So much of what we see at CES tends to be focused on technological innovation for the sake of innovation, or obvious attempts to tap into whatever trend is gripping the internet's attention that year. In the last few shows, though, there has been a heartening increase in attention to assistive products that are designed to help improve the lives of people with disabilities and other different needs. At CES 2024, I was glad to see more development in the accessibility category, with many offerings appearing to be more thoughtfully designed in addition to being clever. It's so easy to get distracted by the shiny, eye-catching, glamorous and weird tech at CES, but I wanted to take the time to give due attention to some of my favorite accessibility products here in Las Vegas.

GyroGlove

Before I even packed my bags, numerous coworkers had sent me the link to GyroGlove's website after it had been recognized as an honoree for several CES Innovation awards. The device is a hand-stabilizing glove that uses gyroscopic force to help those with hand tremors minimize the shakes. Because the demo unit at the show floor was too large for me, and, more importantly, I don't have hand tremors, I couldn't accurately assess the glove's effectiveness. 

But I spoke with a person with Parkinson's Disease at the booth, who had been wearing one for a few days. She said the GyroGlove helped her perform tasks like buttoning up a shirt more easily, and that she intended to buy one for herself. At $5,899, the device is quite expensive, which is the sad state of assistive products these days. But GyroGlove's makers said they're in talks with some insurance providers in the US, which could lead to it being covered for those in America who could benefit from it. That's one of the biggest reasons that led us to name GyroGlove one of our winners for CES 2024. 

Photo by Cherlynn Low / Engadget

MouthPad

I did not think I'd be looking deep into a person's mouth and up their nose at CES 2024, but here we are. Sometimes you have to do strange things to check out unconventional gadgets. The MouthPad is as unusual as it gets. It's a tongue-operated controller for phones, tablets and laptops, and basically anything that will accept a Bluetooth mouse input. The components include a touchpad mounted onto the palette of what's essentially a retainer, as well as a battery and Bluetooth radio. 

As odd as the concept sounds, it actually could be a boon for people who aren't able to use their limbs, since your tongue, as a muscle, can offer more precise movement and control than, say, your eyes. If you're feeling apprehensive about sticking a device inside your mouth, it might be helpful to know that the battery is from the same company that's made them for medical-grade implants, while the rest of the dental tray is made from a resin that's commonly used in aligners and bite guards. The product is currently available as an early access package that includes setup and calibration assistance, with a new version (with longer battery life) slated for launch later this year.

OrCam Hear

Assistive tech company OrCam won our Best of CES award for accessibility in 2022, so I was eager to check out what it had in store this year. I wasn't disappointed. The company had a few updated products to show off, but the most intriguing was a new offering for people with hearing loss. The OrCam Hear system is a three-part package consisting of a pair of earbuds, a dongle for your phone and an app. Together, the different parts work to filter out background noise while identifying and isolating specific speakers in a multi-party conversation.

At a demo during a noisy event at CES 2024, I watched and listened as the voices of selected people around me became clear or muffled as company reps dragged their icons in or out of my field of hearing. I was especially impressed when the system was able to identify my editor next to me and let me choose to focus on or filter out his voice. 

Audio Radar

If you're a gamer, you'll know how important audio cues can sometimes be for a successful run. Developers frequently design the sound environment for their games to be not only rich and immersive, but to also contain hints about approaching enemies or danger. Players who are hard of hearing can miss out on this, and it's not fair for them to be disadvantaged due to a disability. 

A product called Audio Radar can help turn sound signals into visual cues, so that gamers with hearing loss can "see the sound," according to the company. The setup is fairly simple. A box plugs into a gaming console to interpret the audio output and convert it into lights. A series of RGB light bars surround the screen, and display different colors depending on the type of sound coming from the respective direction they represent.

CES 2024 saw not just Audio Radar's official launch, but was also where the company introduced its SDK for game developers to create custom visual cues for players who are hard of hearing. The company's founder and CEO Tim Murphy told Engadget that it's partnering with Logitech, with the gaming accessory maker "providing support as we further develop our product and design our go-to-market strategy." 

Photo by Cherlynn Low / Engadget

Transcribe Glass

Google Glass was resurrected at CES 2024. Sort of. A new product called Transcribe Glass is a small heads up display you can attach to any frames, and the result looks a lot like the long-dead Google device. It connects to your phone and uses that device's onboard processing to transcribe what it hears, then projects the text onto the tiny transparent display hovering above the eye. You'll be able to resize the font, adjust the scrolling speed and choose your language model of choice, since TranscribeGlass uses third-party APIs for translation. Yes, it converts foreign languages into one you understand, too. 

The company is targeting year's end for launch, and hoping to offer the device at $199 to start. When I tried it on at the show floor, I was surprised by how light and adjustable the hardware was. I had to squint slightly to see the captions, and was encountering some Bluetooth lag, but otherwise the transcriptions took place fairly quickly and appeared to be accurate. The TranscribeGlass should last about eight hours on a charge, which seems reasonable given all that it's doing. 

Samsung's subtitle accessibility features

Though we didn't catch a demo of this in person, Samsung did briefly mention a "sign language feature in Samsung Neo QLED" that "can be easily controlled with gestures for the hearing impaired, and an Audio Subtitle feature [that] turns text subtitles into spoken words in real-time for those with low vision." We weren't able to find this at the show, but the concept is certainly meaningful. Plus, the fact that Samsung TVs have mainstream appeal means these features could be more widely available that most of the niche products we've covered in this roundup.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

The big news in tech right now is CES in Las Vegas and our team has been on the ground all week checking out the new products. A surprising amount of what we saw is already available for purchase, but very few of those things are discounted. As for what is on sale, this turned out to be a decent week for deals on current model devices, with some hitting all-time lows. The Google Pixel 8 smartphones are back to Black Friday lows, as is one of our favorite fitness trackers. A set of Tile trackers is cheaper than ever and the Apple Watch Series 9 has returned to $329. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.  

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

The tenth season of the FIA-sanctioned all-electric Formula E racing series goes green this weekend with the opening round in Mexico City on January 13. This will be the second year of the series using the ultra-efficient Gen3 car, and aside from a number of teams swapping out one or both drivers, there aren't any huge changes from last year. However, Formula E's new TV deal should make races easier, and less frustrating, to watch in the US. 

Formula E, now streaming on Roku and Paramount+

After being broadcast in the US on CBS Sports, Formula E announced a new TV deal last June to expand availability of live events to Roku and Paramount+. 11 races will be streamed live exclusively on The Roku Channel for free. There will also be race previews, replays and Formula E's version of Drive To Survive (Unplugged) available to stream on Roku. There's a new post-race highlights show too, called Recharge, to catch you up on any of the action you might've missed. All of the Formula E content on The Roku channel will be available for free. The other E-Prix will air on CBS and stream live on Paramount+, except for any events that happen overnight in the US. Those will broadcast on Formula E's former home, CBS Sports Network. 

Even though The Roku Channel is an ad-supported network, Roku Media's head of sports Joe Franzetta said there won't be any ads interrupting the races. Instead, the company is working with Formula E to show those during pre- and post-race programs. Since this is the first season of the partnership, he didn't rule out changes in the future. 

"For our first season with Formula E, we will run the races themselves as an ad-free experience," he explained. "We will continue to explore ad formats, such as picture-in-picture advertising as our partnership progresses."

Handout via Getty Images

Races shown on CBS and Paramount+ may still cut to commercial during live action, according to Formula E's chief media officer Aarti Dabas. This was a huge headache for viewers in the US last season as major race action took place at multiple E-Prix while the broadcast was away on a commercial. During the Portland race, the network went to ads during the last four laps. In Rome, viewers missed a massive wreck. Dabas says Formula E is aware this can be frustrating and it constantly trying to improve the experience, including expanded use of picture-in-picture or "double box" so that live action is still viewable. 

"We can understand it can frustrating for fans when they miss key action," Dabas said. "We learn with each broadcast and ensure steps are taken to provide a better viewing experience to fans."

Formula E will make archived races available to stream for free seven days after the E-Prix. Those will only be available on the series' website via the library of past races it launched last November. Currently, there are no plans to make that available to stream on other platforms, but doing so on the Formula E website only requires you to sign up for a free account. 

Attack Charge pit stops still aren't ready for races

The Race reported earlier this month that Attack Charge stops aren't expected to be used at the first race in Mexico City. This is yet another delay in bringing pit stops back to the all-electric series. Early on, drivers would have to change cars in order to make it through a race. The technology eventually progressed to the point where the combination of initial charge and re-gen during races gives teams enough power to make it until the end. As it stands, drivers only pit in the event of damage or a problem, which almost certainly dooms them to finishing at the back of the pack. 

Formula E was supposed to trial Attack Charge stops at select races last season, but the infrastructure wasn't ready in time. According to The Race, there are still issues with having enough equipment for every team, a problem that limited use of the setups at preseason testing in Spain last November. The earliest the pitstops could debut is at the E-Prix in Diriyah at the end of the month. There are concerns about how the 30-35-second stops will affect the quality of the racing, since the street circuit nature of Formula E usually means tightly packed cars. 

Following last week's terrifying incident in which a Boeing 737 Max 9 lost a cabin panel mid-flight, the Federal Aviation Administration says it will have more oversight of the company's production and manufacturing. The FAA is also carrying out an investigation into Boeing following the incident, which led to the agency grounding around 171 of the company's 737 Max 9 planes.

The FAA says it will audit the 737 Max 9 production line and its suppliers to make sure Boeing is complying with quality protocols. It notes that the results will determine whether further audits are needed. In addition, the FAA will more carefully monitor in-service events concerning the 737 Max 9. It will also conduct an assessment of safety risks related to delegated authority and quality oversight. In the latter case, the agency will look into whether it makes more sense to have independent third parties oversee Boeing's quality control and inspections.

"It is time to re-examine the delegation of authority and assess any associated safety risks," FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said in a statement. "The grounding of the 737-9 and the multiple production-related issues identified in recent years require us to look at every option to reduce risk." As for when the 737 Max 9 might return to service, the FAA says that timeline will be determined by "the safety of the flying public, not speed."

There were no major injuries reported as a result of last Friday's incident on an Alaska Airlines plane. Boeing's 737 Max line was previously grounded for nearly two years after two crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people.

Nowadays, there are already plenty of choices when it comes to pet trackers, and some can even monitor heart rate, but apparently none could detect atrial fibrillation (AFib) until now. At CES 2024, GPS tracker specialist Invoxia unveiled the Minitailz, the world's first pet tracker that can keep an eye out for early heart disease symptoms on your cats or dogs. Together with other vital stats and activity log, the companion app then uses conversational generative AI to generate easy-to-read reports on your pets.

According to the French company, Minitailz is able to track respiratory and heart vitals with an accuracy of 97 to 99 percent, thanks to its advanced biometric sensors combined with AI. Using deep learning algorithms, the set of data is then used to spot digital biomarkers that indicate stress, aging and pathologies. The device can also differentiate the types of movements, such as walks, runs and zoomies, as well as alerting you when your pets wander beyond your preset geofences.

Photo by Richard Lai / Engadget

The Minitailz module houses a built-in SIM card for LTE-M connectivity, which enables real-time tracking in conjunction with GPS. This can be attached to any pet collar, which is an advantage over many competing devices that are stuck inside a physical neckband, according to Invoxia.

The Minitailz is already available for dogs via Invoxia's website for $99, followed by a cat version due in March for the same price. You'll also need to buy a subscription starting from $8.30 per month.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

In 2023, passkeys popped up all over the place. Big tech companies embraced them, which trickled down to smaller firms, until passkeys became a ubiquitous part of any security conversation. To give passkeys the credit they deserve, top security experts agree that the new way of logging in comes with greater security. Like every other security advancement from SMS-based multifactor authentication to hardware authentication keys, however, adoption lags because people still hesitate to make the leap.

Passkeys let you log in without a password. Instead, it creates a digital authentication credential, or a "key," between your device and where you want to login to verify your identity. In practice, this usually looks like a fingerprint or face scan to prove that its really you, and the rest happens on the cryptographic backend. Support for the new way of logging in skyrocketed in 2023, going from “a handful of sites with no users to hundreds of sites with billions of accounts” that could potentially log in using passkeys, according to Andrew Shikiar, executive director of the FIDO Alliance, one of the organizations driving passkey adoption.

To understand the scope of end user passkey adoption, I asked around a bit. Companies that touted passkey compliance, like password manager Bitwarden, declined to share specific figures about adoption. Competitor Dashlane’s chief product officer Donald Hasson shared that the company is seeing about 20,000 passkey-based sign-ins per month, “with growth doubling quarter over quarter.” It’s impressive, but worth noting that it still appears to be a small fraction of actual Dashlane users.

Travel company Kayak told Engadget that it switched completely over to passkeys at the end of last year, which is certainly one way to push people on board. Users can either use single-sign on, passkeys or an email to log on. There are still some legacy password users, but they’re being fazed out by being pushed to switch to the other options when they attempt to log on, said Matthias Keller, chief scientist and senior vice president of technology at KAYAK. “Sign in with Google and sign in with Apple are very popular because they're probably still the easiest experience if you're already logged into these systems,” Keller said. “For new account creation, we see, I would say, around two-thirds of users taking the passkey option.” Still, he declined to share specific login figures. We reached out to Adobe, Apple, GitHub, LinkedIn, Nintendo, PayPal, Roblox, Robinhood, TikTok, and Uber about passkey implementation, but none have responded by time of publication.

Shikiar sees the switch to passkeys playing out like biometrics (e.g. fingerprint and face ID). Switching to passkeys aligns more with the seamless single action you get from just looking at your phone to unlock it, not the clunky steps of MFA that involve another device or extra time to access an account, Shikiar said. The problem, in short, is that we’re stuck in our ways. We love our passwords, no matter how many times we’re told that they’re fallible. The username and password combination has been our comfort zone for logging in since the dawn of computer accounts, and users will drag their heels to avoid any change. We saw this with the slow adoption of multifactor authentication that still falls behind today.

Users are slow to adopt passkeys, and companies are still catching up, too. It is getting easier for smaller companies to adopt passkeys because they no longer need to build out support in-house. For example, password manager 1Password launched Passage last year as a way for businesses to support passkey authentication without having to DIY the infrastructure. But while passkeys have caught on in principle, a year of transformative passkey adoption is still far away.

Security analyst and consultant Cole Grolmus detailed why consumers have been slow to adopt passkeys in October. He set out to change as many logins as possible from passwords to passkeys and, despite being all in on passkeys in principle, ran into roadblock after roadblock. Out of the 374 apps Grolmus uses, only 17 supported passkeys, which led him to conclude we’ll be stuck with passwords for the foreseeable future. “The hype is very well merited,” Grolmus told Engadget. “At the same time, I think you just have to be realistic about the amount of time that it takes for any technological change, particularly ones involving consumer adoption, to play out.”

Still, passkeys could mark a shift in personal security if we give it time to play out. New ways of doing things often struggle to replace the entrenched patterns we’ve gotten used to, even if the new paradigm is superior on paper. At least passkeys smooth out the login experience, as opposed to adding another security hurdle like we saw with MFA. Once people see that passkeys can be a “wonderful experience,” they’ll make the switch, said Grolmus.

If you have the chance to switch to passkeys, it's worth a shot. If you use PayPal, Shopify, Uber, Roblox or other big name companies (the list goes way on), you can get it set up today, but keep in mind, most services probably don't have the option, and might not for a while.

The technology industry loves to breathlessly sell you its latest and greatest and best-est new idea. Pitches have to be fast and aggressive because if you took more than a second to think about what they were selling, you might not reach for your wallet. As flashy as the products at CES 2024 in Las Vegas can be, they often have one fatal weakness. Which is to not have any sort of answer to the most important question of them all: “y tho?”

One: LG’s wireless transparent OLED TV

Photo by Billy Steele/Engadget

LG came to CES showing off a 77-inch wireless 4K OLED TV that is transparent for some reason. You can play footage of a singer, or an aquarium, or other screensaver-y type things as a talking piece in your home. But it turns out, being transparent isn’t great for actually watching TV, so it ships with a roll-out black background to make your transparent TV no longer transparent. I can imagine this used as an advertising screen or as an installation in a museum or corporate office. But why would you spend so much money on a TV where its key feature is an impediment to its proper function?

Two: Kohler PureWash E930 Bidet Seat

Kohler

It’s important that devices are designed with accessibility as a primary concern, rather than tacked on at the end. Nobody would hate on a voice-activated toilet that could help folks with access needs get through their day. But Kohler’s bidet seat is deeply integrated with Alexa or Google Home. Why on earth would you spend more than two grand to give Amazon or Google detailed insights into your bathroom habits?

Three: Lockly Visage facial-scanning smart lock

Lockly

Lockly’s Visage smart lock uses facial recognition to allow access to your home, opening the door if it spots you approaching. Setting aside the hideous privacy and security implications of smart locks, a thing you should never connect to the internet, this is a mad idea. Why would you leave something as important as access to your home at the whims of a sensor or some unproven gadget?

Four: Urtopia’s ChatGPT-enabled e-bike

Urtopia

The Urtopia Fusion is an e-bike equipped with a 540Wh battery promising 75 miles of range, a beefy mid-drive motor and air suspension forks. It is also, for some godforsaken reason, equipped with ChatGPT which, the company says will enable you to “talk” to your bike. Its custom assistant will, when asked, help you “explore new routes,” “get real-time information” and even “engage in entertaining conversations.” Why on earth would you want to have a conversation with your bicycle when you should be focusing on literally anything else.

Five: Hyundai S-A2 air taxi concept

Hyundai

Hyundai showed off a new VTOL air taxi concept that, it’s hoped, would take people on short hops of up to 40 miles. It can reach a top speed of 120 miles per hour and will probably never ever come to the real world. After all, why would you go to the trouble of reengineering the whole world to accommodate this disaster waiting to happen?

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

Nissan has unveiled its latest Nismo electric vehicle. The Ariya Nismo is based on the Ariya e-4orce and it's scheduled to be available in two trims. The B6 has a 66kWh battery, while the B9 has a 91kWh version. With Nismo being Nissan's performance division, it's no real surprise that the EV will offer a little more power than other Ariyas. The B6 model will have 362 hp and 413 lb-ft while the B9 is set to have 429 hp and 443 lb-ft, though Road and Track points out that these figures might change before the electric SUV hits the road.

The Nismo team is said to have tuned the acceleration and added an exclusive driving mode that aims to maximize response. Nissan claims that the tuning, combined with the four-wheel-control tech of e-4orce and tires mounted on rigid 20-inch aluminum wheels, will help deliver "superior stability and turn-in ability as well as better line-tracing and enhanced cornering ability at high speeds."

Nismo also added an optional Formula E-esque sound to the Ariya Nismo for additional "excitement," Nissan said. The automaker added that the cabin has a premium feel with specially designed Nismo seats and trim.

This isn't quite the first Nissan EV that the Nismo team has worked on. It debuted the Leaf Nismo RC concept at the 2011 New York Auto Show. A second-gen model went into production in Japan in 2018. Nissan has yet to announce pricing and a release window for Nismo's new flagship EV.

The latest ZenBook 14 OLED from ASUS has most of the hardware we'd want in a modern ultraportable: Intel's new Core Ultra chips, a gorgeous OLED screen and a decent number of ports. But after testing ASUS's laptops for years, and seeing how much progress it's made with the Zephyrus G gaming line, it's surprising that the company's premium Zenbook hasn't evolved much lately.

While it's a solid step into the "AI PC" era, thanks to its NPU for accelerating AI tasks, the new ZenBook 14 is also a reminder that ASUS is lagging behind Apple and Microsoft when it comes to premium design. It doesn't feel nearly as sturdy or sleek as the redesigned MacBook Air, and it lacks the refinement of the Surface Laptop. The ZenBook 14 OLED looks fine — it’s as if you asked an AI to generate an image of a generic ultraportable.

On the plus side, ASUS is delivering far more bang for the computing buck than Apple and most other competitors. You can snag the ZenBook 14 OLED with a Core Ultra 7 155H chip, 32GB of RAM and 1TB SSD for $1,300 at Best Buy. An M2 MacBook Air for the same price comes with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD (and it can only be upgraded to a maximum of 24GB of RAM). ASUS also includes a decent selection of ports, including a USB-A connection, two USB-C Thunderbolt ports, an HDMI socket and a microSD card slot. You'd have to step up to the pricier 14-inch MacBook Pro to get some of those ports on a Mac.

While ASUS is touting the Core Ultra's AI capabilities as the big upgrade this year, I'm still far more compelled by the Zenbook 14's glorious 14-inch 3K OLED screen. It's wonderfully bright and colorful when it needs to be, and it can hit those inky dark blacks that we love from OLED displays. This year the Zenbook's OLED screen can also reach a 120Hz refresh rate for smoother scrolling, which is practically a requirement for premium laptops these days.

Images and video practically leap off of the ZenBook 14's OLED screen, which makes it ideal for binging Netflix or catching up on your YouTube queue. And thanks to the laptop's incredibly thin bezels, it's almost as if the display is floating in the air — so much so, I stopped noticing how dull the rest of the ZenBook's design feels. I also wish there was a bit more spring and depth to its keyboard, and that its trackpad didn’t feel so stiff.

But back to Intel's Core Ultra chip. Our review unit, which was equipped with a Core Ultra 7 155H, 32GB of RAM and Intel Arc graphics, delivered some healthy gains over ultraportables running Intel's 13th-gen chips. It scored 1,000 points higher in PCMark 10 compared to the ZenBook S 13 running a Core i7-1355U, and its Arc graphics were almost twice as fast as the S 13's Intel Xe graphics in the 3DMark Wildlife Extreme benchmark.

While it's far from a gaming machine, the ZenBook 14 OLED's Arc graphics also reached between 30fps to 49fps while playing Halo Infinite in 1080p with low graphics. Streaming games over Xbox cloud gaming delivered far better results: Halo Infinite and Forza Motorsport played like a dream over Wi-Fi in my office. Of course, that's more a testament to the ZenBook's wireless hardware than its graphics.

Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

Intel's Core Ultra chips are also focused on a lot more than just raw horsepower (Intel's internal benchmarks even show it getting bested by a 13th-gen chip in some single-threaded tasks, a trade-off it made to deliver better AI and graphics performance). The addition of an NPU means the ZenBook 14 OLED can handle AI workloads in the future; developers like Adobe and Audacity have announced they're working on AI-powered features in their apps. If you're not using those apps, there's not much to do with an NPU in Windows yet except for Microsoft's Studio Effects, which lets you blur backgrounds and automatically keep yourself in frame during video chats. And notably, Studio Effects delivers far better background diffusion and person detection than the built-in alternatives in Zoom and Google Hangouts.

Buying an AI PC like the ZenBook 14 OLED is more a bet on the future rather than an immediate speed upgrade. But based on the industry support we've seen from Microsoft and other big tech firms, having an NPU-equipped PC could pay off soon. Just imagine Microsoft giving Copilot offline capabilities to make it more responsive, similar to Apple's push to make Siri available offline (something also powered by the company's Neural Engine). Eventually, you may be able to speak aloud to Copilot and have it instantly find files or locate a specific setting on your PC.

I won't blame you if you're not excited by the future of AI PCs. When Macs switched over to Apple Silicon chips, there were dramatic performance improvements over Intel's older hardware, along with the additional benefits of the Neural Engine and far better battery life. Windows users, instead, can only hope and pray that developers actually tap into NPUs.

Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

For now, though, you can look forward to some decent battery life from Intel's Core Ultra chips. The ZenBook 14 OLED lasted 12 hours and 43 minutes in the PCMark 10 Modern Office battery benchmark, which was longer than any other PC we've tested. During a recent trip, it held up for around a day and a half for general productivity work (lots of web browsing, writing, photo editing and a few video chats). ASUS is still lagging behind Apple, though — the M2 MacBook Air lasted 16 hours and 30 minutes in our benchmark. Fan noise also remains a problem: Its fans spun up noticeably during a podcast recording, whereas the fan-less MacBook Air is completely silent even under heavy workloads.

After spending a few weeks with the ZenBook 14 OLED, I’ve grown to love its OLED display and I’m intrigued by the possibilities of the Core Ultra chip’s NPU. It’s just a shame to see those features stuck in a relatively humdrum package. If you care more about getting a good deal than style, though, this ZenBook is tough to beat.

It's almost time for the first Samsung Unpacked event of the year. We're almost guaranteed to get the first official details about the Galaxy S24 smartphones, which are almost certainly going to have on-device generative AI features. You'll be able to watch Samsung Unpacked at 1PM ET on January 17 on the company's website or YouTube channel.

What to expect at Samsung Unpacked

Samsung hasn't exactly been subtle about what's on deck for Unpacked. The company has been teasing something called Galaxy AI for mobile devices across several promo videos:

Yeah, it's pretty safe to say AI will be a focal point of the showcase. In November, Samsung revealed its Gauss generative AI models. These can handle tasks such as translation, coding assistance and turning text into images. The S24 lineup is also expected to run on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, which can handle many generative AI requests on-device. As such, at least some GAI features won't need to go through the cloud, meaning that they should be processed more quickly.

As for the new smartphones, there likely won't be many changes on the hardware front beyond spec bumps. That said, the S24 Ultra is slated to have a fully flat display along with a titanium casing, according to a leaked spec sheet. Just in case there was any doubt about fresh Galaxy phones being in the offing, Samsung already has a pre-order page up for "the newest phone from Galaxy."

It's less certain whether we'll see any hardware other than smartphones at the event, though some rumors have indicated the presence of a Galaxy Fit 3 fitness tracker and/or Galaxy Book Pro laptops. This being Samsung, there's always at least a small chance of seeing new tablets, smartwatches and earbuds too.