CES 2017: VR, Faraday And What To Expect From Next Year's Show

We are just two months away from next year’s biggest technology conference, the Consumer Electronics Show. Through the recent years, CES can be useful to predict the hottest trends in consumer technology for the year ahead. CES has featured products from consumer technology markets, including 3D printing, augmented reality, audio, drones, robotics, smart homes, vehicle technology, transportation, wearables and more. CES 2017 will be held Jan. 5-8, 2017 in Las Vegas.

Here’s what to expect from CES 2017

Asus will unveil its Google Tango-enabled AR smartphone at CES 2017. This has been confirmed by Asustek CEO Jerry Shen for Korean publication DigiTimes. The upcoming smartphone, called ZenFone AR, will be powered by Google’s augmented reality platform Tango, Shen said. The ZenFone AR will also come with advanced functionality and performance at a competitive price.

Faraday Future told Engadget that it will unveil its production vehicle at CES 2017. The company hasn’t announced any new details, but says the car is a “premium” EV with “holistic design,” and packs tons of technology.

HTC introduced the HTC Vive VR headset last year - but now the company is rumored to be working on a second-generation version, codenamed Oasis, according to a tweet by @LlabTooFeR, who has previously tweeted accurate information in the past. We don’t know too much about this headset, but we do know it’s a possibility HTC could unveil the headset at CES 2017.

Microsoft recently announced budget friendly VR headsets were coming with support for the Windows 10 Creator Update. We’re hoping we’ll get to see Windows 10 VR headsets from HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus and Acer.

Many gamers are waiting for Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card, which is expected to be announced at CES 2017, according to Chinese-language website Zol.com.cn. According to a recent report, the card will be based on Nvidia’s GP102 GPU core design, which is the same design used on the most updated GTX Titan X. Though, the GTX 1080 Ti will reportedly only use the GDDR5 video memory that’s installed on the GTX 1070 and GTX 1060.

Two Sony Xperia smartphones recently passed the European Economics Commission with the model numbers G3112 and G3121. A user on the Chinese site Weibo has some information on the two new phones. The user, called “Reviewer” said the two phones will come with a 5-inch or 5.2-inch full HD and a larger 5.5-inch 4K screen which will launch at CES 2017. The user also says it will be “equipped with 4GB of RAM.” We’re not sure if it’s for both phones or one of them.