What does innovation even mean anymore?

IFA Berlin, or Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin is one of the oldest industrial exhibitions in Germany, and every year companies from around the world sign up to show off their latest products and innovations. But what exactly does an overused word like “innovation” signify today?

Are there any more surprises?

IFA, Europe’s largest consumer electronics trade show, just wrapped up last month. On the show floor, we were treated to an endless parade of the latest shiny gadgets and devices, including everything from smart fridges with 29-inch Windows 10 tablets on their doors to freakishly thin ultrabooks.

And then there were the booths themselves, which were clearly designed to dazzle and impress. LG even created an OLED tunnel where visitors were treated to all sorts of wondrous vistas, including gracefully undulating humpback whales and stunning views of space. It was, in a word, quite magical. 

But the common thread tying all these disparate products and exhibits together was the same underlying motivation. Whether it was being the first to put quantum dot technology in a gaming monitor or create the first ever gaming notebook with a curved screen didn’t quite matter. Everyone just wanted to be seen as a pioneer and innovator. It was really all very impressive, except that we’d already seen a lot of it before. Granted, everything at the show had technically come fresh out of the oven, but it’s easy to say that there were few truly revolutionary things.

Or were there? Given the ubiquity of laptops, smartphones, and myriad other gadgets, it’s probably a risky move to make bold changes to a familiar form factor. But working within these limitations, we’d argue that brands have still managed to bring something new to the table, and we haven’t even accounted for rapid progress in emerging fields like virtual reality. Sometimes, you don’t have to break the entire mold to have a claim to innovation.

“Everyone just wanted to be seen as a pioneer and innovator. It was really all very impressive, except that we’d already seen a lot of it before.”

Redefining the tablet PC

The star of the show was undoubtedly the Lenovo Yoga Book, a lithe convertible notebook that doubles as a tablet. The word “innovation” has been repeated ad nauseum at shows like these, to the point that it often elicits little more than an eye roll or shrug, but the Yoga Book may actually be deserving of its true meaning.

Lenovo spent three years developing the Yoga Book, compared to a regular nine-month product development cycle. It was conceived as a productivity device right from the outset, and aimed to capitalize on the growing prevalence of smartphones. Phones have become a big part of how people work today, and the Yoga Book brings a similar touch-based interface to the laptop, effectively melding phone, tablet, and PC.

Gone is the physical keyboard. In its place, a touch-based Halo keyboard that can learn your typing style, adapt to it, and supposedly help you type more accurately. Of course, you aren’t going to be a whiz typist when you start out, but as the keyboard learns, it will adjust the virtual active area around each key. This means that you can be less precise with your typing, and still activate the key you want even if you don’t land right on it. There’s also predictive text input just like on a smartphone or tablet keyboard, making the experience even more familiar for users.

Pen, paper, and stylus

More intriguingly, it comes with a stylus, which uses passive electromagnetic resonance (EMR) technology that brings note-taking to the next level. As a nod to how much of our work and personal lives are conducted in digital spaces today, the stylus features two different nibs meant for use on real paper and the digital notepad. The pen has hover detection capabilities of up to 10mm, so you can place a notepad (as long as it’s less than 10mm thick) on the typing area, write in real ink using the stylus, and have it automatically digitized and saved on the Yoga Book.

The best part of it is how elegant the entire thing is. It is only 9.6mm at its thickest, and feels almost a book in hand, which goes a long way toward explaining Lenovo’s choice of name. And unless activated, the Halo keyboard is an otherwise unimposing black slate, and the device boasts an exquisite simplicity of design that belies its rich functionality.

As far as innovative designs go, the Yoga Book is right up there with the best of them. Maybe it won’t turn out to be a hit. Maybe people will hate that it doesn’t actually have a keyboard. But it’s nevertheless shown us that established form factors are far from set in stone, and even now, that there’s still plenty of room to shake things up.

AN OLD DESIGN COMES TO LIFE

This isn’t the first time someone tried to remake the tablet PC. Back in 2009, Gizmodo first ran a story on the Courier, a dual-touchscreen device that also used a stylus and touch-based input. The Courier would have been hinged like a book, and feature two 7-inch screens, not unlike certain early prototypes of the Yoga Book.

Back then at Microsoft, the Courier was actually one of two different approaches to tablet computers. While Steven Sinofsky, the then-head of Microsoft’s Windows division, envisioned a tabletfriendly version of Windows, the Courier actually ran a modified version of Microsoft’s flagship operating system. This meant that the Courier wouldn’t even run Microsoft Outlook, as the team behind it thought of the Courier as a complement to PCs instead of a substitute. Eventually, this was what brought about the demise of the Courier project, because it didn’t properly match up with Microsoft’s Windows and Office franchises.

Make everything slimmer and curvier

But if you can’t invent some new way to use your notebook, maybe you can just make it slimmer. Or curvier. Or just pack a whole lot of bleedingedge hardware into it.

Acer debuted the Swift 7 in the run-up to IFA, a 9.98mm thick notebook that wrested the title of world’s thinnest notebook away from the HP Spectre. This is the first notebook to go under the centimeter mark, and octobe r it’s quite the beauty with its black-and-gold metal chassis.

And just when we thought that gaming laptops couldn’t get any crazier than the ASUS ROG GX800 with its liquid-cooling dock, Acer came up with the Predator 21 X, a 21-inch notebook with a curved display. 21-inches is the sort of size you’d expect from a desktop display, and not a laptop, but that’s exactly what Acer packed onto its new gaming notebook.

Speaking of curves, Samsung and LG also announced new curved gaming monitors. The way it looks, if a feature isn’t common, manufacturers will seize on it to be considered different, perhaps to the point where it becomes mainstream. Nevermind that it’s still an open question as to whether curved screens truly provide better immersion. Curved screens work well with larger screen sizes, and both are great fodder for spec sheets and claims of novel new experiences.

“And just when we thought that gaming laptops couldn’t get any crazier than the ASUS ROG GX800 with its liquid-cooling dock, Acer came up with the Predator 21 X, a 21-inch notebook with a curved display.”

The race for immersion

What has curved screens, touch and styluses have in common? They’re all digital technologies trying to replicate the analog so it feels natural to our sight and touch. And perhaps the biggest proponent for immersive experiences has to be virtual reality. The number of exhibitors showing off Virtual Reality (VR) or Augmented Reality (AR) products at IFA has grown from three last year to close to 35 this year, reflecting an exponential growth in the sector.

According to Mark Papermaster, (Chief Technology Officer, AMD), we are just starting to see a confluence of enablement for Virtual Reality (VR) or Augmented Reality (AR) that will see these products really start to hit the mainstream.

Devices are now connected with good capabilities for voice and gesture interaction, while computing and visualization capabilities are getting better so 3D imagery is less easily distinguishable from actual footage.

VR for entertainment

Some of the biggest draws we saw at IFA involved VR set-ups that gave you a chance to experience hell-raising rides. From kayaking down rapids to bungee jumping into a volcano, participants got thrown into completely new worlds by donning VR goggles and strapping themselves into seats (or harnesses) that physically moved them.

The combination of mind and body engagement absolutely heightened the sense of realism conveyed; yet this isn’t new. We’ve all seen virtual reality rides in some form or another at amusement parks at some point or another. What is new, is how much less space is needed for these rides, and how much more realistic the visuals shown through the headsets are.

And that’s largely due to the improved computing hardware that we are now able to cram into these sets. The more frames shown to you per second, the more seamless the visual experience. With companies like XMG finding ways to put all the computing hardware into a backpack you carry with you, your range of motion – and hence the span of the virtual world created is no longer limited to the length of the cable.

“The number of exhibitors showing off Virtual Reality (VR) or Augmented Reality (AR) products at IFA has grown from three last year to close to thirty-five this year, reflecting an exponential growth in the sector.”

1. With Vestel’s VR, a drop of a few metres felt like several hundred feet.

2. VR gaming in the traditional sense at the Medion booth.

3. Gaming with the XMG walker backpack allows for full movement.

4. VR allows you to really pilot a Mojo drone.

5. Fancy bungee jumping into a volcano? Samsung’s Gear VR makes it possible.

From the virtual world to the real one

And it’s not only for games. More effort is also being put into capturing audio specifically for VR, with new 360o-capture microphones coming out from companies like Sennheiser. The advent of 360o cameras means that actual live footage is also increasingly being used to improve the experience for the viewer.

Companies are also moving away from the notion of just using created graphics for VR experiences. For example, Mota’s new JetJat drone has a camera with live streaming capabilities that can be fed real-time into a VR headset, letting you see what the drone sees; a true piloting experience indeed.

360 footage is increasingly being shown off as a means to which viewers can literally experience a place for themselves and broadcasters like Deutsche TV-Plattform are already starting to experiment with these technologies with their regular footage. At IFA 2016, viewers were given the experience of being in a television studio while a live broadcast was going on.

6. The Emblematic Group uses a modified VR helmet to improve the VR experience.

Mixed realities

Meanwhile, native VR content is also growing exponentially. In his keynote, George Bloom (Executive Producer, CBS Digital) was talking about applying a new approach to storytelling. Instead of taking you through a movie from the perspective of the director, he wants to make films that allow you to choose which viewpoint to watch the film from.

According to him, film locations can be recorded using laser scans and then constructed into 3D models that you can then potentially explore from the viewpoint of the hero or the villain by strapping on a VR headset. It’s certainly an interesting concept, but one that could require an entirely new set of visual storytelling techniques.

Nonny de la Peña (CEO, Emblematic Group) on the other hand, talked about projects she’s working on that combine virtual reality with classic journalism. By using VR to recreate scenes that her team has seen first hand, she places viewers into anything from a crime scene to a battlefield. By tapping on what she calls a “duality of presence”, she hopes to evoke a sense of empathy in people; educating them about causes that matter.

The smallest things can lead to a revolution

We’d like to think that trade shows like IFA are replete with cuttingedge stuff that represent huge leaps in technology. But as far as consumer technology goes, exponential jumps are few and far between.

Instead, we’ve settled into a cycle of steady, iterative upgrades. Is this year’s model better than the last? Sure. And you can probably expect the following year’s version to be even better.

It’s not every day that something like the Yoga Book happens, but it would also be too hasty to write off improvements like slimmer and lighter designs, faster processors, and yes, even 21-inch notebooks.

Take the new ASUS ZenWatch 3 and Samsung Gear S3 as an example. Some have criticized the ZenWatch 3 as just another marginally better iteration on boring Android Wear, but it’s also ASUS’ best-looking smartwatch to date and its most capable. Similarly, the Tizenbased Gear S3 is really just a more powerful and feature-rich Gear S2, but there are key upgrades like an always-on display and IP68 rating.

There’s still a lot to be improved on – they’re still fairly chunky and big for instance – but these watches represent a step in the right direction in terms of usability. Though we’re not yet at the point where smartwatches are a must-have, we could be getting there sooner rather than later.

This is the case as well in an emerging field like virtual reality. It’s still more hype than actual utility, but it’s only a matter of time before the aggressive pushes to improve the overall experience produces truly compelling applications and use cases.

Consumer technology advances mostly by way of gradual, cumulative refinements, and it is this accretion of features and experiential improvements that matter the most.

7. Project Syria is just one of the experiences you can find at the Emblematic Group’s webpage. (emblematicgroup.squarespace.com)

“We’ve settled into a cycle of steady, iterative upgrades. Is this year’s model better than the last? Sure. And you can probably expect the following year’s version to be even better.”