OnePlus weighs in on smartphone strategy and the value of trust

OnePlus released two great smartphones in 2017, but the smartphone startup is facing more and better competition than ever before. That’s great for you and me, but much trickier for a startup still trying to carve out a notable niche for itself. What’s a small company to do?

In this case, OnePlus’ answer is to keep making the best products it can and avoid looking at competitors simply as rivals to be crushed over time. Kyle Kiang, head of global marketing for OnePlus, joined us on our CES stage to discuss the team’s strategy for building a successful mobile brand and the difficulties of developing a foundation of trust in through hardware.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

The challenge of showcasing weed tech at CES

There was, as expected, a thin scent of weed in Roger Volodarsky’s 28th-floor Mirage hotel suite as the Puffco CEO and founder demonstrated his latest product.

It was 11:30 PM the night before CES opened, and seven attendees gathered in the living room overlooking the Vegas strip. A welcoming, tattooed man with a groomed beard and shaved head, Volodarsky was showing off the Puffco Peak, a smart dabbing rig for consuming cannabis concentrates that he’d presented at the Pepcom media event just hours earlier. Away from the mainstream events around CES, he could show how it truly works.

After all, this is the first CES since marijuana was legalized in the state of Nevada last year, and it’s available for purchase all over Las Vegas. The irony is that in Sin City, you are prohibited from consuming cannabis products anywhere but in a private residence, including hotels, parks and even dispensaries.

In practice, vaporized cannabis and edibles are easy to find and easier to consume with little residual smell (there was no hint of weed vapor in the Mirage’s hallway on Monday). But technically, a combination of state law and hotel policy means that Vegas’ visitors — of which there were 42.2 million in 2017 — lack almost anywhere to take advantage of legal cannabis.

It also means that the few cannabusinesses at this year’s CES are also hamstrung in their ability to demonstrate their products, even as there’s a gold rush of demand that led to cannabis startups receiving more than $600 million in equity funding last year. Hence Puffco’s after-hours session at the Mirage.

“We think that if you want to make an omelet you’ve got to crack a few eggs, and so that’s why we did this in here,” said the Brooklyn-based Volodarsky, on using his suite for demos. “For us it’s just the risk we take, and if they want to kick us out for it I’m OK with that.”

In contrast, Vapium, another vape company, presented at CES with a different angle: as a strictly medical company. Located in CES’ smart home section around companies hawking gas sensors and smart pet doors, its booth was a clean green and white with representatives wearing white lab coats.

Under the brand Vapium Medical, the company launched a smart vape that tells you precisely how much THC or CBD you consume with every inhalation. It achieves this by cross-referencing the airflow through the vape and the exact strain and strength of the cannabis capsules inside it. Pinpointing effective dosages of medical cannabis can allow doctors to prescribe it more accurately and monitor a patient’s use, all while creating a database about how certain strains and quantities of marijuana use affect certain medical conditions.

“Even for doctors who are convinced that cannabis is effective, there’s not really good dosing guidelines,” said Barry Fogarty, Vapium Medical’s COO. “Because it’s been a prohibited substance in most places, there hasn’t been the research that there needs to be, and so that’s exactly what we’re trying to plug into.”

Due to release in the second half of 2018, Vapium Medical is presenting the prototype purely as a medical device. “We’ll only sell products in those states where medical cannabis is legal,” said Fogarty.

There would not be any demos at the trade show either. “Especially as a medical company, we will adhere to all of the bylaws,” said CMO Lisa Harun.

For Puffco, the decision to come to Vegas was only made four days in advance.

“We thought, why not show this off at CES? It seems like a place where maybe new eyes that have a respect for great design and strides in industry, maybe they’ll respect us there,” said Volodarsky. “It’s easy to be a marketing company in cannabis. It’s much more difficult to be an innovator. And the risk is high just like in any other side of consumer electronics.”

That risk extends to its off-site presentation. “It is what it is,” said Volodarsky. “This is the unfortunate risk we take as leaders of the industry; it’s what we have to do.”

The showcase ended when Puffco’s spokesman got hungry (“He’s done a few demos,” Voladarsky said) and they headed out for pancakes. Before leaving, Volodarsky grabbed the rig for one more hit.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

Louis Vuitton is making a luggage tracker

A smartphone app and recent FCC filing strongly hints that Louis Vuitton has a new tech product on the way: A luggage tracker that pairs with particular bags sold by the fashion company. Sources tell Engadget that it will be the first such device to work internationally, but there has been no official confirmation yet.

According to a leaflet included in the documents filed to the FCC, the luggage tracker is called the Louis Vuitton Echo and will be built by French start-up Axible. It can operate for up to six months on a full battery and can be recharged via simple USB cable. Customers use the company’s LV Pass smartphone app to pair with the tracker, which slides into a dedicated pocket in Louis Vuitton luggage. The Echo automatically switches to Airplane Mode in flight; After landing, customers can check the app for their bag’s location and see if it was opened in the interim.

The tracker only works within certain major international airports covered by Sigfox’s mobile geolocation service; Judging by the company’s coverage map, that includes most of Northern and Western Europe, along with highly-populated cities in the US, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Iran, Oman, Taiwan, Japan, Australia and New Zealand (though it’s ‘rolling out’ across the rest of those countries). Anyone buying a Louis Vuitton Echo gets three years of Sigfox service included with purchase of the device. It’s unclear how much the Echo will cost (count on a stupidly high sum — it’s Louis Vuitton, after all), nor when the device will be released.

Source: FCC

LG puts Google Assistant in its own touchscreen-equipped speaker

Google Assistant’s fingerprints are all over the CES 2018 show floor, but it’s especially easy to see on a few new Android Things-powered devices. This LG ThinQ Google Assistant Touch Screen Speaker is one of them, and like Lenovo’s Smart Display, it’s built on a Qualcomm Home Hub Platform.

On the show floor, it smoothly scrolled through demo applications popping up info in ways we’re used to seeing on our phones or through Android Auto. So far all the demonstrations only include Google apps like Duo, Maps, Music, Photos and YouTube — currently MIA on Amazon’s Echo Show — so we’ll be watching carefully to see how the device’s capabilities expand as developers dig into Android Things, which leans on existing tools to create new apps for these devices.

According to Qualcomm, this more powerful version of its platform (SDA624) can drive a Full HD+ display, capture 4K video and support Tensor Flow for on-device machine learning. Also, like Lenovo’s speaker, this one has a physical switch to turn its camera off. WiFi and Bluetooth links are present behind its 8-inch touchscreen and like several other LG products on display, it has audio tweaking courtesy of Meridian Technology, but so far the company hasn’t confirmed any other details.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

Source: LG

Don’t call it a dildo: Kiiroo and OhMiBod on the future of sex toys

CES may have a complicated relationship with sex, but one company has made it its mission to destigmatize doing it at the world’s largest technology conference. For the past seven years, the family-run sex toy manufacturer OhMiBod has made the trek to Las Vegas in an attempt to gain mainstream distribution for its line of tech-savvy pleasure products.

This year, the company has partnered with one of the leaders in interactive sex toys, Kiiroo, to create an internet-connected vibrator that can communicate with the Fleshlight-branded Launch male masturbator. OhMiBod’s Fuse claims to be the first of its kind to offer bi-directional control — basically, allowing either the stroker or the vibrator to send sensations to the other device from long distances. Both devices also promise to sync with VR and traditional porn and can be used by webcam models to give their clients an extra-sensory experience.

The Fuse can be purchased online for and you can see the devices for yourself at the Las Vegas Convention Center’s South hall through the remainder of CES. The Kiiroo Launch is now available for $220 and the OhMiBod Fuse can be had for $150.

I sat down with Kiiroo founder Toon Timmermans and OhMiBod’s Suki and Brian Dunham to talk about the future of long-distance love at CES 2018 and learned a lesson interactive sex toy branding. Whatever you do, don’t call it a dildo!

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

Artgasm turns the female orgasm into a literal work of art

The female orgasm can be elusive, but at CES 2018, sexual health startup Lioness managed to capture and immortalize them as works of art. It’s based on information gleaned from volunteers who have used its $229 bio-sensing vibrator that started shipping in August. The mini exhibit is here in Las Vegas to drum up awareness for both the Lioness brand and women’s sexual health issues, particularly how we orgasm. It was shown in a limited preview last year at the Mothership music festival, and Lioness hopes to eventually add more pieces and bring the exhibit to galleries all over the country.

The Lioness vibrator has force sensors on the dildo end, which detects pelvic floor (and wall) contractions. That’s one of the best ways to identify orgasms, according to Lioness founder Liz Klinger. There’s also a sensor that recognizes when a session starts by measuring body temperature, which tends to rise as people get aroused. Like most rabbit vibrators, the Lioness also has a clitoral vibrator in the middle, which pulses in three adjustable speeds. The device also houses an accelerometer and gyroscope to track its motion.

This data is usually displayed in the free Lioness app on a chart, showing waves cresting and falling as the pelvic floor moves. But for this exhibit, Klinger, who has a background in art and visualization, found a way to animate a climax. The three pieces here depict different women who orgasm in different ways — whether it’s someone who builds slowly and then has an intense release, or a person who climaxes quickly but not as deeply.

Each piece in Artgasm shows the pelvic floor contractions, represented by a circle in the middle that expands and contracts. The dots in the background represent the vibration intensity — the more dots there are the stronger the vibration, while the rings surrounding the inner circle show how the vibrator itself is moving. When the person is climaxing, the background flashes different colors.

It’s easy to dismiss Artgasm as crass or unnecessary, but the individual art pieces offer a way to at least attempt to talk about orgasms in a dignified, mature way. Many women struggle to talk about what they like in the bedroom, and some might not even have the vocabulary to express what exactly turns them on. Lioness plans to add the ability for its users to create their own orgasm artwork, so in a few months you may be able to see what it looks like when you orgasm, too. When you can see what’s causing a person to respond the way they do, you can better understand how to pleasure yourself or your partner. The world would be a much happier place if more of us knew how to orgasm more consistently.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

Facebook will focus on friends over publishers in the News Feed

Facebook just announced that it will make sweeping changes to the News Feed, the primary place where users find content on the social network. Over the next few months, users will see “more from your friends, family and groups” and ” less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media,” so says CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The company says that it has heard from users that the so-called “public content” is crowding out “personal moments” that the Facebook platform was built on.

Zuckerberg notes that “it’s easy to understand how we got here,” saying that there’s been an explosion of video and other types of public content that has “exploded” on Facebook in recent years. Because of that, he said that “the balance of what’s in News Feed has shifted away from the most important thing Facebook can do — help us connect with each other.” As such, it’s time to re-balance what people see when they visit the site.

In addition to focusing on interactions between friends rather than media or businesses, Facebook will prioritize posts that “spark conversations and meaningful interactions.” To achieve that, the company’s algorithms will try and predict posts that you’ll want to interact with your friends about and show them higher in the News Feed.

As a result, Facebook Pages used by businesses and media will be de-prioritized; the company freely admits that reach, video watch time and referral traffic will likely decrease. Somewhat ironically, though, Facebook notes that live video is a strong driver of engagement and discussion — six times greater than regular video. As such, those types of videos may still be popping in your feed, even from Pages.

Zuckerberg cited a recent study the company conducted about how using Facebook can correlate to your moods. Specifically, the study indicated that when using social media to make connections with people they care about, people come away feeling good about themselves. Conversely, passive reading of articles and watching videos can provide the opposite effect. Zuckerberg notes that’s the case even if the content in question is entertaining and informative.

Ultimately, Facebook seems to be moving back towards what made it such a success in the first place: person-to-person connections. Indeed, he’s even positioning a recalibration of Facebook as something of a legacy for him. Mike Issac at the New York Times reports that he’s been rethinking how he views and will run Facebook since having children, even if it’ll be detrimental to the company in the short term. “It’s important to me that when Max and August grow up that they feel like what their father built was good for the world,” Zuckerberg said to the NYT. The Facebook CEO promised last week that his goal for 2018 was to fix many of the problems the company has been dealing with in recent years, and it looks like he’s not wasting any time to get to work.

Source: Facebook

Netflix’s ‘Altered Carbon’ trailer shows a vast cyberpunk world

We’ve been looking forward to Netflix’s take on Blade Runner for a while now. Altered Carbon, based on the novel of the same name, even made an appearance at CES this year. Now there’s a brand-new trailer to get us all excited for the upcoming sci-fi series, full of body horror, murder and (apparently) some funny moments.

In the upcoming television show, a rich man 300 years in the future (played by Rome‘s James Purefoy) needs his own murder solved. So he resurrects and hires Takeshi Kovacs, a soldier killed in action 250 years previously, to investigate. The show looks impressively large, with stunning environments and sets. It’s a serious throwback to the cyberpunk vision of novels like William Gibson’s Neuromancer and, of course, Blade Runner, itself based on a Philip K. Dick novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Altered Carbon is set to debut on Netflix this Februrary 2nd.

Via: The Verge

Source: Netflix/YouTube

Presenting the Best of CES 2018 winners!

Finally, after long hours of debating about which of our finalists should win our Best of CES awards this year, we’ve made our decisions. Below is our list of winners for each category, as well as Best of the Best and People’s Choice. Congratulations to all winners and finalists!

Best Accessibility Tech: Xenoma e-skin pajamas

Accessibility has become a major theme at CES, and it’s one of the harder categories to judge because of all the potentially life-changing tech on the floor. But Xenoma’s e-skin pajamas took the prize this year thanks to its innovative fabric sensors that can stand up to the abuse of a washing machine and don’t need any sort of liquid or gel to keep conductivity with your skin. — Terrence O’Brien, Managing Editor

Best Startup: Black Box VR

Black Box VR is building the gym of the future. Using the HTC Vive, motion-tracking controllers and specially designed workout equipment, Black Box turns exercise into a video game. The plan is to set up a boutique gym in San Francisco this year, where members can strap into a game, work out and attempt to land on the local leaderboards. This is just the beginning of the VR fitness market. — Jessica Conditt, Senior Reporter

Best Digital Health and Fitness Product: L’Oreal UV Sense

The smaller a device is, the more wearable it becomes, and that’s one of the reasons that L’Oreal’s UV Sense is so intriguing. It’s a UV sensor no bigger than a thumbnail that tells you, via your smartphone, how much sun exposure you’ve received each day. The benefits are twofold: Not only could this help prevent skin cancer, it’s also a key step on a micro-wearable computing journey that could revolutionize the world. — Dan Cooper, Senior Editor

Best Wearable: L’Oreal UV Sense

For a while, the phrase “wearable” was primarily synonymous with “fitness tracker you probably wear on your wrist.” L’Oreal’s tiny UV Sense tracker shows just how much the definition of wearable has changed, while also providing a very concrete, specific benefit. The tiny sensor requires no battery; it just attaches to your fingernail and tracks UV exposure — the data are picked up by your phone. Hopefully, this is a precursor to other minimally-invasive health trackers we’ll see in the future. — Dan Cooper, Senior Editor

Best Transportation Technology: Toyota e-Palette

The automotive world is flooded with the word mobility. It’s become shorthand for ride-hailing and car sharing. Toyota saw mobility and decided that in addition to getting people around, it’s important to transport their goods and their small business. The e-Palette is a vehicle that resembles a train car, but more than that, it’s an opportunity for businesses big and small to take retail and delivery to the next level. It can be a taxi, food truck, flower mart, delivery truck, office or even a place to sleep. It’s a blank slate on wheels, and in this quickly changing world, that might be exactly what we need. — Roberto Baldwin, Senior Editor

Best Home-Theater Product: Optoma 4K Alexa Projector

Why don’t you already have a projector? Thanks to recent advances in DLP tech, we’re running out of excuses for sticking with smallish TVs. The Optoma HD51A combines quality and convenience — courtesy of its new link to Alexa voice commands — with a price that will fit many home-theater budgets. — Richard Lawler, Senior News Editor

Best Connected-Home Product: Lenovo Smart Display

At a show full of connected fridges and smart appliances, it’s the Lenovo Smart Display that gets the prize for Best Connected Home. It’s one of the first smart displays in the Google ecosystem and it’s — at this point, anyway — definitely the best. Its stellar Google Assistant implementation combined with great design makes this everything we wish the Echo Show was, and more. — Nicole Lee, Senior Editor

Best Innovation (Disruptive Tech): Toyota e-Palette

If Toyota has its way, in the not-so-distant future your favorite retail store or restaurant will come to you. The potential for the e-Palette to bring an autonomous vehicle that can not only change the delivery market, but bring an entire small shop to you, is pretty insane. Ditto for a food truck or ride-sharing service. There are a lot of uses for this vehicle, all of which take us further into our self-driving future. And with e-Palette, Toyota shows how technology can affect not only cars, trucks or buses but business as a whole. — Billy Steele, Senior News Editor

Best Phone or Mobile Device: Lenovo Miix 630

This Windows 10 2-in-1 may seem like an odd choice, but it fits the bill because of what’s inside it: a Snapdragon 835 chipset, just like the one in your phone. As a result, the Lenovo Miix 630 is incredibly fast to wake up, and its battery can withstand as many as 20 hours of use on a single charge. Throw in an excellent keyboard and the ability to add a SIM card inside for on-the-go data and we just might have the perfect machine for road warriors — Chris Velazco, Senior Mobile Editor

Best TV Product: LG 2018 C-Series OLED

LG’s next OLED TVs are even smarter and better-looking than before. The C8-series, the step above the entry-level B8, sports the company’s fast new Alpha 9 processor, which is put to good use powering the newly added Google Assistant. LG’s own tech isn’t going anywhere; instead, it’s now working together with Google to deliver a complete TV experience. — Devindra Hardawar, Senior Editor

Best Gaming Product: HTC Vive Pro

HTC is already a leader of the PC VR world with the Vive, and its latest headset upgrades the original model in a few crucial ways. The HTC Vive Pro adds integrated 3D audio, a more comfortable head strap, dual front-facing cameras, two mics and beefed-up resolution — 2,880 x 1,600 combined and 615 pixels per inch. The Vive Pro is a slight but welcome update that keeps the VR industry moving in the right direction. — Jessica Conditt, Senior Reporter

Best Unexpected Product: My Special Aflac Duck

A corporate cuddly toy isn’t typical fare for the Best of CES, but Aflac’s Special Duck certainly deserved a place. Designed to support children diagnosed with cancer, it has features like a port-a-cath with an RFID chip for children to familiarize themselves with chemotherapy treatment, as well as emoji cards which allow the duck to express the child’s emotions for them. It’s also cute, fluffy and cuddly. Aflac has plans to get the toy to all children diagnosed with cancer in the US, free of charge. It’s hard to argue with that plan. — Mat Smith, UK Bureau Chief

Best Sports Tech: Prevention Biometrics Head Impact Monitor System (HIMS)

Prevent Biometrics’ mouthguard combines advanced sensors with connectivity that could improve and save the lives of athletes. When a severe collision is detected, medical staff on the sidelines are alerted immediately, offering the best chance of a proper response to injury. With long-running controversy concerning concussions in football and other competitive sports, it’s sports tech with significance. — Mat Smith, UK Bureau Chief

Best PC or Tablet: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

Not content with an incremental update to its popular Thinkpad X1 line of flagship laptops this year, Lenovo added meaningful improvements like a built-in privacy shutter and twin far-field mics for excellent voice control from a distance. Add a sumptuous Dolby Vision HDR display, a comfortable keyboard, embedded eSIM and Alexa support incoming, and the Thinkpad X1 Carbon is a well-rounded laptop that bundles the best tech of 2018. — Cherlynn Low, Senior Reviews Editor

Best Robot or Drone: Sony AIBO

Sony’s adorable robot dog is back. This time, AIBO is more intelligent, connected and agile. As well as being a pettable companion, it has an onboard camera allows it to act as an adorably mobile webcam. Its OLED eyes are extremely expressive, and its WiFi and LTE connectivity allow it to function on the move. It’s a true return to form for perhaps the most popular consumer robot ever. — Aaron Souppouris, Features Editor

Best Vision of the Future (Smart City): Wi-Fiber Intelli-Platform Integrated Streetlights

We want our cities to be smart, but often the cost of accomplishing such a feat would be eye-watering even for the most-flush of folks. Consequently, companies are looking for ways to bolt on smart-city equipment to existing infrastructure. Wi-Fiber has built a lamppost head that contains security cameras, IoT and municipal WiFi equipment within its slender body. It even gives basic street lighting an upgrade, offering the ability to change color or flash to direct emergency services straight to where the crisis is. — Dan Cooper, Senior Editor

Best of the Best: Toyota e-Palette

Technology is supposed to open up new opportunities. But sometimes it keeps us in a well-defined box based on a company’s profit plan. At CES, Toyota introduced its own sort of box, the e-Palette. The rolling rectangle will be whatever the owners dream up. A delivery van, a mobile retail space, an office, maybe even the most obvious, a food truck. Available in different sizes and open to whatever its owner can come up with, Toyota’s concept represents opportunity to large corporations. But more important, to small businesses. — Roberto Baldwin, Senior Editor

People’s Choice Winner: Dell x Nikki Reed Circular Collection Jewelry

Nearly 29,000 people voted in our People’s Choice poll, and after 24 hours, there was a clear, undisputed winner. With over 30 percent of the vote (for context: second place only received 9 percent of the vote), the winner of our People’s Choice award this year is the Dell x Nikki Reed Circular Collection Jewelry. It turns out that thousands of people were big fans of Dell and Nikki Reed’s collaboration to recycle expired computer parts and make them into rings and earrings. Congratulations! — Nicole Lee, Senior Editor

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

YouTube may review its most popular channels for offensive content

It became pretty clear last year that YouTube has a content problem. Last spring, companies like AT&T and Verizon pulled ads because they were found to be appearing alongside extremist videos. And it was hit with another round of ad-pulling later in the year when reports surfaced that a portion of the site’s children’s content turned out to be not so kid-friendly. Now, following the uproar over Logan Paul’s Aokigahara forest video, YouTube may begin vetting the videos posted by its most popular channels, according to Bloomberg.

Paul’s channel was one of YouTube’s Google Preferred accounts — a group of top-tier, highly viewed channels that Google sells ad space on at a higher rate. YouTube pulled Paul’s Preferred status yesterday as part of its response to his video, but for content creators that still have that status, those Preferred accounts will now reportedly be vetted in order to make sure their content is appropriate for the brands buying ad space on the videos.

According to Bloomberg’s source, Google will use both human moderators and AI to spot videos that may not be appropriate for ads. In a statement to Bloomberg, a Google spokesperson said, “We built Google Preferred to help our customers easily reach YouTube’s most passionate audiences and we’ve seen strong traction in the last year with a record number of brands. As we said recently, we are discussing and seeking feedback from our brand partners on ways to offer them even more assurances for what they buy in the Upfronts.”

Via: Bloomberg