CES 2015 Brings The Nostalgia Factor With Polaroid, Sony, Dell, And Palm

You may have noticed a lack of CES 2015 coverage on Techcitement. To be honest, it’s all been a bit overwhelming. So far, many of our favorite companies have announced impressive new devices. We’re dying to test them all. One thing that’s struck us is how many devices at an event that looks at upcoming consumer tech are, indeed, looking back.

Take Sony. After the absolute king of consumer electronics, Sony, has long since been eclipsed by rivals. The most iconic Sony brand is arguably the Walkman, the first mainstream portable cassette player. If you’re a child of the 80s or 90s (or just saw Guardians of the Galaxy), you’re aware how ubiquitous these were. Even non-Sony devices were called walkmen (a.k.a. Band-Aid becoming a generic name for adhesive bandage strips). Sony tried plastering the Walkman name on smartphones for a bit, but those failed to sell and the smartphone arm has been spun off. Even though the brand never exactly went away, it may as well have. Until now. Sony is bringing the focus back on the name with a $1,120 audio player. Yeah, you’re not going to find this at the local corner electronics store so fast. Sony’s marketing department will gladly explain all the reasons why you should pay such an exorbitant amount for a 128 GB music player running an outdated version of Android, but at the end of the day, it boils down to this: It’s meant to be a status symbol. Something Sony devices have arguably not been since the mid to late 90s.

Pretty, yes. Worth the cash? You decide.

Speaking of the 90s, remember Palm? I don’t mean the company that crashed and burned with webOS and then disastrously sold out to HP. I mean the company that dominated the PDA market (kids, ask your parents) and helped create the smartphone segment. Before a series of horrific business maneuvers, Palm Inc. was insanely popular. Even now, I constantly have people show me their old Palms that they keep for nostalgic reasons. A company you’ve likely never heard of, Alcatel, is hoping to cash in on that nostalgia by buying the Palm name (but not the patents or the webOS software; that’s another story). Alcatel is largely considered a C-list budget phone maker here in the U.S. (if considered at all), but I was impressed by some of the handsets being shown off by the company at a recent press event. Will adding the name cause people to fork over money for the hardware? We’ll have to wait and see what actual hardware is announced.

That’s what the old Palm said too.

Polaroid had actual hardware to show at CES this year. Quite a bit, actually. While not technically the same company as the one that made the classic instant-printing cameras, the current owners are pulling off what Alcatel hopes to by using that name to move a whole lot of devices as well as a photo hosting site (because there weren’t enough of those, apparently). Even the names invoke classic cameras. Polaroid’s Socialmatic sounds a lot like Kodak’s Instamatic, no? I admit to being most intrigued by the L tablet line—a 7″ and 10″ tablet, affordable priced at $99 — $149. These are the most off-the-beaten path from the Polaroid brand, but I’m keeping an eye out.

+2 for not skinning Android. -20 for generic looking hardware.

You know who is doing really interesting things with tablets, though? Dell. Yes, despite stepping away from Android tablets back in 2011, Dell has not only come back to them in recent years, but the Dell Venue line has been solid. Now, Dell has upped the ante, crafting a tablet that not only stands out, but breaks a record. The Venue 8 7,000 is thinner and lighter than even the most recent iPad Air. A quad core Intel Atom chip powers this Android 4.4 device. If you’re sad that it comes with an older version of Android, don’t be because Dell is shipping the 7,000 unlocked so you can upgrade it yourself (although there is an official update soon). The ability to self update indicates that it’s unskinned. The 6 mm thick tablet also sports a microSD slot, which means it’s not only thinner than the iPad Mini, but you can expand past the initial 16 GB of storage. Priced at $399 and available now, the Venue may have me recommending Dell tablets for the first time in ever.

I’m drooling. Over a Dell tablet. Madness.

I could go on and on about other vendors at CES who hope you’ll let your warm fuzzies for the past take you to the checkout. Neil Young finally showed off the music player he hopes you like his music enough to buy. Lenovo bumped the X1 laptop to bring back the function keys that were taken off last year to appeal to classic fans. HP finally realized that consumer PCs don’t have to be bulky messes. In a slightly more recent appeal to fans, LG showed off a webOS smartwatch prototype (SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY).

(Video from AndroidCentral)

On Monday, I thought CES 2015 was going to be the year of the curved screen. On Tuesday, it looked like the year of the fitness trackers. Now, it looks more like CES 2015 is the year companies looked forward by looking back.

What classic brand above will you be checking out? Let us know in the comments!