminates some of the circuitry normally required in a TV product. Could this tuner herald over-the-air (OTA) TV for tablets?

SkyCross announced a variable aperture antenna for cell phones and tablets. This tunable antenna mysteriously varies the antenna length so it operates over a wide range of frequencies and can compensate for the detuning that is common in cell-phone use. How does it do that? See the video at www.engineeringtv.com/video/VersiTune-LTE-antenna-module-fo;CES-2012.

Siano, the Israeli TV tuner chip vendor, showed a chip that will soon find its way into ASTC-M/H U.S. OTA TV products like cell phones and tablets. Samsung also announced a forthcoming OTA chip that will show up on handsets and some tablets later this year.

WiSpry introduced its WS2017 digitally tunable RF microelectromechanical-systems (MEMS) capacitor array, which can provide wide tuning range and compensation for detuning in cell phones and other impedance matching needs. According to the company, the WS2017 now lies at the core of the first mass-produced RF-MEMS-enabled handset (see “Antenna Tuner Drives RF-MEMS Handset”).

Toshiba announced and demonstrated its wireless TransferJet technology (Fig. 2). This new wireless technique is designed for short-range but very fast data transfers for photo and media sharing and HD video streaming between cell phones and PCs. It uses the 4.48-GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) frequency to deliver net data rates to 375 Mbits/s up to several centimeters. Inside a cell phone, it offers a way to transfer photos and videos in a flash by tapping a companion unit with TransferJet. It’s near-field communications (NFC) on steroids.

Atmel showed its latest touchscreen controller chips, which are a real leap forward in a world where most screens ultimately will use touch technology. And finally, Texas Instruments introduced its OMAP5 with upgraded embedded ARM Cortex A15 processors for use in smart phones, tablets, and other mobile devices.

Now That It’s Over…

In a panel on smart phones, Kevin Sinclair, CEO of the Wireless Zone, said that the shelf life of any new smart phone today is about 90 days. In other words, in 90 days, there will be a newer and better model available. So, next year’s CES will look radically different.

You have to see the International CES for yourself to appreciate it. It’s mostly hype and glitz, but it does bring forth new products you could see immediately and many that won’t be available for months yet. I didn’t see anything that was revolutionary, but most of the new products are incrementally better than yesterday’s.