Chargeable masks and less watery whiskey: Some of the most exciting announcements from CES on Monday

CES 2021 kicked off on Monday, and it looks unlike ever before. The event, hosted by the Consumer Technology Association, has abandoned its Las Vegas Conference Center in favour of Zoom calls and virtual product presentations in light of the COVID situation.

On Monday, tech manufacturers presented a plethora of their latest offerings, varying from rollable phones to tech-integrated masks.

Whiskey connoisseurs will likely be excited about LG’s new fridge, that will produce balls of ice to cool ones’ drink while diluting it less. The ice balls won’t drop out of your traditional fridge ice nozzle, instead, the user will reach into the door and pick them out of a bin.

For chess enthusiasts, Square Off has released a rolleable version of their popular automated chess board. The original allowed the user to play a physical game of chess, against an artificial intelligence opponent with the use of mechanised magnets inside the board. Unlike the original, the version announced on Monday does not feature automatically moving pieces but is portable, battery-operated, and likely perfect for those that want to play a physical game of chess, while maintaining social distancing.

Samsung announced the latest of its consumer-robots in the form of the vacuuming JetBot 90 AI+, which uses an Intel chip to power its onboard AI. The vacuum can also double as a surveillance camera as remote access to its camera is available from anywhere, so you can see the robot’s surroundings whenever you want.

Also debuted on Monday was a facemask by the name of MaskFone with an inbuilt microphone and attached earbuds, to allow mask-wearing users to have clearer sounding phone calls, without jeopardizing their health by going maskless.

TCL demonstrated two concept devices at CES, a standard-looking phone with an AMOLED screen that can be rolled out vertically to increase the device’s screen size, and a papyrus-esque scroll that can be unrolled to view a 17-inch display.

GoSun launched the ‘Flow’, which is a portable solar-powered water purifier. It joins GoSun’s extended lineup that gives the user a complete off-grid living set-up, which is likely more appealing in the pandemic-wrought world. GoSun was named as a CES 2021 Innovation Awards Honoree for this product.

Also on Monday, Panasonic announced new batteries, with less than 5 per cent cobalt. Panasonic also pledged that it would be working towards cobalt-free batteries in the next few years. This is especially good news for Tesla fans as Panasonic supplies the cells for Tesla’s battery packs.