Just got back from CES (well worth the trip but exhausting).

Using N5 with a TMO SIM (so no LTE) I arrived in Vegas and flicked over to Google Now (left swipe). One of the cards it showed was the hotel where I was staying with phone number etc.

Now I hadn't put the hotel name or date in any of my calendar appointments so was wondering how on earth did it know to bring up that card. I then recall that my friend who booked the room and also mentioned which flights he was taking to Vegas from San Francisco had sent me the hotel name and dates and flight details via Gmail. Gmail isn't my primary e-mail but I guess Google scanned my Gmail, found the hotel name and flights and brought them up.

Sure enough when we left swiping to the left showed the current status of my Virgin America flight, the departure time, gate etc.

There were many other examples of this deep integration that Google has in the US that we only see bits of of here. It can be spooky or useful, depending on how you feel about privacy.

As an aside with 150K attendees you can imagine cellular reception would be challenging. My friend was carrying a S4 with Verizon and he has no problem but I could barely get any data on my TMO SIM. Luckily he also had a Verizon hotspot which I ended up using most of the time when I was at the Convention Centre and swiched back to TMO when away.