CES 2023 Day 2 recap: Sony, Google and a Ram 1500 concept
The annual tradition of ridiculously grand concept vehicles continues.
Well CES is officially underway. The floor is open and hordes of PR reps, journalists and eager entrepreneurs are coursing through the arteries of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Of course even before the LVCC opened its doors today there’s been plenty of news coming out of CES 2023.
Sony
Sony held its big press conference Wednesday night, covering everything from high-end cinema cameras and nano satellites, to video game movies and accessible controllers. The company’s Project Leonardo controller will offer a variety of customizable buttons and other hardware in a kit built for those with limited motor ability. Like Microsoft’s Xbox Adaptive controller, Project Leonardo reflects a growing trend in tech, especially in the gaming industry, to better serve those living with disabilities.
The Sony announcement that made the biggest splash though, might have been that the endlessly delayed Gran Turismo movie is coming out in 2023. Personally I’m not a big fan of the Gran Turismo series, or racing games in general, but even I got a bit excited watching the trailer. The camera work in the upcoming Neill Blomkamp film is shaping up to be pretty intense.
And in a weird bit of synergy, Sony also unveiled a car of its own, the newly christened “Afeela” concept which was born out of partnership with Honda. The first Sony Honda Mobility vehicle won’t be ready for the road until 2026 at least.
AMD
AMD also made a splash two CPUs and a GPU. The beefiest of the bunch is definitely the new Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU which packs an insane 144MB of cache using the company’s 3D V-Cache technology and reaches boost speeds of 5.7GHz. The other two AMD announcements focused on the mobile side, including the first RDNA 3 GPUs for laptops and a lineup of performance-focused Ryzen HX CPUs.
Razer
Another company focusing on raw power this CES was Razer which announced two new laptop models – the Blade 16 and Blade 18. They’re loaded to the brim with high-end components like Intel Core-i9 HX chips and NVIDIA’s top-of-the-line RTX 4090 graphics cards.
But personally I think the most interesting feature is the Blade 16’s dual mode screen that can run either 4K at 120Hz and peak brightness of 1,000 nits or full HD plus at 240Hz and 600 nits, depending on whether speed or resolution are more important at that particular moment.
Razer also finally gave us a release date for its Edge cloud gaming handheld which will land on January 26th.
Lenovo
The biggest dump of news, though, probably belongs to Lenovo. It announced two laptops, a giant tablet, an e-ink notepad and even a “Think” branded phone. The ThinkPhone finally brings some of Lenovo’s enterprise expertise to bear on Motorola mobile devices while the Smart Paper tablet syncs handwritten notes with audio recordings, so you can scrub through a lecture and immediately see the notes associated with that moment.
The most unique device, though, is the dual screen YogaBook 9i. Sure, we’ve seen plenty of concept dual-screen machines before, but the 9i isn’t a pipe dream, it’s an actual product that will go on sale later this year. Lenovo will even bundle all the accessories you need to make the most of its form factor, including a foldable stand, a stylus and a bluetooth keyboard.
You can simply use the foldable as is and pull up a virtual keyboard on the bottom screen, or you can attach the physical one to the screen and use the exposed bit of the display either as touchpad or to show widgets. But you could also set it up as basically a portable dual-screen workstation with the displays either side by side or stacked one over the other.
Switching to the world of automobiles, Google was finally ready to put its major overhaul of Android Auto on display and has started rolling it out to users. The new UI has a split screen mode and puts Maps in easier reach at all times.
And speaking of Maps, Google debuted a new HD version that will be coming to the Polestar 3. These higher-resolution maps will be useful for Pilot Assist, but might prove essential for future self-driving features. Unfortunately, no word on when or if the HD Maps will be coming to other vehicles.
Stellantis
Last, but not least, Stellantis revealed its Ram 1500 Revolution BEV Concept truck. In the grand tradition of truly outlandish concept vehicles showing up at CES the Revolution BEV has an augmented reality heads up display, a collapsable steering wheel, some sort of 3D animated avatar that the driver can interact with and will even follow you around like some sort of sad puppy dog if you want.
On the more practical side it also sports four wheel steering and an 800 volt architecture that would allow it to get up to 100 miles of charge in just 10 minutes. Of course, you’ll never actually be able to buy the Ram 1500 Revolution BEV Concept. But there is supposedly a Ram 1500 BEV coming in 2024 that will be loosely based on this.
And don’t worry, there’s still plenty more to come from CES – We’ve only just begun scouring the floor for hidden gems. So for all the details on anything you might have missed, check out our comprehensive coverage on Engadget.com or our YouTube channel. And stay tuned more from CES 2023.
