Just when you thought the megapixel wars might finally be winding down, Nokia has announced the 808 PureView, a phone that incorporates a 41-megapixel camera (yes, you read that right!), as well as Carl Zeiss optics, and something the company calls "pixel oversampling technology."

At the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona on Sunday, Samsung announced a new smart phone, the Galaxy Beam, with an unusual feature that puts a new twist on sharing: The Beam's built-in projector saves you from squinting at a small screen by letting you display images, video, games, and other digital content on flat surfaces such as walls and tabletops.

For those of us who cover TVs, there was a lot to look at during CES this year—certainly more than we imagined just a month before the show opened. Not surprisingly, we saw some prototype TVs that wowed us. But the bigger news was that most of these TVs are actually expected to available by the end of the year.

The 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is officially over. And there was a ton of news from the trade show. The buzz from the CES exhibit floors included the hot gadgets expected to hit store shelves this year, as well as developments that will affect other consumer products such as home appliances and cars.

Mavia is a small box with GPS receiver and 3G-nework cellular access that plugs into your vehicle’s OBD-II port, a connector found in every 1996 and newer vehicle. The OBD-II port can access information about your vehicle such as trouble codes (to interpret that dreaded check engine light), vehicle speed, and mileage. Mavia can access this data and send it to the Internet. So what? Well, a lot can be done with this information.

Sony displayed two aftermarket A/V car receivers at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that not only control your smartphone, but they can become your smartphone. The new XAV-601BT and XAV-701HD stereos feature large touch screens that can look and function just like your phone, allowing some or all of the functionality on a larger screen that is easier to access.

Electronics are infiltrating everything we use, and the halls of 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) here in Las Vegas are now home to the manufacturers and suppliers of the consumer electronics that we call automobiles. Amid acres of gizmos, Delphi displayed their “MyFi Connecting with Safety Vehicle”—an electronic smorgasbord of what is possible in today’s connected car.

At the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Scosche introduced CellControl, a product that combines hardware and software to make driving safer by restricting cell phone operation.

The big story, in terms of a technology that is here and that consumers seem to actually want, is super-thin ultrabook laptops that contain Intel-produced processors. And the folks at Intel tell me they don't just want to provide users with a faster, lighter-weight computing experience; they also want to make it safer and easier to shop online.

Earlier this week at the Consumer Electronics Show, Motorola unveiled the latest member of its RAZR family of cellphones, the Droid RAZR Maxx, which the company says can deliver up to a whopping 21.5 hours of continuous talk time.

When Microsoft announced earlier this week that it would be selling Kinect for Windows starting in February, a number of people envisioned a near future where they would be moving the cells around on their Excel spreadsheet by waving their hands, or finally getting quality motion controls for PC games that have never been ported to the Xbox 360. But neither of these situations is really what Kinect for Windows is about.

While much of the buzz at any Consumer Electronics Show revolves around the sexier kids in school -- TVs, computers, cell phones -- there is a quiet rumble surrounding the impending release of a horde of "connected appliances," which is a blanket term for fridges, washers, dryers, dishwashers, stoves and ovens that communicate in some way with each other and maybe with the outside world.

As lightbulbs move from disposable to durable they’re turning up in some unexpected places. The Switch75 LED from Switch Lighting is on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, alongside other products that were awarded the show’s best innovation honor. And for the first time CES is hosting a panel discussion on lighting today, with the focus on light-emitting diodes.

Audi brought some interior bits from the upcoming A3 redesign to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. While the console, dash, and other pieces on exhibit don’t give any hints of what the exterior of the redesigned compact will look like, the display makes a dandy way to show some new features coming to Audi Connect.

The first color e-book readers that use low-energy screens like those on black-and-white models like the Kindle and Nook Simple Touch will hit some foreign markets this year, but won't might not be available in the U.S., at least to typical consumers.