Best of CES 2011: PopSci's Products of the Future

Samsung 7-Series Sliding Netbook

John Mahoney

Samsung's new 7-series netbook ditches the standard swiveling convertible tablet PC format for an ingenious sliding mechanism, which turns the netbook into a 10-inch tablet. The Atom-powered 7-series does run Windows 7, which frankly has never been successful as a tablet OS (not even in the coolest hardware) but Samsung seems to have put a substantial touch-based skin over it to make the tablet experience more seamless. Samsung's got lots of experience with that--its TouchWiz Android skin is one of the most popular in the world--so we're hoping this great
form factor won't go to waste.

Eye-Fi Direct Mode

Eye-Fi

Eye-Fi's wireless SD cards have always been a great way to beam photos directly from your camera to your computer as well as services like Picasa and Flickr. But until now, they've required a Wi-Fi connection, which limits their use in the field. Not anymore: Later this year, Eye-Fi will release a free firmware update for its X2 cards that will create an ad-hoc network and beam photos to an iPhone or Android phone via a free app. What does that mean? It means you're no longer limited to your smartphone's camera when quickly uploading pictures to Facebook, Twitter, emailing them to friends, or whatever else you like to do with them. Now you can whip out your DSLR or high-end point and shoot, take the amazing pictures those cameras are capable of taking, and beam them to your smartphone instantly.

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Motorola Xoom Tablet

John Mahoney

Motorla's 10.1-inch Xoom tablet is the first to use Android 3.0 "Honeycomb," the first version of Google's mobile OS specifically designed for tablets. Although we haven't seen real, final software yet, the demos of Honeycomb make it pretty obvious that the quickly crowding tablet world just got much more interesting.

Casio Bluetooth Watch

Dan Nosowitz

I know, I know: A Bluetooth watch? Is this another in the long line of failed "smart watch" experiments that implored gullible gadget lovers to attempt to read emails on a half-inch monochrome screen? Thankfully, not at all: Casio's new Bluetooth watch concept syncs with a smartphone in ways that make sense and don't overreach. It uses an ultra-low-power version of Bluetooth (a gadget using this new type of Bluetooth can last for a year on a normal watch battery) to sync with an Android smartphone, mostly for notifications. Got a new phone call, email, or text message? You'll get a little beep and the name of the sender or caller on your wrist, even if the phone is in your bag or deep in a pocket on silent mode. It also has a "track my phone" feature that'll stop the undignified practice of asking for a friend's phone to call your own, only to find it somehow sitting next to the toilet.

The Bluetooth watch is a "concept" because it hasn't been officially announced in a product yet--but in our hands-on experience, it's perfectly functional and ready for release. You might see this in a G-Shock watch later this year.

Motorola Atrix 4G

John Mahoney

It's a phone! It's a laptop! It's a desktop!. Moto's powerful dual-core Tegra 2-powered Atrix presents a glimpse of a pretty exciting future--when smartphones are just as (if not more) powerful than some desktop and laptop systems from just a year or two back. Mated with a HDMI desktop dock or a nifty laptop shell (seen here), the Atrix gives you a solid Android smartphone experience on top of something more resembling a desktop.