Wrapping up CES 2012

To wrap up our series of highlights from CES 2012, we leave you with a few of the more interesting miscellaneous devices and products:

3-D on the iPhone: A Canadian company called Spatial View was displaying a 3DeeSlide iPhone case that contains a plastic lens that can be attached to the phone to create 3-D images. It costs only $29.95 & produced very impressive 3-D effects. They will also be selling a similar 3DeeScreen for laptops, initially priced at $129.95 for a 15.6” screen. It’s a good concept, limited only by the relatively few videos that must be specially created for this system, accessible through their free app.

Solar Kindle Cover: We also couldn’t resist the concept behind the Solar Kindle cover, which is the first Kindle cover that is completely solar-powered. Listing at $79.95, it carries a guarantee to provide 3 months of unplugged Kindle usage within a “normal sunlight environment,” with one hour of sunlight creating 3 days of reading time. If it’s fully charged, the built-in LED reading light can be used for 50 hours without having to use the Kindle’s main battery. Overall, it seems like quite a deal, although it is priced about the same as the lowest-priced Kindle itself.

Finally we give you our choice for “Product with the Lowest Commercial Potential.” It was a TV from Haier with a transparent screen. Other than being some kind of significant technological achievement, we can’t imagine anyone wanting to buy this TV. It’s as if the engineers forgot that viewers would actually want to clearly see the image itself, rather than whatever happens to be present behind the screen. But high concept is just part of the continuing fascination with the CES.