CES 2015 opened January 6 with drones stealing the show before the keynotes even began. DJI’s Phantom 3 and a wave of competing consumer quadcopters signalled the arrival of aerial photography as a hobby-grade activity — no longer the domain of professionals with $50,000 rigs. The FAA drone registration debate would follow within months, but at CES the skies above the Las Vegas Convention Center were genuinely buzzier than usual.
Intel’s RealSense 3D depth camera technology arrived with serious ecosystem ambitions — gesture recognition, face scanning, background removal, all built into thin laptops and tablets. It was impressive in demos and underwhelming in practice, but it pointed toward the kind of spatial computing concepts that would eventually re-emerge with products like LiDAR in iPhones and Apple Vision Pro.
The connected car had its breakout CES moment in 2015. Mercedes-Benz unveiled the F 015 Luxury in Motion autonomous concept, BMW partnered with Samsung on telematics, and every major automaker appeared to announce a connected dashboard partnership. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto were both announced and immediately became the most meaningful in-car software launches in years.
CES 2015 also marked the quiet debut of Ultra HD Blu-ray as a standard — physical media’s last serious attempt to stay relevant in a streaming world. ces.tech