IFA 2016 Award Winners (digitaltrends.com)

For the technology addicts out there, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and International Funkausstellung Berlin (IFA) are events to pay close attention to. They are annual trade shows that exhibit consumer electronics from hundreds of exhibitors to thousands of attendees. IFA is coming to an end and the folks over at Digital Trends have put together a list of their "Top Tech picks of IFA 2016 in each major tech category." The "Top Picks" of each category include:

BEST OF SHOW: LENOVO YOGA BOOK
AUDIO: AUDEZE INSINE 10
COMPUTING: LENOVO YOGA 910
COOL TECH: YUNEEC BREEZE
COOL TECH: BOTSCAN
HOME: LG INSTAVIEW SIGNATURE FRIDGE
HOME: NETATMO SMART VALVE
LATIN INNOVATION: SOLIDMATION
MOBILE: ZTE AXON 7 MINI
VIDEO: PHILIPS 901F 4K UHD OLED TV
WEARABLES: SAMSUNG GEAR S3 FRONTIER

Have any Slashdotters been paying close attention to IFA 2016? If so, how do you think this year's event stacks up to past IFA events?

Comments

Nein

[rossdee]

I don't speak German

Good selection

[Anonymous Coward]

... but it's hard to say how these products will pan out over the course of the next few months. For example, the Yoga Book is fascinating, but the touchscreen keyboard may ultimately turn out to be a complete and utter gimmick. We shall wait and see!

Re:Good selection

[HiThere]

An early report said that using it was a real pain. It was better than an on-screen keyboard, but only just. Perhaps it matters what your typing style is. I'm an "almost touch typist" so keyboard action is rather important to me.

Re:Good selection

[sittingnut]

best way to judge relevance and importance of awards/records/prizes/etc., is to think whether you can remember the last winner/holder.
if you can't remember, it doesn't matter.

Re:Good selection

[Anonymous Coward]

There's considerable doubt about the size of the market for tablets with keyboards of any kind. Anecdotal, I know, but the majority of people I know who tried using ~10" tablets of various sorts with keyboards for productivity applications from a few years back have mostly reverted to using some sort of "proper" laptop/ultrabook with a 13"+ screen and a decent keyboard. Obviously there are niches for it, but for a lot of people, the compromise is just too great.

Relevance of tradeshows

[SuperKendall]

I think I says a lot that I have not heard of the single item from that list, yet they were the best things at the shows... I stopped going to CES a few years ago and I really don't feel like I'm missing anything.

Re:Relevance of tradeshows

[93 Escort Wagon]

Trade shows lost most of their relevance once the web arrived. Companies have come to realize they don't need to be beholden to a handful of tech pundits just to get word out regarding their latest new product - they can just announce it on the web, and their customers will start drooling. And if a company wants to get the pundits together, they can control the messaging a lot better By hosting their own events.

Related to that... tech punditry has also largely lost its relevance for the same reasons. We don't need some writer possessing a passing familiarity with tech to "Inform" us about products. Occasionally a hands on piece about a new product can be interesting... but, generally speaking, those guys don't tell people anything they can't readily discover for themselves.

Re:Relevance of tradeshows

[BringsApples]

Trade shows allow a hands-on experience. People can play with the stuff, see stuff working/not working.

Re:Relevance of tradeshows

[rapiddescent]

**trade shows** (i.e. for the trade) are there to do deals and speak to your suppliers/distrubutors. I don't really like how they allow retail customers into them - kind of get in the way.

Re:Relevance of tradeshows

[Anonymous Coward]

Trade shows are still relevant. They are only relevant for "traders" though. It was also interesting for the regular consumer for a while because a lot of progress was made. But today there is little progress. The progress is now kind of like: "Aha, just like 20 years ago, but now on the internet?" or "Just like we did on a desktop 10 years ago, but now on a smart phone?". This is no longer interesting.
 
What do people care for a screen that acts like a keyboard? Or a smart phone that is just slightly faster, better, harder, stronger? Just like the Daft Punk song, people are fed up with this incremental improvements. There is no reason to travel to some boring event when the new technologies are just 'meh'.
 
Virtual reality and augmented reality are the new thing. But even those technologies existed 30-40 years ago. And even when it might interest enough people to go to the trade show, it is not possible to show what it is without giving the people a pair of VR glasses. This is not really impossible, but very, very costly and for what reason? To make a couple of nerds happy? The only thing they need to do is to make some influential (B/V)loggers happy. And the best way to make those people happy is to invite them to your own product release event and give them a device for free. These bloggers now they have to be positive in their review and just critical enough to be considered a trustworthy reviewer and not an advertiser, if they want to keep on getting new products.

re: Trade Shows and relevance

[King_TJ]

Actually, I'm not so quick to declare the trade show dead, just because of the Internet's popularity. But I do think these consumer product trade show events are of declining interest simply because the gadget and electronics market is super-saturated.

I used to get really excited whenever an event like CES or Mac World rolled around, following everything carefully even though I didn't have the opportunity to attend. These days, I just kind of yawn and make a mental note to check out a few of the highlights, maybe after the event is done.

Honestly, they just don't release many things anymore that aren't just incremental improvements on something I already own or know about. When I'm ready to buy or upgrade, I'll do my research THEN, based on what's readily available and shipping. And I think that's how MOST tech-heads and gadget-freaks I know approach it, too. We might follow a specific area, such as new photography gear for people into that hobby, or even a sub-set of that -- like "What's new in drones?" But a big expo of all things electronic that any company wants to show me at one specific time and place? Not such a good use of my time attending that, or even following someone's blog who is there, in real-time.

Thank you for POSTING the list.

[SeaFox]

If there's one thing I hate it's having to go to another site to watch some stupid photo slide show for each award when I can scan though a black and white text list in less than 30 seconds.

LATIN INNOVATION

[Nutria]

Why must there be a category only for Latin America?

Re:LATIN INNOVATION

[Gussington]

Where does it say anything about America? I thought is was something to do with ancient Rome. My vote is the Arch.

Re:LATIN INNOVATION

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it would be nonPC to have a black/jew/indian (american)/ category. The latinos have no clout in the real world so we can single them out.

Re:LATIN INNOVATION

[pjt33]

I thought it was the language, and I'm disappointed that Latin still doesn't seem to have a word for microblogging.

Re:LATIN INNOVATION

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US at least, minority groups receive their own highlighted categories- so that their contributions will not appear to be smothered by any majority. Fair/unfair? Just answering your question is all.

special

[Anonymous Coward]

is it like a special olympics kind of a deal?

Lenovo Yoga Book - It probably won an award

[Misagon]

How typical that a laptop with a touchscreen-keyboard should win "Best of show" ...

Re:Lenovo Yoga Book - It probably won an award

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the ASUS Zenbook UX501 should win something.

It's thin, reasonably light, and capable.

Hot Tech:

[Plumpaquatsch]

Galaxy Note 7

Android top end tablet missing in list

[Anonymous Coward]

Notably missing from the list:

No top end Android tablets. Windows tablets a plenty in the 12+ inch power category. ZERO running Android. And more than that, Google are rumored to launch a crappy 8 inch Android tablet next year, so even Google has given up making powerful Android tablets. Their Pixel 2 top of the range device ran Chrome not Android, because Pinchai was head of Chrome and so won't put Android on any powerful devices.

The last "pro" spec Android tablet was launched nearly 3 years ago, the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2. Samsung have not launched any high end Android slate since. Yet they've launched a lot of top end Windows tablets.

I know who I blame, Pinchai, too much focussing on the niche Chrome to the detriment of Android.

No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

> Have any Slashdotters been paying close attention to IFA 2016? If so, how do you think this year's event stacks up to past IFA events?

Surprised this story was even posted.

Video = TV?

[Kjella]

VIDEO: PHILIPS 901F 4K UHD OLED TV

I'd probably pick the Panasonic HC-X1, a 1" UHD/60 fps camcorder for $3199. After having had 1080p60 cameras I couldn't imagine going back to 30 fps, haters gonna hate on HFR but the "movie feel" is a fuzzy wish for things the way they were like gramophone records as opposed to the cold and sterile CDs. Hopefully it shows up in a consumer camcorder next CES.

It is just bought ad space

[heson]

Usually places in these "Top ten", "Best in show" etc. are bought with ads (sometimes with real money), just like in score of 95% in Computer Games Magazines, and the page of "Cool expensive tech stuff you need right now" in the in flight magazine. Until there is a way to verify the legitimacy of these lists, I will treat them as ads (i.e ignore them)

Re: Trade Shows and relevance

[rapiddescent]

IFA Berlin was pretty busy in my opinion. I was there for the trade day friday and also went on Saturday (where public can come in). For those that went, there were some big takeaways from IFA - it wasn't all just a small iteration of previous years electronics (ok except for drones, phones and audio/visual).

Trade shows are not really for consumers to make their minds up on what to buy - it's also for distributors to do deals, for trade partnerships and so on ahead of the delivery schedules. I was there to research tech we'll be doing deals for into next year.

* I have "show blisters"

PLEASE STOP SHOUTING

[Nunya666]

And no, I don't pay attention to the International Fucking Association.

Now i know what not to get.

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet it all shines like polished class too.