Event Report

Last week Motorola revealed its much-awaited foldable smartphone, built on the foundations of its once-iconic RAZR V3 clamshell design. As one of the lucky few to have hands-on time with the device prior to launch, two words sum up my experience: painful excitement.

IFA is often considered to be the CES tradeshow of Europe, where global consumer electronics vendors would showcase the commercialized products they previously previewed at CES. Held in Berlin every year in early September, the show would get little attention from the mobile world but that has been changing lately as smartphone vendors shift their focus from overly mature markets like the U.S. to EMEA markets.

In an era of smartphones and tablets, schools are beginning to change their curriculum, taking the focus off skills such as cursive writing. As voice-based interfaces become more pervasive, what additional changes will the future bring?

I’m starting to get concerned that the marketing hype surrounding 5G will struggle to meet the reality of the situation. Beyond any technical reservations (we’ll get to those) there seems to be a growing sentiment that 5G will cause fundamental upheavals in society and business – the like of which have never been seen before. Consider me a skeptic.

The refrigerator demo was going well. The combination of cameras inside the fridge and artificial intelligence (AI) metaphorically wrapped around each item meant the external screen we were looking at not only showed what was inside, but also tagged each item with its appropriate food category. The demonstrator looked relieved and, in a moment of candid honesty, said, “Phew. Earlier the fridge labeled that broccoli as a peach and the bread as a watermelon.”