But make no mistake, the show will go on starting on September 3 and, despite the limited on-ground attendance, the announcements coming over the three days of this year’s conference are going to be no less massive with laptops, tablets, smartphones, and more coming from hundreds of exhibitors.
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We’ll continue to update this page throughout the conference, but until the news starts breaking, here’s a look at what we expect to see at IFA 2020 this week and how you can watch along.
How to watch IFA 2020
With in-person attendance so limited for an event that is normally open to the public, a livestream of the conference will be available by going to the IFA website and signing up with your email address, name, address and interests. Just keep in mind that the conference is held in Germany (Central European Summer Time zone) so many of the presentations will be held at less than ideal times for those in the U.S., so consider catching the highlights with us each day.
Intel 11th Gen Tiger Lake CPUs
The newly unveiled 11th Gen Intel Tiger Lake CPUs should be on display from a variety of vendors during IFA 2020 and while we would traditionally be walking the halls and getting our hands on them immediately, we are expecting receive many in the coming days. The floodgates have already opened with the Asus VivoBook, Acer Swift and Dell XPS 13 to name a few, but with Intel reporting that there will be roughly 150 laptops from a variety of vendors using Tiger Lake chips, there should be no shortage of laptop announcements coming this week.
5G all the things
Count on 5G being a strong theme again this year with Qualcomm kicking things off with the keynote presentation for IFA 2020. This was a focus at IFA 2019, but it’s a lot less theoretical this year now that we’ve tested the first 5G laptop and every new flagship smartphone from the iPhone 12 to the Pixel 5 is launching with support for 5G.
Qualcomm
While the company may not have any specific announcements to make, Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm’s president, is giving the opening keynote, and you can bet that most of the talk is going to be around 5G and AI with Qualcomm powering it all. The company stresses in its summary for the keynote that it will be discussing how mobile technology is being used to “deliver new immersive experiences and transform the global economy to drive growth and make it more resilient.” With Qualcomm inside most modern smartphones, like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2, VR headsets like the Oculus Quest and the Oculus Quest 2 (presumably), and many forthcoming always-on laptops running on a Snapdragon 8cx SoC, it will be interesting to see what the company has to say about the future of this industry.
LG
Another prominent player speaking at IFA 2020 is LG. While the company certainly could use the stage time to make some actual product reveals, it seems that this will be another look at the company’s outlook on the future of technology. On the more visual front, the LG Virtual Exhibition (opens in new tab) offers a look at a wide range of its products from home entertainment and home appliance and air solutions. It’s a 360-degree reconstruction of what the company’s booth would have looked like at IFA 2020 if not for COVID-10. It’s worth a look just for the 200-pnale “OLED New Wave” display at the entrance, which was at CES this year.
TCL
Yes, the company that you most likely know as the makers of some of the better performing affordable TVs may have some other products in store for us at IFA 2020. The company has spent the last couple of years establishing itself as a name in the smartphone space in addition to headphones. While we don’t have any specific leaks regarding what to expect from TCL at IFA 2020, new headphones are likely and the company brought a variety of interesting foldable concept smartphones along to CES this year, so there’s always a chance of something unique and exciting from this relatively new player in the smartphone space.
Bose
Another perennial presence at IFA, Bose may finally be ready to unveil the Bose Noise Cancelling Earbuds 700. We’ve seen the earbuds in what appeared to be final packaging and the company claimed they would arrive this year, so it would be a bit of a surprise if it didn’t use IFA 2020 to make the official announcement.
