IFA 2024 Day 2: Processing, Power, And Other Cool Features

I live in Chicago, and we unfortunately get both sides of extreme weather from freezing cold during the winter to blistering, cook-eggs-on-the-sidewalk heat during the summer. When I’m using MagSafe charging in the car, both seasons cause my iPhone to overheat. In the summer, the phone cooks under the windshield, and during the winter, heat blasting from ends up with Kentucky Fried iPhone.

So Aukey is looking to solve this problem with its Omnia-Frez cooling system that actively cools your phone when you are charging. The company has a vent mount, plus a 3-in-1 charger for iPhone, Apple Watch, and Airpods that also includes the active cooling system. Heat is a big issue when you’re charging wirelessly, and over time it can degrade your battery, so active cooling can help in the long run overall. I’m also curious to find out if this kind of MagSafe charging solution can also prevent MagSafe ring adapters from losing adhesion due to heat while charging.

Regardless, I’m excited that somebody is trying to figure this out. I’ll be testing the chargers out to see what the results are, but so far, I’m optimistic and excited about it.

Soundcore, a division of Anker, is a great source for headphones that sounds good and won’t break the bank. This year, at IFA, Soundcore is launching a new set of cans that have pretty sound and very solid ANC. They’re the Soundcore Space One Pro headphones.

The ear cups are large, and the padded headband is comfortable. I worried initially that buttons, placed around a narrow rim that encircles the ear cup, might be a little hard to find and press, but once I was wearing them, I found them easily enough. The headphones fold up so that the ear cups go face to face, so the folded package is quite compact. The headphones cost $199.99 and Soundcore sells a carrying case for $34.99, so overall, the price isn’t too bad.

Anker had a demo station with sound playing on the show floor and the headphones sounded good, as did the ANC, but it’s pretty hard to tell these things when there’s so much going on around you. Based on my experience with Soundcore, I suspect the overall sound quality will be very solid, but likely not the best you’ve ever heard. Still, I suspect they’ll be well worth the price tag.

Qualcomm used IFA to launch a new version of it’s Snapdragon X processor that we first learned about at Snapdragon Summit last fall. The Snapdragon X Plus, is a more of a midrange processor in the speed and power department from the flagship Snapdragon X Elite that launched 1,000 laptops earlier this summer. What’s cool about the processor is it’s bringing Window son ARM to a more reasonable price point than what we’ve seen thus far.

The Vivobook 15 S that I’ve been using to cover IFA is more than powerful to hand the writing tasks I’ve had to do here, though I haven’t had much cause for editing photos or any real heavy lifting. But that’s what this processor is meant for. It’s not supposed to be doing any heavy-duty tasks, and it’s supposed to last forever. I’ve done a fair amount of installing, researching, and writing on this laptop for the past two days and it’s sits at 71% battery after two days.

Overall, the Snapdragon X Plus is a great and necessary addition to the Windows-on-ARM lineup so that reasonably priced Windows machines.

If you haven’t spent the last few months in a cave, you’ve likely seen your share of AI-generated art. Whether or not it can actually be considered art is an ongoing debate, but if you’re a fan of excess fingers, mashed up faces, and other visions from the deepest layers of Hell then we’ve spotted the perfect product for you!

Vestel produced an AI Art TV concept that randomly generates scenes based on the decor around it. It then displays the generated image on screen. Said image can be anything from a collection of colors to a weird, melty, twist on DaVinci’s “Last Supper.” It’s not the only Art TV out there (it’s a concept so it’s not even out there) but it is the only one making use of AI image generation.

The display model is basically synced with the picture frames surrounding it, it’s there to give you an idea. We’d imagine an actual production version would have to use cameras to give you a similar experience.

If you’re a PC gamer, desktops are in a league of their own. The only issue is, rigs capable of playing contemporary games on max settings tend to be voluminous, heavy, and probably the least portable. Well, things have changed and Tecno has a desktop backpackable PC in the Tecno X Geekom Mega Mini Gaming G1 that can play modern games like Black Myth: Wutan at full graphics. It’s a Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 in there, so it’s not doing ray tracing any time soon.

Micro PCs aren’t exactly a new thing, and we’ve all seen very small custom builds, but this is going to be commercially available and it’s water cooled. It’s actually going to be the smallest commercially available water-cooled PC on the market when it eventually hits the shelves.

Let’s be honest, gaming laptops are a compromise, they’re always disappointing in some way. Either they’re underpowered, or will set your thighs on fire, or they’re going to cost you as much as this fairly high-end box of joy. It’s currently raising cash on Kickstarter if you want to nab one at an early bird discount, with a full release planned later this year.

Adding to the pile of interesting concept pieces that may actually never see the light of day is Lenovo’s swiveling laptop. This piece does actually have a practical application. If you’re a public speaker it can track you around the stage, room, or whatever platform you’re spewing your spiel on.

It also has less practical uses like its ballet demo. In this mode, a dancer will appear on screen and the screen itself will enhance her movements by tilting, spinning, and bowing in the same direction.

The laptop is also capable of capturing a 360-degree panoramic photograph of whatever environment it’s set up in. There are strings of practicality here that we could see applied in a production product. In fact, given Lenovo’s history of adapting unorthodox displays, at least one swiveling device appearing in a retail environment — even a business to business one — would not be shocking. But various snags, including the one that made one of the two prototypes catch on the keyboard and subsequently break, should be expected and may be what eventually consigns this prototype to the perpetual maybe pile.