CES 2024 has been a huge success with a range of new product reveals across many subsections of tech, from smart home devices to laptops and, of course, smartphones.
Whether you’re excited about the new ROG Phone or fascinated by the Rabbit R1 AI-enabled handheld, the annual expo has something for everyone but with so much crammed into CES 2024, how do you know what’s genuinely exciting?
That’s where we at Trusted Reviews come in; we’ve spent the week trawling the show floor, and here’s our ultimate round-up of the five biggest and most exciting mobile announcements of CES 2024.
Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro
Asus kicked off CES 2024 with a surprising reveal of the ROG Phone 8 Pro, not only because the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate has only been out for just over seven months but because it’s a complete rethink of Asus’ gaming phone.
That’s because the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro sports a notably toned-down look compared to its predecessor, with a glass rear and matte finish making it look more like a regular flagship phone than the likes of the in-your-face RedMagic 9 Pro. There are also other quality of life improvements like IP68 dust and water resistance, and much smaller bezels that elevate the design of the phone.
Throw in the latest tech like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and up to a whopping 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage and you’ve got what looks to be a pretty capable gaming phone, and crucially, one that doesn’t look like a gaming phone.
TCL Nxtpaper 14 Pro
The TCL NXTPAPER 14 Pro might look like your average tablet at a glance, but it’s actually one of the more unique offerings on the market.
That’s largely down to the inclusion of TCL’s NXTPAPER 3.0 technology, allowing the paper-like display to switch between a full-colour display and a black-and-white reading mode similar to that of an e-reader. It’s essentially a hybrid between an iPad and a Kindle, switching between the two with the press of a dedicated button on the tablet’s chassis.
That’s not all either; it boasts a 14-inch 2.8K display that should be excellent for movie-watching, while the MediaTek Dimensity 8200 chipset and healthy 12GB of RAM should deliver the power that most users are after. Throw in a stylus and you’ve got a pretty impressive Android tablet!
Samsung Flex In & Out Concept
While not a phone that’ll appear on the market any time soon, Samsung showcased a rather interesting foldable concept at CES 2024 dubbed the Flex In & Out Concept.
At a glance, it looks similar to Samsung’s current Z Flip 5 with one key exception: you can fold it in both directions. In fact, it can be folded open, folded shut and even bent over backwards to move the internal screen to the outside of the device.
It’s useful tech because it allows Samsung to ditch the inferior cover display, instead using half of the screen when folded backwards. The question is, will we see this in the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6? It seems unlikely, but it’s also unlikely the last we’ve seen of this tech from Samsung.
Clicks Keyboard for iPhone
I doubt many of us would’ve had a keyboard case for the iPhone on our CES 2024 bingo cards, but here we are, and it actually looks pretty impressive.
Reminiscent of the days when physical keyboard adorned phones from the likes of BlackBerry, the $139 Clicks Keyboard for iPhone case literally adds a physical keyboard to the bottom of your iPhone with real clicky buttons that provide a tactile feel not available from touchscreen typing.
It also automatically hides the on-screen keyboard when connected to an iPhone, meaning you get to see more of the text, email or WhatsApp message you’re replying to. It’s set to be available this year for the iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, and because it plugs directly into your iPhone, there’s no need to charge it either.
Rabbit R1
A big theme at CES 2024 is AI, and that’s perfectly embodied by the Rabbit R1, a totally new product showcased at this year’s event. It’s not technically a smartphone, but it certainly seems like an emerging category of product that could one day replace our phones so it’s certainly worth noting here.
The Rabbit R1 is a plastic device that looks a little like a Playdate (it’s manufactured by the same company) and it’s focused solely on AI. Rather than accessing apps from the touchscreen yourself, you use the push-to-talk button on the side to tell your artificial assistant what you want to do. The AI can then simply execute that task.
According to the company, the R1 can perform tasks like scheduling appointments, setting reminders, playing music and sending messages – but there’s much more to it than that.
What makes the R1 so impressive is that it runs on an algorithm that teaches itself to use apps, meaning there’s no need for app developers to support a specific API – and you can even use an online portal to teach it more advanced tasks like removing an image background in Photoshop. This theoretically means there’s no limit on what the R1 could do.
It’s set for release this year with a $199 price tag and no monthly subscription.
