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This is my first post about CES 2012, and, yes, I know the show was a month ago, so you’re probably wondering what took me so long, when my fellow Tech Bloggers managed to get quite a few CES posts up over the past few weeks.  Well, I won’t make too many excuses. Suffice to say, it was my first CES, so I had no idea what to expect. The show totally burnt me out after only a few days, and I had to go on vacation soon after the show.  Anyways, enough about me, onto the article, which will be the first of many tardy updates about CES from me.

If you are a little confused as to why I am looking for an ice cream sandwich at an electronics show, I’ll fill you in a bit first.  Ice Cream Sandwich (which I will refer to as ICS going forward) is Google’s code name for the latest and greatest version of their Android OS – Android 4.0.  Launched late last year on Samsung’s new flagship phone, the Galaxy Nexus (available from Future Shop on Bell, Virgin, Telus, Rogers, Fido and Sasktel), ICS is the first version of Android to be designed from the ground up for both tablets and phones.

Taking a lot of the UI elements from the Honeycomb tablet version of Android, ICS is arguably the best phone OS on the market today, with a beautiful, easier to use, refined UI, and numerous little improvements to how Android works.  All the core Android applications, such as email and contacts management, have been rebuilt from the ground up for a much better user experience, and Google’s intention going forward is that ICS will become the standard OS version on all Android devices, tablet or phone.  It will also combat the dreaded fragmentation of the OS that causes application compatibility issues and headaches for both users and developers.

Therefore, going into CES I expected to see a lot of ICS devices on display, since it is the latest and greatest mobile OS, and CES is all about showcasing the newest and best.  Much to my surprise (and many others, if you read this article on PCWorld.com), there weren’t actually that many ICS devices on display.  A number of flagship devices, such as the Samsung Galaxy Note, Sony Xperia S and Toshiba Excite were shown running, and will ship with, the older version of the Android phone OS, Gingerbread.

At the same time, however, all these vendors were promising that ICS would be coming to their latest toys soon, so why weren’t they on display running Android 4.0?  Well, part of the problem is that while they have probably had the code from Google for quite some time, none of them are probably intending to offer ICS on their devices in the 'pure' version that runs on the Galaxy Nexus.  They all need time to customize the OS for the specific hardware it will be running on, and to add elements (be it custom applications or UI changes) that will differentiate their devices from the competition, and I guess there just wasn’t enough time before CES to get their custom versions ready.  The next big phone and tablet show is coming up at the end of February, Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, and that is where I expect to see more devices shown running ICS.

Thankfully (especially since I was assigned to write about them!), there were at least some ICS phones and tablets on display at CES - they just weren’t as high-profile as some of the other devices shown.  Also, since I only had limited amount time at CES, I didn’t get a chance to see all the ICS devices that were on display, so this post is part one, where I'll go over the ones that I did see in person, and in part two, I will talk about the ones I didn’t.

Here are all the Ice Cream Sandwich devices I saw:

ACER ICONIA A700 TABLET

 

The first ICS device I got to see was on Sunday, at Acers pre-CES press conference.  There they announced the Iconia A700 10.1" tablet, which, along with the already released Asus Transformer Prime (available at Future Shop), will be one of the first quad-core tablets on the market.  It uses Nvidia’s Tegra 3 CPU, for more power in a tablet than your desktop computer probably had only a couple of years ago.

To further differentiate itself from the competition, the A700 has a 1080p screen, which looked pretty nice in person and was very crisp - great for watching HD movies.  It also ships with ICS out of the box, with a few mild Acer customizations, such as the "Acer Ring" wheel above, that allows you to jump to selected applications directly from the unlock-screen.  You can check out my video below, where I talk to an Acer representative in more detail about the A700.  This tablet should be available from Future Shop in Q2 this year, but no pricing has been announced yet - though I would assume it will be around $500 at launch.

Hands on video:

Slideshow of images of the A700: 
 

ARCHOS 101 G9 TABLET

Archos has been in the tablet game for a long time, releasing their first "Internet Media Tablets" in 2008, running their own OS, which was then upgraded to Android in 2009.  They are also well known for their line of portable media players, which support a wide range of audio/video codecs and formats.  It only makes sense, then, that media playback would be one of the prime focuses of their newest tablet, which is now officially certified by Google (Their previous models were not 'official' Android tablets, so they didn't include all the standard Google applications, such as Gmail and the Market).

At CES they had the Archos 101 G6 Turbo (the Turbo model's CPU runs at 1.2Ghz) on display, which has already been out for a while now, running Android 3.2, aka Honeycomb.  They have now announced that this 10.1” tablet will be upgraded to ICS very soon, and in the video below I get a hands-on demo of one running the new OS.  While the 101 G9 does have a lot of similarities to many of the other 10” Android tablets on the market today, it does have a couple of unique differentiators.  It runs a Ti OMAP dual-core CPU, instead of the more common Nvidia Tegra 2, and Archos claims that this chip is faster.  It also has a front facing 720p camera for web conferencing, and seeing as media playback is one of Archos’ focuses, it has a kickstand on the back, and can mirror multimedia content by playing on it to your TV, via HDMI.

While Future Shop does carry Archos products, they don’t currently have the 101 G9 listed.  Hopefully, when the ICS update is available, this tablet will then be available in Canada from Future Shop.

You can learn a little more about the Android 3.2 version of the Archos 101 G9 on their site here. 

Hands on video:

HUAWEI ASCEND P1 PHONE SERIES

Don’t worry if you have never heard of Huawei - in North America their devices are not very well known, but they are actually one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world. Their back-end hardware powers many of the largest and most advanced wireless networks across the globe, including Bell's and Telus' new LTE network.  While not well known, they have also been selling phones in Canada for quite some time - mostly lower-end models on the new carriers like Wind Mobile and Mobilicity.

At CES this year, Huawei sought to shake off the image of just making cheap budget devices, and introduced the Ascend P1 series of phones.  They claim that the Ascend P1 S is the “World’s Slimmest Smartphone”, and at 6.68mm thin it probably is, at least for now.  Unlike most of the other phones introduced at CES, all three models run ICS out of the box.  They all have dual-core CPUs, 8MP cameras, and qHD AMOLED Gorilla glass screens – quite impressive specs for phones that should still come in quite a bit under the price of other flagship Android phones.

The three different models are very similar – the P1 is the standard model that, at only 7.69mm thick, isn’t as thin as the S (strangely, though, it doesn't have a larger battery than the S because of this) and runs a 1.5Ghz OMAP CPU, which is faster than same CPU found in the Galaxy Nexus.  The P1 S is the super-slim model, with the rest of the specs the same as the P1. The P1 LTE uses a different CPU (Qualcomm Snapdragon), since it is needed for LTE, and is, sadly, a little thicker, in order to accommodate the larger battery needed to run the current LTE chipset for a reasonable amount of time.

There are two things that I am not sure of – the first is what version of ICS these phones will run out-of the-box.  At the show, the display models were running a stock version of Android 4.0, which I think is a great decision if they end up shipping like that.  I own a Galaxy Nexus and I LOVE the stock ICS UI, and, with almost identical specs to the Nexus (save the screen resolution), the Ascend P1’s could be great cost-effective alternatives to the, admittedly, expensive Nexus.  However, in the Huawei promo video below, a heavily-skinned custom 3D UI is also shown, that while looking slick in the video, is probably not as intuitive to use.  Hopefully, if they do decide to install this custom UI, you’ll be able to revert back to stock ICS if you wish.

The second thing I am not sure of is if these phones will come to Canada, at least to one of the bigger national carriers like Bell, Telus, or Rogers.  Are Canadian consumers ready to embrace a relatively unknown brand like Huawei? I guess, though, the same thing could have been said about HTC five years ago, and look at them now, so maybe we will see a Telus P1 LTE in the near future.

You can learn more about the Huawei Ascend P1 phones on the site here.

Official Huawei promo video:
 

Stills of the P1:

Stills of the P1 LTE:

Stills of the P1 S:

LENOVO K2010, K2110 & S2110 IDEATAB TABLETS

The last vendor that I got to see at CES who had Ice Cream Sandwich devices was Lenovo.  They had quite a heavy presence at the show, and introduced lots of innovative and unique products at CES, such as the Yoga convertible Windows 8 tablet that Ted has already written about on the Tech Blog.

The three tablets that I got to see were all fairly similar, at least on the surface.  All three were 10.1” screen Android tablets, running ICS with Lenovo’s unique Mondrian skin on top, which has some nice Metro UI-ish looking shortcut tiles on the home-screen.  Under the hood, though, each of these tablets are quite a bit different from each other, especially the IdeaTab K2110, which is actually one of the first INTEL x86 based Android tablets officially authorized by Google.

One thing to note is that, while it is assumed that the focus of CES is on the North American market, since it is held in Las Vegas, it is actually a Global event, and a number of devices that Lenovo had on display were for the Chinese market only, including two of these tablets.  However, a silver lining to this, if you end up liking one of these models, is that I was told that none of them were actually China ONLY, just China FIRST.  If there is enough demand in other parts of the world, Lenovo might consider releasing them elsewhere.  I personally liked the IdeaTab K2010 Tegra 3 model (which is currently China first) over the Global S2110 model, which is slated to come here soon, so here’s hoping that the Chinese market exclusivity won’t last that long.

IdeaTab K2010

The K2010 has a Quad-core Tegra 3 processor and a finger-print reader on the back.  One thing that I am not sure about are the screen specs, since one Lenovo rep told me that it had a 1080p screen, just like the Acer A700, but I could not confirm this 100%.  If so, this will make this tablet quite the killer device, and I do like the looks of it over the A700, so I hope it does come to Canada eventually.

Stills of the K2010:

IdeaTab K2110

The K2110 was one of the big reveals at the Intel CES keynote. It is one of the first official Intel-powered Android devices (along with the Lenovo K800 phone, which was sadly only running Android 2.3, so I couldn’t include it in this round-up). Other than the 1.6Ghz CPU, an Atom Z2460 based on Intel’s new low-powered Medfield architecture, there isn’t that much difference between this Intel ICS tablet and the ARM architecture CPU (which is what is found in all other Android tablets too) based K2010. It does, however, have a higher-resolution screen, at 1366x768, and includes NFC (Near Field Communications), which is rare for a tablet.

Stills of the K2110:

IdeaTab S2110

The last Lenovo tablet I saw is the S2110 (also known as the S2), which is definitely slated to come to Canada and the US, and will probably be the model that Future Shop will carry later this year. Unlike its sibling, the K2010, it doesn’t use a Nvidia quad-core Tegra 3 CPU, but uses the new Qualcomm 8960 1.5Ghz Krait processor. While it is only dual-core, it is supposed to be very efficient, and should perform on-par with other quad-core tablet CPUs. The other aspect of this tablet that Lenovo was focusing on was the very slim keyboard dock, which, just like the Asus Transformer tablets, turns the S2110 into a full-blown thin-and-light notebook.
 

Official Lenovo hands-on video of the IdeaTab S2

Stills of the S2110:

Lenovo has not announced any exact release dates, or pricing, for any of the three tablets above, but the S2110 should be the first one to come to Canada, and Lenovo's website says in should be sometime in June.

There is a little more info about the S2 on the Lenovo New Product Showcase site here.

The wrap up

That about covers all the Ice Cream Sandwich devices I actually got some hands-on time with, but since CES is such a huge show, I didn't have time to see them all. Check back soon for part two, where I talk about some of the devices I DIDN'T see, such as the new premium Asus TF700 1080p 10.1" tablet, and the budget-minded ZTE T98 7" tablet.