The best, brightest and most baffling of IFA 2015
With Samsung pulling its traditional IFA Note announcement and doing it earlier than usual, you might have been forgiven for thinking that the German tech show was a little light on showstoppers.
Well, alright, you're probably not wrong - but even though we were reliant on Sony and the Chinese phone brands to supply us with phones to goggle over, plenty of others took their chance to inject some terrific tech into our collective consciousness.
Okay, so these days MWC is probably a more significant tech show, but IFA still has plenty to amuse, bemuse and confuse in virtually equal measures.
So without further ado here's our must see list from IFA 2015 - and yes we included 3D printed food.
- Check out our predictions for IFA 2016.
Sony Xperia Z5 Premium
Of course, the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium has to make the cut - the moment someone starts talking about the pointlessness of a 4K screen you just know that you want to see it for yourself.
That screen aside, the host of new features that accompany it make the Z5 Premium a proper flagship phone that separates you from the mass of iPhone and Samsung Galaxy toters.
Samsung UHD Blu-ray
And while we're on the topic of Samsung; even though it parked its S6 Edge+ and Note 5 announcements in its own unpacked showcase in August it did at least keep some of its powder dry in the shape of the Gear S2. On the other hand, perhaps the first Samsung UHD Blu-ray player is even more drool-worthy.
That means you will be able to watch a small but burgeoning selection of the next generation of spinning media in a resolution so darn nice you'll feel reality looks a bit pixelated in comparison.
XYZ 3D food printer
We got an email about 3D printed lollipops this week and were nonplussed, but when we found out about 3D printed pizzas we were first in line.
That may sound fickle, but there's just something about the concept of the Italian mainstay that appeals to us. That said, we're a bit confused as to how XYZ's 2016-bound food printer is going to print the pineapple.
Philips AmbiLux TV
The Microsoft Illumiroom tech made so much sense we're still annoyed it's not in our living rooms yet, so we're rather glad to see those masters of light Philips bringing their own take on wall-lit entertainment with its AmbiLux TV.
Of course Philips has been doing the Ambilight for some time and this seems like a natural extension - with nine rear-arrayed pico-projectors being used to beam the same images displayed on the Ultra HD TV screen onto the wall behind.
Huawei Mate S with force touch
Huawei have been on the cusp of doing something really interesting for a while and we will caveat the whole of this entry because force touch is only available on a limited subset of the subset of a subset of the Huawei Mate S phone range. Which might well mean that only a few people get to actually experience this themselves
That said, it is nice to see this kind of feature rolled out by manufacturers that aren't as familiar as the Samsung / Apple / HTC regulars.
Acer Revo Build Series mini PC
This PC oddity, the Acer Revo Build Series mini PC, is made up of modular 'Blocks' which means that the 125x125mm box can be customised with all manner of different options and the only base components are an Intel Celeron or Pentium chip with Intel HD Graphics and system memory.
It is out in October with prices starting at €199 and there are apparently plenty of 'Blocks' released in due course. If not you get a tasteful orange and black door stop...
Samsung SleepSense
Okay - we're not sure if gamifying sleeping is fair, given that it utterly breaks our 'snooze you lose' ethos. That said we can absolutely guarantee you that we'll absolutely be aiming to score highly when Samsung's latest piece of kit crawls under your mattress and listens to you sleep [shudder].
SleepSense is a sensor you place under your mattress, pair with an app and then you can monitor your sleep directly from your phone. You're given a sleep score calculated by your total sleep time, sleep efficiency, the time it took to fall asleep, number of times you woke up, number of times you got up, time in REM and time in deep sleep.
Panasonic audio rug
Panasonic wins what we're loosely terming the 'batsh*t mental' award for IFA with its 6.1 audio enabled rug. Yes - a rug with speakers built in, we were floored. Sorry.
It's only a prototype for now, but expect the 'feet on' review soon.
Samsung Gear S2 Classic
We're, ahem, watching out for how well this does, with Samsung desperate for its latest offering to compete with market debutant and inevitably immediate leader, Apple.
The Samsung Gear S2 Classic certainly got a bit of a boost in the styling department, but is this going to convince the masses to join the wearable revolution?
Asus VivoStick
With design styling that's as much sex toy meets kazoo as PC on a stick Asus is hoping that its latest ware will allow us all to add a bit of Windows 10 to our TV lives.
But, at this point, pause for a second to imagine how this sizeable Asus VivoStick will look sticking out of an HDMI cable on your TV...
