CES wouldn't be CES if there weren’t companies out there breaking records. If corporations weren't lauching the biggest, fastest, thinnest or simply the first, then they wouldn't be happy. As it goes, neither would we.

With all the claims and counter claims as press conference follows press conference, it can be rather tricky to work out just who managed to crack and hold onto each accolade as the feats of engineering roll in. So, with our eagle eye, we've looked back down at all of our 214 individual pieces of coverage on the event and, now that the doors of the Las Vegas Convention Centre have finally shut and the counters and recounters have been satisfied, here are the the CES 2012 record breakers according to Pocket-lint.

Laptops

The whole show in Vegas 2012 felt like it was dedicated to laptops this year with every man, woman and dog digging up an Ultrabook to hold aloft to the crowd and swear an oath upon. If you want to take a look at them all, then check out our dedicated Ultrabooks of CES page, otherwise, read on for the ones that count.

THINNEST ULTRABOOK IN THE WORLD - Acer Aspire S5

Technically speaking, the Acer Aspire S5 was and still is the thinnest Ultrabook in the world but that's only because Samsung has refused to class the razor thin Samsung Series 9 laptop as an Ultrabook at all. Other than the S5's extremely slimline 15mm profile, there's the usual SSD storage, Intel Core processor and a choice between HDD and SSD in case you fancy defeating the whole purpose of having an Ultrabook. Read more

FIRST ULTRABOOK WITH THUNDERBOLT - Acer Aspire S5

Ok, perhaps not of such major importance and, again, it's only a record by virtue of the fact that Apple has decided not to bother with the Ultrabook title for the MacBook Air. All the same, the Acer Aspire S5 is the first Ultrabook to come with the high speed I/O port that is Intel's Thunderbolt technology. At up to 10Gbps transfer speeds with entire Blu-rays able to shift from A to B in under 30 seconds, it's a rather useful tool to have. Now all you need is something that's compatible at the other end.

THINNEST LAPTOP IN THE WORLD - Samsung Series 9

It might not be an Ultrabook but it's certainly a laptop and a bloody thin one at that. At just 12.9mm thick and with only 1.16kg in ballast to worry about, it's a waif of a machine. Throw in all the RAM, CPU and SSD mod-cons plus a 9.8 seconds boot up time (1.4 seconds from sleep) and a?HD+ SuperBright Plus screen with 160-degree viewing angle, and it just about manages to make laptops sexy again. Read more

TVs

You can normally bet your house on seeing either the biggest TV in the world at CES or the thinnest or, more usually, both. CES 2012 saw neither. So, what records did the AV world set in Vegas this time around?

BIGGEST OLED TV IN THE WORLD - LG 55EM9600?& Samsung OLED

OLED TVs have been around for a while now but commercial availability has been a tricky thing to find. All the same, both LG and Samsung look to have cracked it this year with the arrival of equally world record breaking 55-inch sets that should be up for sale by the end of the December 2012. Naturally, with pictures stunning and panels super thin, you can expect to pay an arm and a leg for them when they do turn up. LG hands-on | Samsung hands-on

BIGGEST ULTRA DEFINITION TV IN THE WORLD - 84-inch LG UDTV

Ultra Definition is the name that looks like will stick when it comes to selling the public the next generation in screen resolution. UDTVs are what's known as 4K2K (3840 x 2160px) and what's rather special about this one is that it works as one of LG's Cinema 3D systems too. In other words, it supports passive 3D with half the resolution coming to each eye. In effect, you end up with full 1080p 3D visuals without having to go with the bother and expense of alternate shutter glasses. Read more

FIRST TRANSPARENT TV - Samsung Smart Window

Imagine a world of see-through monitors, windows that are interactive and car windscreens that relay all the information on the screen rather than the dashboard beneath it.?Now imagine that, rather than the stuff of science fiction movies and pipe dreams, the technology that will allow this to become a possibility is going into production in just 20 days. Sure there are military and industrial versions of this kind of thing but this is the first time we've been inches away from the home of next Tuesday.?Read more

Printers

Hold your horses. Don't you dare skip this section. Yes, printers are the third most dull category of gadgets after fax machines and, worst of all, scanners but we wouldn't be writing a section of world record breaking printers if there wasn't something pretty sexy to say about them, right? Right.

FIRST HOME 3D PRINTER - Cubify

3D printing has been quietly around in the industrial sense for a while but now the ability to turn 3D computer designs into actual models by laying down layer upon layer of printed substrate will become a reality in the home as well. 3D Systems will be selling the Cubify 3D printer for $1,300 by the end of Q1 2012. Pretty soon you'll be able to scan in your own designs too. Read more

Tablets

We didn't see the crazy rush of tablets that we saw at CES 2011 just after Android Honeycomb came out but that doesn't mean that there were no significant moves in this space. When there's tablets involved, there's always records to be set.

FIRST TABLET WITH BUILT-IN JOYSTICKS - Razer Project Fiona

Project Fiona is a PC gaming tablet which is set to make up for all that's bad about flick 'n swipe. It's a?hybrid PC/tablet but with all the meaty titles thanks to the?Intel Core i7 inside. There's a full-screen user interface supporting multi-touch, a?3-axis gyro, a magnetometer, an accelerometer,?Dolby 7.1 surround sound,?Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 but, most importantly of all,?physical control options with integrated dual game controllers and ultra-precise analogue sticks. Read more

Phones

It's normally Mobile World Congress in February where most of the big phones news arrives but there's always one or two manufacturers that simply can't help gushing the goods a month earlier in Vegas. 2012 happened to see quite a few record breakers here too.

FIRST QUAD-CORE PHONE - Fujitsu Tegra 3 phone

With no official name yet, that didn't stop Fujitsu giving the world a taste of the first Nvidia Tegra 3 handset to arrive on the market. Details are light at the moment. We know it's an Android handset running 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, we know it's made by Fujitsu, we know it's got an Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor and that's about it. Follow the link for some nice shots of it running RipTide GP. Read more

THINNEST PHONE IN THE WORLD - Huawei Ascend P1 S

For a while, it looked as if Fujitsu had grabbed itself another gong by claiming the prize of the thinnest smartphone in the word with the ES IS12F at just 6.7mm, but the rug was pulled from under it with the arrival of the 6.68mm thick Huawei Ascend P1 S. It runs Android ICS, comes with?Dolby Mobile 3.0 a, 4.3-inch display with a 960x540 resolution, a 1800mAh battery and all sorts of other top line specs. Read more

HIGHEST RESOLUTION CAMERAPHONE IN THE WORLD - HTC Titan II

We'll forego the discussions of how much it actually matters for the moment. The fact remains that a 16-megapixel sensor represents the most pixel-packed there's even been on a smartphone before. Eight has pretty much become the standard on a top notch device but the Windows Phone 7 operating HTC Titan II has blown those out of the water. With a 4.7-inch screen,?1730mAh battery and 4G connectivity, that's not all that's impressive about it either. Read more

FIRST SMARTPHONE WITH OPTICAL ZOOM - Polaroid SC1630

Camera with a phone? Phone with a camera? It doesn't really matter. The fact remains that you can make calls, send texts, browse the web and play games on the Polaroid SC1630. It also happens to house enough space and photographic credentials for a?3x optical zoom lens offering a range of 36-108mm (in 35mm terms). There's also a 16-megapixel CCD sensor doing the work which equals that of the Titan II. Read more

Camcorders

Canon, Sony and Panasonic were probably the three who made the most noise in the camcorder space with their handycams all seeming to pack either Wi-Fi, 3D or both at CES 2012. However, it was someone else who led the pace in Vegas and will forever go down in the record books.

WORLD'S FIRST 4K CAMCORDER - JVC?GY-HMQ10

JVC has been working on a low-cost 4K resolution camera since 2007, and it seems to have finally managed to make it a reality.?The ?3,300 camera boasts an 8.3-megapixel sensor that produces video with a resolution of 3840x2160. That's very slightly less than a full-blown 4K digital cinema camera will shoot but it's over the resolution you'd end up seeing projected, digitally, at your local cinema.?The camera has a non-removable f/2.8 lens, which includes a 10x optical zoom, and you record onto SD card at a rate of 144Mbps. Read more

Gaming

CES isn't E3 but there were still a couple of interesting amusing developments in the gaming world at Vegas in 2012. So were any of them record breaking? Oh yes.

FIRST U.S. ARMY ENDORSED GAMING KIT - From CTA

Quite what the army get out of it is one thing (more recruits, a load of cash?), the point is that you can now strut about your living room putting your foes down the way Uncle Sam intended. The top of the tree has to be the Move-compatible assault rifle but there's also a backpack, on-ear headphones and even a headset with a throat mic to enjoy as well. Read more

MOST STORAGE ON A CHAIR EVER - X Rocker Pocket Chair

Ok, this one's a total guess but we were seriously impressed with the amount of gaming kit you could tuck into this $100 piece of furniture. It's more of a beanbag shaped like an armchair than anything but what's great is you can fit about the same amount of games boxes, discs, gamepads, guitar controllers, drumsticks, drinks and just about anything you could think of into the pockets, zips, holders and compartments on the sides as you can in an entire bookshelf and cupboards. Read more

Tags: Audio Phones Laptops CES2012 Features Tablets Cameras Camcorders Televisions Printers

CES 2012 record breakers originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:45:07 +0000

What has always seemed the stuff of pie in the sky will be coming to your home within weeks. 3D printing has been around on an industrial level for a while, but now a company called 3D Systems has come up with a version for the home called Cubify that can be yours for $1,300 by the end of Q1 2012. Pocket-lint went hands-on with the very thing at CES to find out exactly what it's all about.

The Cubify printer itself is a decent size with much of the bulk taken up by the round cartridge on the side that looks rather like the magazine of a 1920s Thompson machine gun. Sadly, it's just the one cartridge at a time that you can load, meaning that printing has to be of one colour at a time. In terms of the material used, it's an ABS plastic resin that's heated up and liquefied as it travels to the print head. It is set down in a series of lateral layers, one built on top of the other, cooling and setting as it does so.

The designs themselves are currently supplied by the Cubify site where you can download around 1,000 different ones, stick them on a USB key and into the printer. If you happen to be a dab hand at 3D CAD packages, then you can also create your own and even upload them to the community.

In the near future, however, even design novices should be able to enjoy tailor making their own bits and pieces. The company demoed the idea of using the Kinect, essentially a 3D scanner, as an input device. Currently the limitations are in the quality and resolution of the image which is where the idea of teaming up with the people behind the Lytro camera comes in. The files from those pictures would have everything Cubify would need and in plenty of detail too. Expect some movement here some time in the near future.

3D Systems is just waiting for the sign of from the FTC in the States before Cubify printers start shipping. Cartridges will cost $50 a go and, to give you some context, you'll get around 10 chess piece sized objects out of each one at a cost of $5 in materials to print. Arrival on the shelves of the UK and Europe should be pretty much at the same time.

Sure, there are plenty of limitations and this won't suddenly mean that we start printing TVs and cars at home, but what you can make with ABS at the moment is a decent start.

Tags: Printers 3D Printing Cubify CES2012 3D Systems

Cubify 3D home printer pictures and hands-on originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:28:00 +0000

Pocket-lint has a rather special App of the Day coming to you straight from CES 2012 in Las Vegas and we guarantee you’ve never seen anything quite like it before. The app itself is brand new from a company that’s just getting this particular service going, so it’s a touch raw at the moment.

All the same, it’ll make an amusing free download to try out even if you don’t go all the way to the paid part of the service. You’ll see what we mean in a minute.

Sculpteo

Platform

iOS

Price

Free (sort of)

Where

iTunes

The Sculpteo website has a service that’s been around for a while. If you can send them a 3D graphical design from a largely professional software package, the company will have it 3D printed for you and send it to your door. Very nice indeed if you happen to be able to do that kind of thing without a problem.

Most of us, of course, cannot and that’s where the Sculpteo iOS app comes in. The company has got a handful of designers on board to provide, currently, five or six objects that you can have printed out. These are espresso cups, slightly larger cups, vases, bowls and other ornaments.

Now, that doesn’t sound like a lot of fun on its own but where the app comes in is that you can customise it. Take a picture of yourself in profile with your device’s camera and then the app uses the line of your image to shape either the vase or cup. The cup is probably more subtle and useful, but the vases made from side faces are really quite stunning. Glance at them and you might not get it but once you know how they’re made, it’s hard to shift what you see. What’s also quite nice is that you can chose exactly how much of your profile you wish to use - the whole length or just a section.

The objects range from $40-$300 to get them produced and posted and the process will take 30 days, although Sculpteo is planning to cut that in half. This time next year, company CEO Clement Moreau is planning on having 1,000 designers on board to offer a lot more in the way of choice too, as well as more ways to make them your own.

Tags: Apps Sculpteo iPhone apps iPad apps Printers 3D Printing CES2012

APP OF THE DAY: Scultpeo review (iOS) originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:00:00 +0000