Relying on the breaks, 2022 may very well be a really eventful 12 months for brand new tech products and even entire new tech classes. From gaming to electrical automobiles to blended actuality wearables, subsequent 12 months’s releases may even start a shift in the best way we view tech’s position in private and enterprise life.
I’ve taken my greatest shot at rounding up essentially the most important and anticipated of these releases. It’s admittedly a blended bag. Some products have already been introduced, and—barring catastrophe—might be delivered subsequent 12 months. Others are nonetheless in the rumor stage, however have an inexpensive shot of constructing it to market. Others are straight-up longshots. However some phase of them will certainly present up.
Table of Contents
Certain issues
Panic Playdate. Panic’s new Playdate handheld video gaming machine ought to lastly see daylight in early 2022 after the corporate delayed its launch twice. The Playdate, which was originally announced in 2019, has a 1-bit black and white show and the principle management is a four-way directional pad. It was designed in collaboration with the eclectic Swedish shopper electronics firm and design home Teenage Engineering, which may be the explanation for its most intriguing characteristic: a hand crank on the facet of the machine that’s used for sport management. Panic plans to launch video games in “seasons,” with new titles each week for twelve weeks.
Valve Steam Deck. Valve and AMD mentioned in July that they’d collaborated to construct a brand new handheld gaming laptop referred to as the Steam Deck. The machine seems to be quite a bit just like the Nintendo Switch, however is the primary PC-compatible handheld console and may play the complete Steam library of Home windows PC video games. After the Steam Deck was formally introduced final July, orders for the machine on the Steam web site got here so quick and livid that they briefly overwhelmed the servers. Then in November Valve notified people who had positioned orders that supply can be pushed again to February 2022 due to the chip supply shortage.
Rivian R1T and R1S. Automotive just lately held an IPO that yielded it nearly $12 billion {dollars} and valued the EV upstart at greater than $65 billion—greater than among the world’s best-known auto makers. The corporate is engaged on delivering a fleet of native supply vans to Amazon, which owns 20% of Rivian. However its marquee products are an electrical pickup truck and an electrical SUV. The corporate is now starting manufacturing on the truck, the R1T, which it expects to start transport in larger volumes in 2022 for a $67,500 beginning value. The SUV, the R1S, will begin at $70,000.
Apple Common Management. Common Management isn’t an precise product, however it may as nicely be contemplating the excessive stage of anticipation for it among the many Apple devoted. At its WWDC convention in June 2021, the corporate introduced that the subsequent variations of its iOS and MacOS working techniques would let customers management a Mac and an iPad from one keyboard and one mouse or touchpad. For instance, you may use a Mac keyboard to sort textual content on the display of the iPad, or use the mouse to drag content material from the iPad over to the Mac. Apple initially introduced the brand new characteristic together with iOS 15 and MacOS Monterey and that that it might arrive “in the autumn.” However as Jason Snell at Six Colours points out, Apple has now updated its website to say that the Common Management characteristic will arrive subsequent spring.
Magic Leap 2. Magic Leap says it’s going to launch its Magic Leap 2 blended actuality headset subsequent 12 months. Will probably be smaller and lighter than its predecessor, the Magic Leap 1, and can have a sooner processor and higher battery life. It additionally has a decidedly extra svelte, and fewer steampunk, design language. Notably, the sector of view of the in-lens shows (the place the digital imagery is intermingled with the view of the actual world) can also be considerably taller. The corporate has pivoted towards promoting its AR goggles to enterprises–particularly the healthcare, manufacturing, and protection industries, the place they’ll be used for all the pieces from employee coaching to distant surgical procedure.
Meta Quest 3. Meta (née Fb) mentioned in its large metaverse presentation in October that it was engaged on a brand new digital actuality machine that’s meant to introduce individuals to metaverse-like experiences. The codename for that machine is Project Cambria. That left some individuals questioning in regards to the destiny of the comply with up to Meta’s already in style Oculus Quest 2 headset, the Quest 3. (The corporate is phasing out the Oculus title.) Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that his firm is still working on the device, however gave no agency timeframe for its launch. It’ll seemingly arrive in 2022, if the present launch cadence for the product holds. The Quest 3 will characteristic a extra highly effective processor and probably a greater battery, and it may promote for even lower than the $299 value of the Quest 2. It’s additionally attainable that Meta will introduce the Mission Cambria machine underneath a model title of its selecting throughout 2022.
Apple iPhone 14. As normal, Apple isn’t speaking about subsequent 12 months’s iPhones. But when it sticks with custom, it’s going to launch a brand new line of iPhones referred to as the iPhone 14 in the autumn of 2022. MacRumors believes the road up will include a 6.1-inch iPhone 14, a 6.1-inch iPhone 14 Professional, a 6.7-inch iPhone 14 Max, and a 6.7-inch iPhone 14 Professional Max. The main design themes of the iPhone 13 (primarily the flat metallic edges) will seemingly stay. However some studies say that the brand new telephones can have both a smaller “notch” (for cameras and sensors) on the entrance, and others say the notch will disappear altogether. Some additionally imagine the digicam lenses will not protrude from the again floor of the telephones, however might be flush.
Rumor has it that the 120Hz display refresh fee (120 instances a second) that was supported in this 12 months’s iPhone 13 Professional and Professional Max fashions might be added to a lower-priced non-Professional iPhone 14 mannequin subsequent 12 months. All iPhone 14 fashions will most likely get processor velocity boosts and digicam upgrades (one report says the Professional fashions will get a 48-megapixel camera). It’s not a on condition that there might be an iPhone 14 Mini to comply with this 12 months’s iPhone 13 Mini; gross sales have been reportedly comfortable for the 5.4-inch screened machine.
Advertisements
Maybes
Google Pixel watch. Google’s predominant position in smartwatches up to now has been to provide the working system that powers lots of them–Put on OS, which it merged with Samsung’s Tizen working system. However the firm’s purchase of the fitness wearable maker Fitbit in 2019 advised to some that Google might soon release its personal smartwatch in the identical approach it has developed its personal Pixel smartphones. The smartwatch is predicted to use the Pixel model title, too. Google hasn’t confirmed any of this, however the chatter stage across the product is growing.
Apple AR glasses. Apple has lengthy been rumored to be engaged on a pair of blended actuality glasses. The discharge date was a thriller for a very long time however the analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who is usually proper about Apple releases, says the product could launch as early as late 2022. Kuo says the machine might be powered by a few Apple home-grown chips–one for the OLED shows constructed into the lenses, and one other much less highly effective one for processing data collected by the cameras and sensors on the machine. Kuo says Apple is trying on the machine because the eventual substitute of the iPhone as individuals’s central private computing machine. The glasses may also find a way to show VR experiences, Kuo says. Coloration me skeptical about it displaying up in 2022, however we’ll see.
In all probability not
Microsoft Floor Neo. Manner again in October 2019, Microsoft mentioned it was going to launch a dual-screen tablet called the Surface Neo. It was supposed to run Home windows 10X, however then Microsoft discontinued the OS. It was going to be powered by an Intel Lakefield processor, which Intel then discontinued amid all of its troubles. Now the Neo has been delayed until 2022. Microsoft has now launched a primary and second generation of its first dual-screen cellphone/pill, the Floor Duo, however the units have reportedly not sold well. So it’s attainable the Neo won’t ever see daylight in any respect.
Chevy Silverado E. GM CEO Mary Barra is predicted to unveil her firm’s newest all-electric car, the Chevrolet Silverado E truck, throughout a (virtual) keynote tackle at CES on January 4. The truck options the a fixed-glass roof (the primary on any Chevy car), which creates a fishbowl-like impact in the cabin with most view of the surface world. The absence of a combustion engine paves the best way for many house for front-seat and back-seat passengers, Chevy says. The car, which may steer with all 4 wheels, can go 400 miles on a single cost utilizing the GM-developed Ultium modular battery system. Manufacturing of the brand new EV truck isn’t seemingly to begin till 2023.
Google AR glasses. Google started taking part in round with augmented actuality way back with Project Tango. In 2018 it launched its AR improvement framework ARCor. And, after all, in the 2010s it gained notoriety with its pioneering-yet-despised Google Glass good glasses. However the firm has by no means admitted to working by itself pair of true AR glasses. Now, new job listings strongly suggest that it’s. One of many job listings states: “Our group is constructing the software program elements that management and handle the {hardware} on our Augmented Actuality (AR) products.” What the listings don’t recommend is when Google may lastly launch its AR glasses (if they really exist) to the market. There’s a slim probability that it may accomplish that subsequent 12 months.
