CES 2018 is here, and it feels like companies, including Korean tech giant Samsung, are announcing big news every minute. The company will take the stage at 2 p.m. PT/5 p.m. ET Monday, January 8, to unveil its major plans for TVs, appliances, laptops, and more in the coming year and beyond. You can watch the live-streamed conference on Samsung Newsroom’s official YouTube and Facebook pages, or at the Samsung Newsroom website. We will also embed a live-stream in this article once its available.
Samsung has already shown off a number of new products being featured at the show ahead of CES, such as the Notebook 9 Pen and Notebook 7 Spin laptops, and the 146-inch MicroLED and 85-inch Q9S QLED TVs, but we expect some big announcements at the press conference as well. Speculation has focused on Samsung making a stronger push toward integrating its products into a more cohesive ecosystem through its Bixby A.I. assitant, much like Apple does with Siri and Amazon with Alexa. Bixby isn’t as well-known or available as either Siri or Alexa — it showed up just last year, and only on the Galaxy S8 — but Samsung looks to be slowly increasing the A.I.’s presence across its products, such as its Family Hub Smart Fridge.
Similarly, we wouldn’t be surprised if we got more info on Samsung’s SmartThings Cloud device, which rolls all of its Internet of Things devices into one.
Another potential talking point is Samsung’s newest mobile chip, the Exynos 9810. We suspect this will be the chip powering the rumored Galaxy S9, but it could always make its way into other devices beyond just smartphones. It’s possible Samsung’s future virtual reality and Gear VR plans could also be discussed.
Speaking of smartphones, with the Mobile World Congress taking place just over a month from now in Barcelona, Spain, chances a less likely for major announcements on that front. But we’re always up for a surprise.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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