In the Robotics area at the Consumer Electronics Show, one little automaton caught our attention: The SketRobo (seemingly also named the Sketch Master), from TOSY Robotics, sat quietly creating tiny, perfect drawings as the hubbub of the show swirled around it.

Element, a value-priced TV brand you may have noticed during promotional selling times such as Black Friday, is doing something few other TV manufacturers would dare: It's going to start making its televisions in the U.S.

At the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, we saw a deluge of new ultrabooks computers and some interesting new tablets.

PMA, the industry trade show for imaging products such as digital cameras and camcorders, joined forces with the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show this year. The result: Consumer Reports experts saw a lot of new trends in digital imaging.

The whopping 5.3-inch screen of Samsung's Galaxy Note, U.S. availability of which was announced at CES, sets a new size benchmark for smart phone displays--at least now that the 5-inch Dell Streak phone/tablet has been discontinued. But is this telephone titan just too much phone for most hands and pockets?

In less than a year, AT&T went from swallowing up T-Mobile USA for for $39 billion to owing T-Mobile's German parent company $3 billion in cash and another billion in spectrum because that deal slammed into the regulatory roadblock at the FCC and the Justice Dept. Speaking for the third year in a row at the Consumer Electronics Show, FCC chair Julius Genachowski defended his agency's actions against the deal.

Earlier this year, Intel introduced the concept of “ultrabooks,” very thin, very light laptops with long battery life and prices below $1,000. Apple’s been making a thin-and-light laptop—the MacBook Air—for years. Two things would make ultrabooks truly innovative: a price well below $1,000 and 15-inch or larger thin laptops.

One of the surprises, or disappointments, concerning the smart phones debuting at this year's Consumer Electronics Show was that they didn't come with any of the newer technologies we gizmophiles have been drooling over last six months, such as quad-core processors or Siri-caliber voice-activated assistants. What we got instead were pumped-up specs of the features with which we are already familiar: Screens were bigger, cameras had more megapixels, and batteries received longer lifespans. Here are some examples of these trends, as well as a recap of some of the things we wished we'd see.

There are hundreds of thousands of products on display at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show. Only a handful caught the eyes of the Consumer Reports experts attending the trade show, however.

Ford, Honda and Subaru all announced partnerships with Internet radio providers this week at CES, promising digital and custom user-created radio stations and other web content into their vehicles by leveraging the user’s smart phone and a free downloadable app.

Tablet manufacturers have had an uphill battle since day one in their efforts to challenge Apple’s iPad. Some have been thinner or lighter. Some have been more versatile with lots of input options or mashup designs that make them netbook-like. The Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble's Nook Tablet are notable for their great price and integration with their parent companies' media offierings, and both are very good tablets. But they're smaller than the iPad and don't have the range of apps. The bottom line is, no one has been able to beat the iPad in price, quality, and technological innovation.

Navigation data provider Telenav launched a new app called Scout at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that is designed to provide personalized navigation, entertainment, and convenience features across different platforms, including a smart phone, the car, or a personal computer.

At first glance, it would appear the camera industry is in trouble. Some of the smart phones introduced at CES have specs that equal or surpass cameras: 16-megapixel sensors, displays as big as 5.3 inches and the ability to shoot HD video at 1080p. Plus, smartphones have much more intuitive interfaces and can instantly upload photos and video to the internet for instant sharing. Which is why more and more people shoot photos and video on their phones, leaving cameras and camcorders at home.

Who knew that 2012 would shape up to be such a potentially interesting year for televisions? But if companies are able to live up to their CES promises, later in the year we’ll be seeing the first real TV-sized OLED TVs, plus a few big-screen 3D TVs with 4K technology. In the nearer term there will be a dramatic expansion in the number of sets that include Smart TV technology that can bring an ever-growing array of new content into our living rooms.

The Motorola Droid RAZR Maxx, available from Verizon in the coming weeks for $300 with a two-year contract, has the biggest battery ever squeezed into a smart phone: a 3,300 mAh Li Ion one. Motorola promises this mega battery will deliver a whopping 21 hours of talk time and 380 hours of standby time—a big deal for any phone, much less one that runs on Verizon's fast-but-draining 4G LTE network.