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With an eye on genuine generational shifts, tech companies at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) appear to be refocusing on a simple idea: making personal technology useful again. After years of CES being dominated by concept devices and prototypes that rarely shipped, there is a noticeable pivot towards products with clearer purpose and nearer-term relevance.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is, inevitably, part of the conversation. But the dominant theme at CES 2026 is utility, without sacrificing the coolness quotient. The four-day technology showcase, which began January 6, once again calls Las Vegas home.
Samsung’s Galaxy Z TriFold triple-foldable phone which is on sale in Korea is expected to release this in more countries in the coming months. The company insists artificial intelligence (AI) will play a big role in its ecosystem too, involving its extensive connected devices portfolio. They’ve unveiled a “Companion to AI Living” vision, for an extensive AI-enabled, connected ecosystem.
“With our global connected ecosystem, and by embedding AI across categories, Samsung is leading the way to offer more meaningful everyday AI experiences,” says TM Roh, CEO and Head of Samsung’s Device eXperience (DX) Division.
Localisation will be key for the Tizen OS. Samsung has demonstrated this in India with its Bespoke AI suite for Family Hub refrigerators and AI Wind-Free air conditioners. New products such as an ultra-thin OLED S95H TV and The Freestyle+ projector further illustrate how the company is embedding AI across form factors.
BlackBerry may not be returning, but this may be the closest we get for a while. British startup Clicks, best known for its “Clicks for iPhone” keyboard case, has unveiled the Communicator. This smartphone brings back a physical QWERTY keyboard, echoing a design language of BlackBerry’s Bold series.
“Communicator is to a smartphone what a Kindle is to an iPad. It’s a complementary product that stands on its own, optimised for a specific purpose,” says Jeff Gadway, chief marketing officer at Clicks.
Built on Android, the Clicks Communicator pairs a physical keyboard with a 4-inch OLED display, a 50-megapixel main camera, a 24-megapixel front camera and hardware-level encryption. It is currently open for reservations, with an expected launch price of $399 (around ₹36,000), and will support WhatsApp.
Even toys are getting smarter. Lego has announced a ‘Smart Play System’ featuring Smart Bricks, Smart Minifigures and Smart Tags. Each piece contains a 4.1mm ASIC chip, sensors and copper coils, along with a unique Digital ID. This allows individual Lego pieces to detect distance, direction and orientation relative to others, triggering sounds, lights and contextual reactions during play.
The silicon underpinning consumer tech is also undergoing generational change. Intel previewed its upcoming Core Ultra Series 3 processors, promising improvements in graphics performance and battery efficiency. Rival AMD showcased Ryzen AI 400 chips, successors to the 2024 Ryzen AI 300 series, retaining similar core and graphics architectures but delivering faster clock speeds, higher memory bandwidth and a more capable neural engine for AI workloads.
Continued synergies between automakers and tech companies, has been underlined by Nvidia’s announcement of the Alpamayo family of open-source reasoning models, which is specifically designed to guide autonomous vehicles through difficult driving situations. The Alpamayo 1 is a 10-billion parameter chain-of-thought system, which the AI company says, is capable of approaching driving more like a human being would.
Hyundai Motor Company is preparing for a robot era, and is partnering with Boston Dynamics, towards building co-working robots for manufacturing environments, as well as performing hazardous as well as repetitive tasks. They may be on the right track, considering Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shared the keynote stage with two (decidedly cute) R2D2-like robots.
Garmin, meanwhile, is expanding its health ecosystem. The company has added nutrition tracking to the Garmin Connect app for Connect Plus subscribers, enabling users to log calories and macros — proteins, fats and carbohydrates — using a global food database, barcode scanning or smartphone camera input.
“Whether they’re just starting to build healthy habits, wanting to maintain a healthy lifestyle, or looking to perform at their absolute best, users can now track their nutrition, health and fitness data in one app—giving them a simplified approach to reach their goals,” notes Susan Lyman, Garmin Vice President of Consumer Sales and Marketing.
Televisions too, took a step forward. Samsung has revisited the Timeless Gallery design of 2013 with a modern take, that underlines the world’s first 130-inch Micro RGB TV, the R95H. “Micro RGB represents the peak of our picture quality innovation,” says Hun Lee, Executive Vice President of the Visual Display (VD) Business at Samsung Electronics.
LG responded with the OLED evo W6, also known as The Wallpaper TV, measuring just 9mm in thickness — making it the world’s thinnest. This has been achieved through extensive component miniaturisation and a re-engineered internal layout. Central to the design is LG’s Zero Connect Box, which wirelessly handles all inputs and can be positioned up to 10 metres away from the display.
English (US) ·