With its tennis ball shape, the robot companion Ballie did not leave spectators of CES 2020 indifferent. Developed by Samsung, this personal assistant, like BB-8, a droid from the Star Wars universe, is able to communicate with connected objects in a home. This ranges from opening the shutters to switching on a robot vacuum cleaner in the event of detection of waste on the ground, including switching on the television. Ballie, powered by AI, also has a camera and facial recognition system to track users and monitor every corner of an apartment. Samsung has not released a release date or price.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7N5UDZX7TQ
A smartphone with a round screen
The Cyrcle phone also has a circular design, as the name suggests. “A non-rectangular phone for non-rectangular people,” says dTOOR, the company that develops the device. This smartphone, which runs on Android, aims to better fit in the hand and in the pockets of the pants. Another special feature is the presence of two 3.5mm Jack sockets. An assumed bias, at a time when manufacturers, Apple the first, is trying to get rid of this audio output. No release date has been brought forward and the model presented at CES is still in the prototype stage.
The Cyrcle phone promises to hold better in hand than rectangular phones. (Source: dTOOR)
If the concept seems surprising, it is not entirely new. Already in 2015, the Californian company Monohm presented its smartphone equipped with a round screen and operating under Firefox OS. A test that does not seem to have been renewed, the company’s website having not been updated for three years.
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