Datawind releases what it claims is the cheapest tablet in the world-- the UbiSlate 7Ci, an Android number with a £30 price tag, less than even the more budget-minded of retailer-branded options.

Admittedly one gets what they pay for, since it carries a 1GHz Cortex A8 CPU (identical to the one inside the iPhone 3GS and the Samsung Galaxy S), 512MB RAM, 4GB storage (expandable via microSD slot) and a 7-inch 800x400 display.

However the device was not created with tech-savvy customers in mind. As Datawind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli tells the Wall Street Journal, the company's aim is to bring computing and internet connectivity to schools and low-income communities.

If market research is anything to go by, two things customers like are large smartphones and small tablets. Asus appears to think so as well as it unveils the PadFone mini, a smaller version of the original smartphone-tablet combo.

Like existing PadFone devices the PadFone mini combines a smartphone with a tablet dock, only with shrunken-down proportions-- the "Fone" part features a 4.3-inch 960x540 display, while the "Pad" carries 7-inch 1280x800 panel.

Spec-wise it carries a 1.4GHz quad-core Snapdragon MSM8226 CPU, 1GB RAM and 16GB storage (expandable via microSD), as well as 1500mAH and 2200mAh batteries in the phone and tablet.

AMD reportedly wins a CES 2014 Innovation award for a device still very much under wraps-- TechRadar reports the company is working on "Project Discovery," a Windows 8 tablet reference design powered by the Mullins mobile APU.

AMD has tried to get a foothold in mobile device business for a number of years, but so far failed get its SoCs inside actual tablets. Thus the idea of AMD making an own reference design makes at least some sense.

According to TechRadar AMD will officially reveal the tablet at CES 2014, and the company states "AMD's goals are to show the world what we can do in the tablet space around our next generation APU, Mullins."

Think wearables are not futuristic enough? How about a Motorola idea straight out of a William Gibson novel-- an "electronic tattoo" acting as a mobile microphone, digital display and even a lie detector.

First filed back in May 2012, the patent "Coupling an Electronic Skin Tattoo to a Mobile Communication Device" describes a microphone complete with tranceiver and power supply designed to be tattooed on the user's throat. The microphone captures sound in the form of virations from the larynx, thus eliminating background noise. Sound signals are then transmitted to smartphones via Bluetooth, NFC or other low-power wireless protocols such as Zigbee.

"Communication can reasonably be improved and even enhanced with a method and system for reducing the acoustic noise in such environments and environments and contexts," the patent claims.