18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books
Thousands of popular apps and games
Ultra-fast web browsing - Amazon Silk
Free cloud storage for all your Amazon content
Vibrant color touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle
Fast, powerful dual-core processor
Amazon Prime members enjoy unlimited, instant streaming of over 10,000 popular movies and TV shows
7" multi-touch display with IPS (in-plane switching) technology and anti-reflective treatment, 1024 x 600 pixel resolution at 169 ppi, 16 million colors.
Tablets give us new possibilities when it comes to mobile computing. Unfortunately, they also give us new things to pack when it comes to carry-on luggage.
A new variant of the Pope's favourite tablet, the Sony Tablet S, is now showing up for sale in the UK, the promised 3G version of Sony's Honeycomb offering.
Time is running out for Windows 8 tablets to stay relevant in the eyes of consumers--at least according to a survey from Forrester Research. Over the last two quarters, consumer interest in Windows tablets has dropped from 46 percent in Q1 to 25 percent in Q3.
You've just bought an HP TouchPad for $99. You have successfully clicked on the Buy Now button faster than the frenzied, fire sale horde, and you slept soundly last night in the knowledge that a juicy piece of high-technology was winging its way to your door.
Since 2009, Android supported three general screen size categories: small, medium, and large. But the introduction of tablet-specific Android Honeycomb in early 2011 brought support for the extra large screen size category and drove a wedge between Android phones and Android tablets.
If you've got to have Honeycomb and you've got to have it in a 7-inch tablet, the Acer Iconia A100 might be right up your alley. It's the first 7-inch tablet to launch with Android 3.2, has a TFT WSVGA screen (that's 1024x600) and a 16:10 aspect ratio, boasting a 75-degree viewing angle. It's also go HDMI out, a 5MP rear-facing camera with flash and a fixed-focus 2MP front shooter.
Want to get the most out of your Android tablet? Then don't miss these tips and tricks that can be used to get better battery life, add hidden features, and get the most out of browsing the web.
Tablets are the technology's industry's latest gold rush. With Apple selling 15 million iPads in 2010 and projected to sell as many as 45 million in 2011, everyone wants a piece of the public's sudden infatuation with multitouch slabs of silicon. From the world's biggest computer companies to obscure little parts makers, there have been an obscene number of companies releasing tablets this year and the number will only increase next year.
As Android has evolved, its apps have improved and proliferated. Jack Wallen has created a new list of apps you'll want to install on your tablet or phone.
Since we first had some time with the Toshiba Thrive at CES last January, we've been waiting to hear when it would show up for anyone to actually purchase one. According to Engadget, that will be this July, with pre-orders starting at Best Buy on June 13. The pricing is also done right -- $429 for the 8GB model, $479 for the 16GB, and the 32GB checks in at $579.
If you measure the power used by a netbook PC when it's in standby, a frozen unusable state, it uses around 500mW of power. Leaving a netbook on with WiFi connected in an idle state with the screen blanked, maybe with an email program polling occasionally, you'll see about 10 times the power usage. In PC terms, 5W is impressive but if you go to the smartphone world and take a look at the figures there, there's a huge huge gap that needs to be tackled. As smartphones become tablets, become smartbooks, there's a threat that 'always-on' becomes 'must-have' and that X86-based devices will struggle to compete in casual computing scenarios.
It's not often that I agree with Robert Scoble. In fact, every time I do find myself agreeing with him I get all scared and worry that the apocalypse is going to descend upon us all. Well, if you fear such things it might be time to get your affairs in order because I think that he's right that Android is going to see huge gains in tablet marketshare this year.
The 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is right around the corner. For the third straight year, we will see a veritable army of tablet competitors intent on challenging the dominance of the Apple iPad. Maybe 2012 will be the year that some of these rivals actually gain some traction.
Tablets have come along and killed the netbook, but let's face it--the netbook market was having problems way before the iPad ever reared its 9.7-inch head. I mean, THE PRICE! You can pick up a fully-fledged laptop for the price of most netbooks.
I'm still hoping that Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will help make Android tablets interesting to consumers in a way that Honeycomb-based Android tablets have not been. I haven't tried one for myself yet.
A few days ago TripIt announced that they would be launching their very popular travel application on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, and we got lucky enough to get a hands-on demo of the application from them. Last night while at the ShowStoppers event here at CES 2012 the folks at TripIt took some time to walk us through the application, and as you can see they have done a really nice job with the application and design.
Have you seen kids play with iPads before? They're enchanted by them, mesmerized by the interaction. For some reason, they just speak them. LeapFrog thinks so too, that's why they're making a tablet for kids.
Just in time for summer vacation season, Acer is offering its Aspire One's Happy 2 line of netbooks in milkshake-inspired colors: Banana Cream, Blueberry Shake, Papaya Milk and Strawberry Yogurt.
I've had the Acer Aspire One 522 for 24 hours now so it's time to go live and open up the video cams and chat session to allow you to take a look, ask questions and work out if this is the netbook for you. It's also the first time we've had the AMD Fusion C-50 APU for detailed testing so we'll learn something about that too.
There's one thing that was clear from last nights live testing of the Aspire One 522 -- I'm the worst person in the world to demonstrate 3D games. Interestingly though, that's because I never have devices that can play games. In the last 5 years we've seen just a handful of mobile devices that can play games and the fact that I was thrown into Half-Life 2 and Unreal Tournament demos shows that the Acer Aspire One 522 is quite unique -- and an indicator of where netbooks are going next.
Out-of-the-box, the Acer Aspire One 522 is a very decent netbook. 3D graphics and HD video support out-pace anything that's built on an Intel platform and with a dual-core 1Ghz CPU that challenges the dual-core Atom at 1.5Ghz AND keeps the battery drain down to impressive levels, a 1280×720 screen and a reasonable build quality you have something of a bargain at 299 Euros but I wanted to see just how much I could get out of the Aspire One 522 if I pimped it out with a RAM, storage and OS upgrade. The results have been impressive; But there's a limit.
The last time we reported about the Acer Aspire One 722 (AO722) we said it's an AMD-based "netbook", but after its latest update, the 722 is definitively more on the "ultraportable" category side.
The offered Aspire One AO722-BZ454 features the Fusion C-50, incorporating dual 1GHz CPU cores, Radeon 6250 graphics, and 1080p video decoder. The mini laptop sports 2GB of DDR3 memory, a 250GB hard disk, a battery life of "up to 7 hours", 1366 x 768 LED-backlight screen, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS.
Amazon has on sale the Acer Aspire One AOD255E with a 10.1-inch LED-backlit 1024 x 600 screen, the dual-core 1.66Ghz N570, 1GB DDR3 memory, a 250GB hard drive, Intel's integrated GMA 3150 graphics, a 6-cell battery for up to 8-hour run time, and Windows 7 Starter operating system.
Thanks to a few above average specs, like a 320GB hard drive and a long lasting battery, the Acer Aspire One D260-1270 stands out among a crowd of look-alike netbooks.
Acer held a few events in Germany and showed off an upcoming Cedar Trail Netbook, the Acer Aspire D270. This 10.1-inch device has a matte display and is standard with a 49Wh six-cell battery. Under the hood we've got the new Intel Atom N2600 or N2800 1GB ofDDR3 RAM and optional 3G with a 500GB HDD and Windows 7 starter.
Here's our long overdue look at the Acer Iconia a100, a 7-inch Android Honeycomb tablet. On one hand, it's a blessedly simple device. Take Honeycomb and the usual internals that we've come to know in Honeycomb devices, and scale it down.
What would you give up to pack more features into an Android tablet? Would you be willing to sacrifice thinness? Accept a little more weight, or a design that's not quite as svelte as another tablet?
When it comes to software and hardware, I've always been under the firm belief that if it can be built -- it can also be torn down and that's exactly what has happened to the Acer Iconia A500 tablet.
AT&T today announced it will sell the Acer Iconia A501 Android Honeycomb tablet. The Iconia 501 is the same as the 10-inch Iconia a500 you've come to know and love over the past few months thanks to its bevy of full size ports (read our full review), only this version has an HSPA+ radio tossed in for AT&T's network. That makes it a "4G" device, though remember it's HSPA+ (with enhanced backhaul), and not the newer, faster, actually-4G LTE.
The tabelet has a battery life rated at "up to 8 hours", 1GB of DDR2 memory, 16GB of on-board Flash storage, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with autofocus and flash light, 2MP front camera, stereo speakers, Dolby audio, a Micro HDMI port, signle full-size USB 2.0 connector and Micro USB 2.0 port, and a MicroSD card slot for up to 32GB of additional storage. It has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 connections and sensors that are standard in the latest tablets, such as gravity sensor, e-compass, gyro-meter, and light sensor.
Acer has spectacularly failed in that last endeavour. Its Iconia Tab A500 is a terrific piece of kit, well-connected, respectably powerful and boasting loads of potential. My work ensures that I'm surrounded by many different tablet and touchscreen devices all the time, but I missed the Iconia Tab A500 when it was sent back.
Have an Acer Iconia Tab A500? Have an Acer Iconia Tab A500 that's not running Android 3.1? The wait should be short, as updates are rolling out now. We just got ours, and system update 4.010.08 is weighing in at 122.71 MB. The whole process should take a few minutes, and afterward you'll have the framework for things like Google movies, usb host and a slew of other treats.
Although we've seen the Acer Iconia Tab at Mobile World Congress as well as at CES all signs for this 10.1 inch tablet with a 1280x768 display, running a NVIDIA Tegra 250 Dual-core CPU pointed that it was definitely headed for Verizon given that they announced it and everything. This version, the A501 however is headed to AT&T as they have officially announced they'll be releasing it come Q2. Hit the break for the full press release.
The Iconia A510 feels a lot like the original A500. It is about the same thickness, weight and similar ports but the boost to Tegra 3 offers a notable performance increase. Its 10.1" 1280 x 800 display is piercing to the eye thanks to its strong luminance and wide-viewing angles and the 1.3GHz quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor makes the A510 perform almost flawlessly with almost all operations.
The usual user agent files have it that their up and coming A700 and A701 Iconia Tabs will feature a Tegra 3 quad-core processor, along with a Full HD display with a resolution of 1920x1200.
Acer has released the Tegra 3-powered Acer Iconia Tab A700 tablet. The tablet has a and 10.1-inch 1080p “IPS quality” display, a 1.3GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS, 1GB of RAM, and a 5MP camera on the back with a built-in LED flash.
Aimed squarely at those of us who simply don't see the point of Android or iOS, Acer's Iconia Tab W500 is a Windows 7 Home Premium slate complete with decent graphics, a handy detachable keyboard, a sizeable chunk of storage and a realistic, if not cheap, price tag of £520.
Acer America today expanded its line of low-cost netbooks to include the Aspire One Happy 2, a series of lightweight netbooks available in four colors. The marketing team at Acer must have spent a few too many hours at a smoothie shop since all of the colors for the new Aspire One Happy 2 have unique names like "Banana Cream," "Blueberry Shake," "Papaya Milk," and "Strawberry Yogurt." On the plus side, those playful color names will probably make this new Acer netbook all the more fun and appealing to children and women who are the target market for these stylish, ultra-light, mobile PCs.
Taiwanese PC maker Acer took a rather sudden hit last April when Gianfranco Lanci resigned as CEO of the company, saying it should have been focused on competing with HTC and Apple in the mobile space instead of with HP in the PC space.
Hewlett-Packard may be spinning off its PC business, but that doesn't mean the PC is dead: competition among Ultrabook manufacturers Acer and Asus is alive and well. Acer is reportedly pushing to release its upcoming ultrathin and lightweight Acer Aspire 3951 in September, a month before expected, to directly compete with the Asus UX21 Ultrabook.
Despite its top exec arguing that tablets were a fad, Acer has introduced a new 7-inch slate that is also the first to run the latest, more tablet-friendly version of Android (a.k.a. Honeycomb). The Iconia Tab A100 is available now starting at $329.99. Specs-wise, the A100 is pretty typical of Android tablets these days: Nvidia Tegra [...]
For many users, standard browsing works fine. You open up your browser, and you do your thing. For other, more advanced users, the standard means of browsing just isn’t enough. This is especially true on a tablet, where power and efficiency is at a prime.
Android device makers have so far been tolerant of the homebrew community, but Amazon and Barnes & Noble may not have that luxury when the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet hit the stores.
Amazon’s recent announcement of its newest Kindle offering put the rest of the tech industry on high alert, and for good reason. It has the potential to be the first Android-based tablet on the market that can make a dent in iPad sales this holiday season.
Amazon has added their developer FAQ with a section specific for the Kindle Fire, covering requirements and the submission process for those who are getting ready for Novembers big launch. For the most part, it's a pretty standard read -- an overview of the process, the device specific requirements (they even tell developers how to set up the Android SDK emulator -- 600x1024 px display, 169 LCD density, API 10 and 512MB RAM), and content guidelines. If you have any plans to develop and submit apps to Amazon for the Fire, you should hit the source link and have a read.
Last week, Rick Bergman, senior VP and general manager of AMD's Product Group, spoke at the Pacific Crest Securities Technology Leadership Forum. During his talk, Bergman noted that while AMD was excited about the growth opportunities it saw within the tablet market, it had no plans to enter the smartphone space.
Windows 8's new Metro-style touch-screen interface is supposed to be designed for, among other things, the growing tablet PC market. But according to the analyst firm Gartner, Microsoft will have a hard time trying to beat Apple's iPad and the various tablets based on Google's Android operating system. Carolina Milanesi, the research vice president at Gartner, states, "We expect Apple to maintain a market share lead throughout our forecast period by commanding more than 50 percent of the market until 2014."
Microsoft may still have time to make its mark in the tablet market, some analysts are saying. Although Apple still has the lion's share of the business at the moment, it's still so new that there's plenty of room for growth.
Just as was promised, Android 3.1 for the Motorola Xoom in Europe is now rolling out in stages. Motorola Europe took to their Facebook page to make the announcement and from the looks of things, some users are already getting it loaded up:
When the Android 3.1 update was announced for the 3G enabled Motorola Xoom, some WiFi only Xoom owners were a little upset at having to wait, even if only a little bit. However, some actually received the update that day despite Motorola stating it would be happening in the coming weeks.
Pulse News allows you to take your favorite sources of news and information, and turn them into a fun-to-use and engaging mosaic. You can find news from just about any relevant source there is, from newspapers to magazines to blogs. What's even better is the ability to organize different pages with different news themes. This allows you to keep all of your video game news separate from the political and world news, for instance.
The world of smartphones and mobile media tablets may be dominated by processors based on the ARM architecture, but other instruction sets are getting their due with Android.
Apple's iPad easily dominated the tablet market last quarter, but Android is coming on strong, a study from research firm Strategy Analytics has found.
Two developer teams are working feverishly on bringing Android to the HP TouchPad -- CyanogenMod and TouchDroid -- and it now looks like the former is within striking distance of a fully-functional port.
Android's facing some serious competition when it comes to the tablet market, and it's still an area Android has yet to dominate. With the iPad still top dog, HP officially launches the TouchPad today, adding another device and operating system to the competitive tablet space. The TouchPad has garnered mixed reviews already, with a lack of apps as just one of several ticks for the "cons" column when compared to the iPad.
If you bought a TouchPad during the fire sale, and decided that you like using webOS while waiting for hackers to get a full Android port up and running, news in the Pre Central forums might get you a little excited.
Android tablets can now play with a beta version of mobile Firefox, complete with desktop synchronisation, proper tabbed browsing and all the other UI goodies promised.
Most would guess iPads outsell Android tablets, but it may come as a surprise to you to learn just how much Apple is dominating Google in the tablet wars. There have been some interesting discussions popping up on the Internet based on Google's recent quarterly earnings call where Google CEO Larry Page pinned the number of total Android devices on the market at 130 million.
Google's winning smartphone strategy was to make Android open source and invite anyone and everyone to create a device for their mobile platform. It worked, as HTC, Motorola and others jumped on the opportunity to create smartphones to rival the iPhone.
Donovan Colbert has faith that Android tablets will rise from obscure dark horses to overtake the iOS incumbent. Do you think the iPad will always be king?
Android media tablets are slowly grabbing market share from the iPad, but no single competitor has yet to mount a formidable challenge to Apple's industry-leading slate.
Apple's iPad 2 continues to dominate the tablet market, shipping 9.3 million units and achieving a 68.3 percent share of the worldwide market in the second quarter, IDC found. That's up from 65.7 percent in the first quarter.
With the release of the Kindle Fire and other tablets, things are looking up: Android’s share of the tablet market is expected to rise in the next two years. According to a recent eMarketer report, the iPad takes up 83 percent of the tablet market today, but Android and Windows 8 will chop Apple’s shares down to 76 percent next year, 71 percent by 2013 and even lower to 68 percent by 2014.
In an effort to attract buyers away from Apple's iPad, device makers are setting starting prices of Android tablets to undercut iPad's US$499 entry-level price.
Android's smartphone market share is skyrocketing, according to Yahoo! News, and recently passed the iPhone. But in the tablet world? A bunch of companies are revving up their own Android tablets, but shoppers don't seem to care. Even when I was playing with the Xoom on display at the store, a woman asked me if it was the iPad.
Now the Fandroids are not going to like this, and are advised to look away lest they suffer an apoplectic fit and shower their keyboards in even more drool than usual.
The 374g AndyPad comes with a 7in, 1024 x 600 screen, a 1.2GHz Cortex A8 chip, 512MB of RAM, 802.11g Wi-Fi, and HDMI and micro USB ports. It also has front- and rear-facing cameras - 0.3Mp and 2Mp respectively - and Bluetooth.
Research In Motion said Wednesday that the popular game Angry Birds is available on the PlayBook, though not yet on BlackBerry phones which run a different operating system.
The company has reduced orders from Taiwanese manufacturers for new Apple iPads by as much as 25 percent, according to a JPMorganChase analyst cited by Bloomberg. Other analysts cited the aggressive initial pricing of the Kindle -- the ebook reader designed by the world's largest Internet retailer -- as evidence that we can expect a similar price tag on a tablet device from the company.
A federal court in Sydney ruled in favor of Apple in its ongoing patent war with Samsung, prohibiting the advertisement and sale of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia until the dispute is resolved or permission is given from the court. Previously scheduled for an "imminent" release, Samsung's latest tablet must now be given to Apple at least seven days prior to its Australian release for inspection.
IDC said that 10.1 million media tablets were shipped in the fourth quarter and to no one's surprise Apple and its iPad dominated. However, Samsung's Galaxy Tab walked away with 17 percent market share.
A request by Samsung to see Apple's upcoming versions of the iPhone and iPad as part of a lawsuit has been sternly responded to by Apple. CNet's News.com reports that Apple has filed a request in the District Court for the Northern District of California earlier this week asking the court to deny Samsung's request to see the designs for the iPad 3 and iPhone 5. In its response, Apple stated that Samsung's request was simply "a transparent and improper attempt to harass Apple by demanding extremely sensitive trade secrets that have no relevance to Apple's infringement claims or to Samsung's defenses to a preliminary injunction." The judge will make his decision on this matter on Friday, according to the story.
Late last year, Apple sued little-known Android tablet maker NT-K for "copying" the iPad. No big deal there; Cupertino's always had pretty lax lawsuit trigger discipline. But that December it also took the batsh*t nutso step of filing criminal charges, which were finally tossed this week.
Apple enthusiast blog 9to5Mac is reporting that multiple sources have confirmed over-the-air updates are headed to the Verzion version of Apple's iPhone 4. Adding this feature would eliminate the need for iPhone owners to sync their handsets with the computer-based iTunes download service for updates to the phone's iOS operating system.
The Kindle Fire's almost here, and a lot of folks are excited about what they think will be the iPad's first true challenger. Except that Apple execs say the $200 Fire might actually benefit the iPad. Holdonwhatnow?
Apple's iOS may be forecast to lose smartphone market share even to Microsoft's Windows Phone, but it will remain the leader in the media tablet arena through to 2016.
Whenever I ask people what they want in a tablet, I usually get the following answers in descending order of importance: a price tag south of £200, a 7in screen to keep things compact and the ability to play any video or music files you care to mention out of the box plus the option to play them out from HDMI. The Archos 70 fits that bill to a tee, if you shop around.
The Archos 80 G9 is a smaller version of the Archos 101 G9, a midrange Android Honeycomb tablet most notable for its unusually low price. The 80 G9 continues the low-price trend; at $299 it's the lowest-cost Honeycomb tablet we've seen, and it doesn't stint on processor (a dual-core 1Ghz TI OMAP4) or screen (a 1024-by-768-pixel panel.)
What's interesting about this slate are features you get for only $270, which is the price for the first available model -- the Archos 80 G9 501897 8GB. It's $70 more expensive than the 7-inch Amazon Kindle Fire or Lenovo IdeaPad A1, but the 80 G9 delivers a larger multi-touch screen of 8 inches and the latest Android Honeycomb 3.2 OS while the former run 2.3.
The company says it will also soon have faster versions of the tablets available with dual core 1.5 GHz TI OMAP4 processors. Archos currently offers the G9 tablets with a choice of a 1 GHz or 1.2 GHz dual core CPU.
The Archos 101 G9 is a functional, up-to-date Android tablet at a reasonable price, although it doesn't really stand out aside from 1080p file support.
The 101 G9 (250GB) ($469.99) is an Android 3.2 Honeycomb-powered, 10.1-inch tablet. But unlike other tablets, the 101 G9 (250GB) contains a Seagate Momentus Thin 250GB mechanical hard disk with a 4GB flash cache; that's a killer amount of storage for video buffs. Archos claims this version's "hybrid" system limits hard disk spinning and powers the drive down automatically whenever it's not needed, in order to conserve battery life and protect data.
The Archos 101 G9 and 80 G9 both run Honeycomb 3.2 and feature 10.1-inch 1280-by-800 and 8.9-inch 1024×768 multitouch displays, respectively. The devices are powered by an OMAP 4 ARM Cortex A9 dual-core 1GHz processor, delivering smooth use of the OS and apps.
Archos has been around for quite a while, but they are looking to break into the Android tablet market in a big way with their 70b Internet Tablet, which features Honeycomb and checks in at $199. We don't have all the details when it comes to specs, but what we know puts this one squarely at odds with the likes of the Kindle Fire or HTC Flyer:
Are you longing to get your hands on a tablet, but can't stomach the $500 pricing for devices such as the iPad, Motorola Xoom, BlackBerry PlayBook, or Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1? Then you might be interested in Archos' 80 G9 Android Honeycomb tablet for $300.
Archos is certainly no stranger to the tablet market and with their release of the all new G9 series, they once again are showing why they have been able to consistently produce tablets which are not only fast, but eagerly anticipated by fans. The all new Archos G9 tablets are no exception. Where they are powered by a ARM Cortex A9 dual-core 1.5GHz processor, the G9 is the only Android tablet on the market as of this writing to have the processing horsepower to decode stutter-free 1080p High-profile H.264 video. This is certainly a good thing as the G9 101's 1280x800 10" screen has 16:10 ratio which is good for movies. The lower end model G9 80 however is limited to 4:3 1024x768 8" screen.
Following up on their introduction of the G9 range of Honeycomb tablets back in June (see our hands-on) , Archos has announced that the devices will be available starting September 20. The big news is that the starting price point for these comes in at just $299, the first manufacturer to go under $300.
Unless Microsoft starts making its own processors and devices, it can't be an Apple-like company in control of everything. But it may get part-way there by asking chip-makers to team up with only one or two device-makers for Windows 8 tablets.
ASUS is bringing the Ice Cream Sandwich love in 2012 with the EeePad MeMO ME370T, and a new upmarket model Transformer Prime, the TF700T. The new Prime, which doesn't replace the existing Transformer Prime we all know and love, has a few upgrades from the original model, namely a 1920x1200 display, a 2MP front camera for HD video conferencing, and a re-designed back plate for better Wifi, Bluetooth and GPS reception.
The ASUS Eee Pad Slider has passed through the FCC certification process, getting the all clear for its Bluetooth and Wifi radios. With no mention of any cellular data in the FCC reports, the slider sounds much like the popular ASUS Transformer (check out our review), a great no-contract, no carrier, no fuss stand alone Wifi Honeycomb tablet. Also like the Transformer, the slider sports a 10.1 inch screen, Tegra 2 dual-core processor, front and rear cameras, and connectivity via a number of i/o ports -- micro SD, mini USB, and mini HDMI. Add in a sliding full size qwerty keyboard and you have something very different than the rest of the Honeycomb tablet pack. We love different, and manufacturers that try to do it, providing it's done well. We're ready to give the slider a try, just like many of you guys are.
I first laid hands on the Asus Eee Pad Slider back in March and now, after eight long months, it has finally made it onto the shelves of Blighty’s gadget wallahs. Has it been worth the wait though?
Asus has been showcasing its Eee Pad Transformer Android 3.0 tablet this week, Transformer being the word the company uses to highlight this 10.1in, 1280 x 800 tablet's hybrid design that will turn it into a netbook in the click of a dock.
Asus has not been quick to give up on netbooks. Although tablets like the iPad are cannibalizing netbook sales around the world, Asus has kept on plugging away with slight hardware iterations on their Eee PC line of Atom-based ultraportables, as well as their Eee Pad line of Windows-based tablets.
Welcome to the big leagues. The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime feels like the first laptop-class Android tablet, with its quad-core 1.4GHz processor, clever add-on keyboard dock, and its support for USB storage and console gamepads. This is easily the most impressive Android tablet ever.
The Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101 distinguishes itself from the sea of emerging Honeycomb tablets with its aggressive pricing, and an optional accessory that turns it into a virtual notebook.
So now that we've written a word or three (thousand) about the ASUS EeePad Transformer's life as a Honeycomb laptop, let's put it up against one of our old netbooks, the 10-inch ASUS EeePC 1000HE.
The smartbook is the great 'might have been' of mobile computing. Something thin and light, with solid-state storage, a keyboard, a day-long battery life and the ARM CPU that makes such a quality possible, and a price in keeping with the Small, Cheap Computer ethic.
The available Asus Eee PC 1015B-MU17-BK model features the AMD C-30 1.2GHz single-core APU that includes the AMD Radeon 6250 graphics, as well as 1GB of system memory, a 250GB hard drive, 1024 x 600 display resolution, a battery life of "up to 8.5 hours", and Windows 7 Starter OS. The Asus Eee PC 1215B-PU17-BK has the dual-core AMD E-350 1.6GHz chip with the Radeon HD 6310, 2GB RAM, a 320GB HDD, 1366 x 768 screen, "up to 8 hours" of battery life, and Windows 7 Home Premium.
The 10.1-inch Eee PC 1015B features the AMD C-series C30 1.2GHz single-core or C50 1GHz dual-core APU and 1GB of RAM, while the 12.1? 1215B has the AMD E-series E-350 1.6GHz dual-core chip or the C50 and 2GB RAM.
You don't hear much about Atom these days. It's still there, still kicking, still being stuffed inside an endless stream of netbooks. Yet it's also not very exciting, and hasn't created much buzz. This isn't a case of a journalistic blind spot; Atom just hasn't been update. The original was released in 2008, but Intel hasn't released a major performance upgrade since. By comparison, the performance of mainstream mobile laptop processors has, in some benchmarks, doubled over the same time-span. The processor performance of Atom, measured relative to the power of an average $600 laptop with a Core i3 dual-core, is actually becoming worse over time.
The R051BX has the first generation AMD Fusion C-series C-50 1GHz dual-core processing unit with integrated Radeon graphics and full HD video decoder. The downsides of this laptop are RAM and battery. The memory size is 1GB and it's solidered on the motherboard, so RAM on this netbook is not upgradeable. The battery is a 3-cell unit, without 6-cell option. The R051BX has only two USB ports, a webcam, and media card reader, besides HDMI.
Asus' Eee Pad shipment outlook reveals the company shipped 400,000 tablets - Eee Pad Transformers in the main - in Q2, followed by 800,000 more in Q3. These, Asus reveals, are actual shipments.
The iPad 2 isn't the only tablet in high demand this spring. Of all the tablets that launched this season, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer is facing a shortage problem.
Asus has introduced its UX21 and UX31 Ultrabooks, branding the devices as Zenbooks. Calling the Zenbook the "essential companion for this new Ultra Era," Asus chairman Jonney Shih claimed these ultrathin (under 3mm at its slimmest edge) laptops will last more than seven hours, offer second-generation Intel Core i7 processors, and have not just instant-on but a very quick two-second resume time.
AsusTek Computer Inc. unveiled a sleek tablet computer on Friday, after the Taiwanese firm saw the sales of its once popular line of mini-laptops stall following the launch of Apple's hit iPad.
If you like Asus products and you want one slathered in the goodness of Windows 8, it looks like you will be able to get your hands on an EeePad running Windows 8 in Q3 2012 according to Asus.
According to Notebook Italia, Asus is eyeing Windows 8 for the next version of its Eee Pad Transformer, a tablet with an optional keyboard and trackpad dock that props the device up like a netbook.
The Transformer is a 10in, 1280 x 800 tablet running Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system - onto which Asus has slapped its own UI, Waveshare - and driven by a dual-core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor.
Asus will continue to build Window 7 tablets, calling Microsoft's OS a worthy competitor to the Apple iPad and the army of Android tablets on the market. An Asus official told TechRadar that the company gets a lot of inquiries from the consumer and business market for Windows 7 tablets, so it will continue making them as long as that demand remains.
Online retailer Clove has priced up the eagerly anticipated Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime - a tablet will not only serve up a slice of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich but also Nvidia's five-core Tegra 3 chip.
Some Asustek’s plans when it comes to tablet computers have been revealed. We can expect a Windows 8 based tablet with not Intel or AMD but an ARM processor, a 3G version of the Android-based Transformer Prime, as well as a 7-inch tablet which is likely the already known Eee Pad Memo.
An ASUS/Nvidia customized Ice Cream Sandwich looks nice and smooth. However, the Quadrant benchmark is obviously not showing it correctly. The culprit might be it’s tooled for one-core benchmarking though.
Asus has yet to officially announce the Eee Pad Transformer Prime -- that’s supposed to happen tomorrow. And while it was originally slated to launch some time later this month, the Tranformer Prime has now been pushed back to December so that Asus can ship the tablet with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich pre-installed. Google has agreed to lend a hand to make sure the transition to ICS is a smooth one for Asus.
I suppose it's not a little ironic that what is easily the best Android tablet yet does not look a little bit like an iPad, but a lot like an iPad, and is being sued for trademark infringement--though not by Apple. If you want to be generous, you could say that Asus's Transformer Prime stands on the shoulders of giants. With spiked cleats.
You can't buy it just yet, but ASUS has gone ahead and released the user manual, kernel source, drivers and other software related to its upcoming Transformer Prime Android tablet.
Taiwanese consumer electronics company Asus has been heavily teasing the impending release of its second-generation Transformer Android tablet, known as Transformer Prime. On Tuesday, it pushed out the teaser video we've embedded above, and last night at the AsiaD conference, the company's president Jonney Shih brought the tablet on stage for another quick look before its official November 9th debut.
Just when you thought there couldn't be any more thin and light laptops on the market ASUS unveils an all new range of Eee PC netbooks, updates to the UX21 ultrabook and a new 1080p Eee Pad Transformer. Keep reading to see the full specs and photos.
Asus doesn't really have a tablet to proudly compete with the likes of the iPad, Motorola Xoom or Samsung Galaxy Tab yet, but they're working on it, and when it comes out ASUS CEO Jerry Shen wants everyone to know it's going to push the envelope in some significant ways.
It looks like that very aggressive prices are becoming a trend when it comes to mobile computing. For $300 you can buy a 12? ultrapotable laptop, for $200 you can pre-oreder a 7? ViewSonic tablet, and for the same price you can now also pre-order the Asus Eee PC X101 10.1-inch netbook.
Earlier this year, NVIDIA teased us all with the promise of its forthcoming Kal-El SoC, indicating an August debut. Well, we're currently in the thick of that hot and hazy month with no clear sign of an incoming quad-core tablet, but certainly more release gossip.
AT&T has finally unwrapped HTC's first Honeycomb tablet -- the 10.1-inch Jetstream. This puppy's been leaked every which way to Sunday, and specs are largely as we've previously seen.
AT&T released its Q4 2011 earnings this morning, saying it set sales records for Android devices in the three months ending Dec. 31. While it declined to give specific Android numbers, AT&T did say that it sold 9.4 million Android and iOS smartphones, 82 percent its postpaid sales were smartphones, and it activated 7.6 million iPhones.
Samsung just announced that the Galaxy Tab 8.9 will be available on AT&T as an LTE-capable device starting Nov. 20. It's got a 1.5 GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor, 1280x800 display and 3.2 and 2MP cameras.
Samsung Electronics Co. is closer to selling its new Galaxy tablet computer in Australia after a court on Wednesday overturned a ruling that sided with Apple's allegations Samsung had copied its iPad and iPhone.
With the announcement of the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet a whole new set of specs has arrived for the Nook line. Jump on pat the break to get a look at the full list of features and key specifications.
At the beginning of 2011 there wasn't a single dedicated Android tablet app. Now it's the end of the year and we are inundated with them. New Android tablets are released monthly by the likes of Samsung, Motorola and Amazon, and there's a whole bunch of great tablet-optimized apps to go along with them. Here are some of our favorites this year.
Best Buy could suffer collateral damage from the expected launch tomorrow of Amazon's move into the Android-based tablet market, Piper Jaffray analyst Peter Keith asserts in a research note. Keith notes that a proprietary survey of 410 "online participants" suggest "very healthy demand" for an Amazon tablet, which is reportedly called the Kindle Fire, at a $249 price point.
Research In Motion's iPad competitor, the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, goes on sale April 19, but it's not ready for prime time. Reviewers who got their hands on the PlayBook early posted their thoughts on the tablet -- and it's not good news for RIM.
Today the BlackBerry PlayBook becomes available for order from retail outlets and from RIM directly. The PlayBook is RIM's enterprise tablet that the company hopes ushers in a new era of tablets and the new OS based on QNX. The PlayBook is available from Best Buy, OfficeMax, Office Depot and Staples, and from the RIM online store.
You guyzzz, BlackBerry's PlayBook tablet can also do video-calls! It's only over Wi-Fi, but considering that's the only model that's actually on sale now, I think we can live with that. From tomorrow, PlayBook owners can download it over-the-air through an update, or by checking into the BlackBerry App World.
The BlackBerry PlayBook got a hefty discount at one major reseller though it hardly compares to the fire-sale pricing seen recently for Hewlett-Packard's TouchPad.
The Blackberry Playbook tablet hasn't exactly been a huge sales success for its maker, Research in Motion. To help bring some new life to the tablet, the company is apparently planning to launch a long promised feature that should make the Playbook more attractive to buyers.
No doubt Apple is feeling pretty good about things with sales of the iPad 2 keeping the company coffers overflowing. That's why everyone is talking about the tablets coming down the pike to give the iPad 2 a run for that money. Such talk usually centers around the Motorola XOOM which is already on retailer shelves, and also the HP TouchPad which is scheduled to appear soon. One tablet coming in a few weeks that could give the iPad some serious competition is the BlackBerry PlayBook.
Described yesterday in the official BlackBerry blog, the new BlackBerry Tablet OS version 1.07.3312 offers a security fix to the Flash Player that Adobe rolled out on September 21. Available now for all PlayBook users, the new BlackBerry update can be downloaded over the air.
With tablets being all the rage these days, Bluetooth keyboards are rising in popularity. It's not that the on-screen keyboards are bad (well, some are), but having physicals key adds a whole level of familiarity, plus you don't have to try and balance a tablet on your lap or something.
hahrukh Khan starrer Ra.One is banking on new media as a revenue stream. The movie has games for Android & iOS, an online store selling tablet PCs including other merchandise.
The bounty for any developer who manages to port Android to the TouchPad is growing, reaching more than US$2,100 on Thursday, just as one effort to execute the port struggles to get off the ground.
Today Fox News is reporting that Eric Schmidt promised an iPad killer in six months, based on a comment the Google Executive Chairman made last week to Italian paper Corriere della Sera. This is exactly what Schmidt said. "Noi nei prossimi sei mesi contiamo di mettere sul mercato un tablet di altissima qualitàm," he told the paper. Yes, that's Italian.
It seems like only yesterday that smartphones were the breakthrough gadgets, wowing us with their apps and other capabilities. But how quickly we tire of new toys. As soon as tablets appeared in the market, smartphones became standard feature phones, channeling the promise of even newer technology. And just as Android became the dominant player amongst smartphones, the iPad delivered fresh channel to Google's mobile OS and the manufacturers that support it. With the stakes higher than ever, Team Android gains a fresh perspective and more players, from Samsung to Amazon.
Android's been quick to follow Apple into the handset market, and straight on into the tablet realm. And while Android's been kicking butt and taking names as far as smartphones go, Google's mobile OS may not fare so well against the iPad. The latest report from Gartner indicates that Android will only take a 24 percent market share of the tablet market by 2015, leaving Apple with nearly 50 percent. That's a significant drop from Apple's current reign of 69 percent, which has already fallen nearly 12 percent since last year. But in the long-run, Apple may still be the winner.
It's interesting that the Kindle (as opposed to the upcoming Amazon Kindle Tablet) was written off when the Apple iPad arrived, but curiously, sales rose. While the iPad is great for thumbing through magazines, the Kindle has it beat at book reading.
Let's say your company wants to produce smartphone apps. On the conference room white board, developers have laid out the beginnings of a small-screen game that will make Angry Birds look like Ms. Pacman. Everyone's pretty excited.
I remember physically sighing when Intel announced a dual-core Atom as the answer to video playback issues on the netbook. It's not that way to do it at all which is why I'm very please to have confirmation that Cedar Trail, the latest netbook platform, will have hardware decoding support. The GMA3600 graphics core is based on PowerVR technology from Imagination and while I didn't get full specs, (it's said to be SGX 545 at 400Mhz) I did get visual confirmation.
Android has not only triumphed as the No. 1 smart phone platform in the world, but it is very likely to surpass iPad as number one tablet OS, despite the iPad's current 75 percent market share.
It's not politically correct to snigger at foreign folks' names, but we're not sure how well the Ainol tablet will play with Westerners - even if it does cost as little as $100 (£64) and come with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
China Mobile (CHL) general manager Bill Huang said the company wants to order 1 million tablet computers this year, for a total sales value of 2.2 billion yuan, or $335 million. That doesn't mean the order is going to Apple, though. Huang said the company wants to work with Taiwan original equipment makers to develop a low priced version of the iPad.
Given that many a fanboy's assumption that Apple would announce a new-design iPhone earlier this month derived from claims made to market analysts by sources within Chinese component makers, you should probably treat the following with some scepticism.
The rise of the tablet is part of a broader movement toward what Intel call companion computing, a category that includes all sort of personal and mobile devices from smartphones to netbooks to convertibles and sliders. In an event at Computex today Intel executives said companion computing was still in the early stages and discussed the strategy for getting Atom chips into these devices.
For years, Crytek's 2007 first-person action game Crysis has been shorthand for a system-intensive game that can test the mettle of even the beefiest rig. Over the past four years, though, computers have gotten a lot faster and Crysis has fallen behind the times... almost anything can run it pretty well now.
Come this October, Dell might have the most powerful tablet on the market. At least, that's what its Peju code-named tablet running Windows 8 looks like on paper.
Dell expects both Windows 8 and Android to be credible options for tablet customers next year, and indicated it plans to offer products built around the two operating systems, a company executive said on Wednesday.
Once just a consumer's gadget, netbooks have found a market in the business world as well as among educators. Today we look at Dell's offering, the Latitude 2120 featuring a 10-inch display and eight hours of battery life. Our Dell Latitude 2120 review unit has the following specifications:
10.1-inch display with anti-glare coating (1024x600 resolution)
Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit
Intel Atom N550 dual-core processor (2.0GHz, 512k cache, 533MHz FSB)
Integrated Intel GMA 3150 graphics
2GB DDR2 RAM
250GB 5400RPM Western Digital hard drive (WD2500BEVT)
The 5-inch Dell Streak, an oversized smartphone pretending to be a tablet, is now officially dead as the computer maker puts its money on larger tablets that can better rival Apple's popular iPad.
Dell hopes you keep that iPad at home when you come to work and instead use its new Latitude ST tablet to get your productivity on. The company has just launched the Windows 7 slate with an eye to the corporate market, as well as healthcare and education workers. Dell says the Latitude ST is ideal...
The Dell Streak is one of those early Android tablets that quickly fell by the wayside, but that doesn't mean there isn't a fair number of you still rocking it. The Streak 7 got its Honeycomb update back in October, but bugs have persisted.
RIM continues to be "absolutely confident" in the PlayBook tablet despite poor sales and is to shift its focus to trying to convince BlackBerry enthusiasts to buy the tablet.
An interesting report has emerged from the postmortem for the TouchPad, the webOS-based tablet that HP dumped last week as part of a surprise pivot for the company away from consumer products. According to The Next Web, members of the webOS team have claimed that the hardware HP chose to build the TouchPad around was...
No doubt about it, Football is back in full swing. Last week the NFL released its official app for tablets and now DirecTV has gone ahead and launched its NFL Sunday Ticket app for Honeycomb tablets. With it, you can stream any NFL Sunday Ticket game in HD plus, you also have access to the Red Zone channel.
If you've been itching to get your hands on a Droid XYBOARD, the sequel to Motorola's XOOM, you can now purchase one at your local Verizon Wireless retail store. The XYBOARD packs a 1.2 GHz dual core processor, an IPS, Gorilla Glass-coated display, and an LTE radio, and comes in 10.1 and 8.2-inch flavors.
Back in November we were told the dual-booting Windows 7 / Android tablet would be shipping come Q1 2011 and Viewsonic today has made that happen. Just in case you need a refresher on specs, what you'll be getting yourself into with the ViewPad 10 is:
1.66GHz Intel Atom processor
2GB of memory
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n,
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
1.3 megapixel built-in front camera
MicroSD card slot
Android 1.6 and either Windows 7 Home Premium (with a 16GB SSD hard drive) or Windows 7 Professional (with a 32GB SSD hard drive) for respective ESPs of $599 and $679.
Launched in mid-2009, the Palm Pre smartphone was supposed to the savior for the Palm company. It was the first smartphone to use the WebOS operating system which was developed by Palm and based on Linux. It received a ton of hype before its release as well as a number of favorable previews when it was shown off at the Consumer Electronics Show several months before the phone launched. However the Palm Pre's sales were not up to expectations and despite the company releasing more WebOS phones like the Pixi it wasn't enough. In 2010 HP purchased Palm and got access to WebOS.
New Android tablets continue their onslaught into the market, but new data from Good Technology shows that the world's largest companies are shunning them for iPads.
The unofficial Android 3.0 Honeycomb port for the Samsung Galaxy Tab that we reported a couple of weeks ago has made some pretty impressive progress in a relatively short space of time. Now ROM chef spacemoose1 has made some initial alpha builds available for download, giving the CDMA Galaxy Tab its first taste of Honeycomb.
Along with Firefox 6 for PCs, today, Mozilla also released the mobile version, which I must say looks damn good. But it feels even better. There's a solidness about the browser that makes it ready, finally, for prime time. Firefox fans, this is the one you've been waiting for.
At yesterday's BlackBerry Innovation Forum, RIM finally demoed its massively tardy native email, contacts and calendar apps. RIM expects the features to be in the PlayBook by February 17th—a full 10 months after it launched.
ARCHOS has officially thrown its hat into the Honeycomb ring with its upcoming G9 line of tablets, and we got another sneak peek this week in New York's Times Square. The G9 line, according to ARCHOS Senior VP and General Manager Frédéric Balaÿ, is the fruit of the company's ongoing commitment to Android and Google, which started with the Android 1.5 Cupcake-flavored ARCHOS 7 Home Tablet back in early 2010. Balaÿ says that it is this history with Android, coupled with ARCHOS' over ten years experience in the tablet market, that gives the manufacturer a unique insight into how best to optimize both hardware and software to meet the users' needs. Hit the break for a closer look.
In a world where Android tablet manufacturers have had to scramble on the hardware side to differentiate themselves, there are two trains of thought. One is to go light and sleek, the other is to cram as much functionality into the device as possible while allowing for a little bit of girth.
Ask any analyst, technophile, or blogger -- this summer we expect a plethora of Android tablets. Some will be good, some not so much, but the OGT Tablet is something we're going to be keeping our eye on. Not only do they bill it as "the world's thinnest Android tablet" at a trim 7 mm and only 550 grams in weight, it has some very interesting specs.
If you need more than a smartphone but less than a laptop, you may be a happy tablet user. But there are still some peculiarities to work around and new habits to develop.
But the fine folks at Mozilla are still baking support for it in the new version of native Firefox, and it's avaliable now as a nightly build. That's not to say it's without bugs -- nightly builds are like that, of course.
You've got the same look and feel in the $4.99 app, which has expanded for larger screens, making the mapping features that much better. Tripit support is still there, too, with a $4.99 upgrade. Check out our video and find download links after the break.
On Wednesday morning, Amazon.com is expected to launch its first-ever tablet, apparently called the Kindle Fire. The conventional wisdom is that the device will be a $249, Android-based, 7-inch tablet with a color screen -- and that it will sell like hotcakes.
So you managed to pick up a fancy new Android tablet only to realize that working Facebook in the browser is kind of a drag and it doesn't provide an optimal tablet experience. Enter Friend Me -- a new Facebook application optimized for use on Android tablets running Honeycomb. Friend Me comes to us all from the maker of Newsr and TweetComb and brings Facebook to tablets, as you would expect it to be.
Fujitsu ARROWS Tab, a waterproof Android tablet, has been put on sale in Japan. With prices of $779 for the 16GB FAR70A model and $883 for the 32GB FAR75A, the ARROWS Tab offers a 10.1" multitouch display, OMAP4 1GHz dual-core processor, and Android Honeycomb, all packed into a water-resistant case.
Fujitsu has announced a Windows 7 hybrid with a unique sliding keyboard is going on sale in Japan in June. The TH Series tablet is a 10.1-inch multitouch slate with a full keyboard that slides out when needed. The specs have it firmly in the netbook category, with Atom Oak Trail processor (1.5 GHz), 1 GB of RAM and a 120GB hard drive.
The first known model is the LifeBook TH40/D for the Japanese market. Besides the 1024 × 600 capacitive multitouch-enabled LED-backlight screen, the 2.4-pound slider with a 0.68-inch thickness features the Atom Z670 1.5GHz single-core processor with Intel GMA 600 integrated graphics, 1GB of DDR2 system memory, a 120GB hard drive, and approximately six hours of battery life.
With its security features, sturdy design, and swappable battery, the Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 puts business functionality into a Windows tablet you can actually use, and its combination of touch input and physical controls sidestep many common problems.
Fujitsu is pitching its latest Windows 7 tablet directly at the enterprise and business markets. That's a wise move because Windows in its current form is never going to hold a candle to iOS and Android Honeycomb in terms of consumer usability. It also means Fujitsu can load the Q550 down with tricks and treats and not worry too much about the impact on the price.
Hewlett-Packard may be giving up on making webOS devices such as the Pre 3 and Veer smartphones and TouchPad tablet, but executives at the company say committed to developing its mobile platform. HP appears convinced it can wring some value from the mobile OS it picked up after purchasing Palm last year for $1.2 billion.
Gadmei is showing off a line of inexpensive tablets with Google Android 4.0 and glasses-free 3D screens. Yes, 3D is sort of a gimmick. No, there’s not a lot of 3D content available for this tablet. But yes… the demo video playing a loop of 3D women flying through the air looks pretty cool.
As you may have guessed, the Tab 7.7 features a screen that measures 7.7 inches on its diagonal. Once released, it will join the existing Galaxy Tab family, including the Galaxy Tab 7 Wi-Fi, Galaxy Tab 7 Plus, Galaxy Tab 8.9, and Galaxy Tab 10.1.
This is one of those good-bad things that's starting to swing the needle firmly to "bad" column. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is getting a 63.12MB update to Android 3.2, but the update appears to have a negative effect on Wifi -- kind of an important feature on a Wifi-only device.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1's UK launch is nearly upon us, with Londoners getting the first chance to buy Sammy's latest tablet tomorrow afternoon local time (we'll be there!). Samsung is wasting no time in drumming up a little hype around the Tab 10.1, with three new British TV ads for the device showcasing its thinness, lightness and speed compared to an unnamed, fruit-themed competitor.
If you can't wait until the August 4 nationwide street date for your British Galaxy Tab 10.1, then you might want to head down to the Tottenham Court Road branch of PC World, where it can be yours from 5pm the previous day.
I know we just told you about Logitech's new line of tablet accessories and Phil just made it known that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 should have been what Honeycomb launched on, so this next bit of news looks to enforce the latter and outdo the former.
'Mini Apps' are a collection of utilities that can be launched on top of other Android applications. These include a notepad, calendar, task manager, clock, music player and calculator.
GameStop is offering gamers a choice among the 7-inch Acer Iconia Tab A100 for $329, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 for $499, and the $399 Asus Eee Pad Transformer. To transform them into gaming machines, the retailer is bundling six titles with each tablet--Dead Space, Monster Madness, Sonic CD, Cordy, Riptide GP, and Re-Load.
Earlier this year, GameStop said it would either find some tablets to sell or build its own. Now, the retailer has chosen option A, launching a handful of familiar Android tablets with some free games inside.
Will you be gaming on these GameStop-moded slates this holiday: the Viewsonic Vpad 7, Asus Eee Pad Transformer, Acer Iconia Tab A500 and Motorola Xoom?
The forecast doesn't look good for netbooks. Not only are tablets cannibalizing the netbook market, now budget laptops with faster processors and better graphics performance have hit the $400 sweet spot.
For as long as I can remember, I've dinged the iPad and its 10-inch competitors for being way too expensive. I mean, come on, $500? That's Core i5 computer money!
Gigabyte Technology has begun taking orders for its S1080 Windows 7 tablet in its home market of Taiwan, and expects to start sales in other parts of the world next month.
An update for Google Books, Google's own e-reader Android app, is live and ready to download in the Android Market. You can now +1 a book while you're reading, as well as perform an in-book search. On your phone, you can now use Books in landscape mode "for flowing text," and on your 7-inch tablet, you'll notice better support for your screen size. Hit the link after the break to grab the free update.
If you happen to be the proud owner of a Google I/O edition Galaxy Tab 10.1 you'll be interested to know that it makes interesting use of the stock Bluetooth stack. And as such, you can do some pretty cool things with it.
There are Android tablets ... and then there are Android tablets. And if I understand Google's plan, the online giant will soon release its own Android-based tablet, much as it also has its own Android-based smart phone in addition to allowing partners to create their own devices. Such a Google-made tablet would be very interesting. Very interesting, indeed.
Google Friday unveiled a simplified search interface for Apple iPad and Android 3.1 tablets. The changes, which are being rolling out over the next several days at www.google.com, including a streamlined layout better suited to touchscreen users.
Google is organizing a series of Android Developer Labs (ADLs) that aim to help developers convert their existing smartphone applications to run on Honeycomb-based tablets, it said in a blog post on Monday.
Google Body, the Google Earth-style anatomy app announced at February's Honeycomb event, has finally hit the market. After spending the month as a web app, owners of a shiny new Honeycomb tablet can glide through skin, muscle, bone, organs, veins and nerves with the swipe of a finger.
The recently announced Grid 10 Tablet aims to redeem Fusion Garage after their very much failed JooJoo tablet. The Grid 10 (and its phone-buddy the Grid 4) arrived with much hype and hyperbole.
Lurking inside the Nvidia booth here at CES are some high-profile devices not getting much fanfare, one such being the Acer Iconia Tab A510. Its purpose at the booth is to show off just how powerful the Tegra 3 processor truly is, but we couldn't help giving it the ole fashioned shakedown. Hit the break for full impressions.
Motorola will be selling its new Xoom 2 tablets - a 10.1in model and the 8.2in "Media Edition", both unveiled today - primarily through Dixons' stores and Carphone Warehouse. Those are both consumer-oriented outlets, so why will so many business apps - Citrix, GoToMeeting and QuickOffice, for instance - be pre-loaded onto the tablets?
This Motorola XYBOARD 10.1 looks a little familiar, eh? It should. Take the Motorola XYBOARD 8.2, add a couple inches, and that's what you've got. It's the same redesigned Motorola Xoom 2 with a larger screen and a third option for storage -- 16GB, 32GB or 64GB.
Tablets appear to be a dime a dozen now a days so a tablet has to be pretty unique in order to stand out in this market. Pantech announced earlier today their 8-inch tablet dubbed the Pantech Element, and you may be wondering what makes this one unique. Featuring an 8-inch touchscreen, and running a lightly skinned Honeycomb the device sure sounds like an ordinary device.
Hang on, folks, because mobile computing has just got a bit more interesting. Google's Chrome OS is finally ready for the wild--two years after its launch--and the Samsung Chromebook Series 5, due out on June 15, will be one of two laptops to showcase Google's Web-based operating system.
The S1, dead on, looks like any (every?) other 10-inchish tablet. (Its 1280×768 screen measures 9.4 inches, for bean counters. It's nice.) But then you catch the side. It's curved, tapering to a sliver. Huh. And then you hold it. It's exactly like a magazine where you've folded back the cover. (You know, if you're a fan of magazines that weigh over a pound.) The center of gravity is placed with intent. It feels right, if a couple hundred grams weightier than I'd like. But unlike every other major Android 3.0 tablet out there, it's actually designed to be used in portrait mode. Bless you, Sony.
The elephant in the room here at CES this year is truly Windows 8. Microsoft's talking about it, but not much. Manufacturers have hardware that should be running Windows 8, but has Windows 7 onboard instead and they aren't willing to say what their plans are. It's a shroud of mystery that Microsoft is trying to maintain until the public beta is out come late February.
RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook launched this week, on the 19th, in WiFi only configuration and my 32GB model from Best Buy arrived yesterday. As linked to below, a few other ZDNet bloggers wrote about the PlayBook, but I wanted to give you a quick video walkthrough of the device, user interface, and included applications.
Archos recently caused a bit of commotion by announcing two new tablets powered by Android 3.1 Honeycomb -- the Archos 80 G9 and 101 G9. Of interest was not only the 1.5GHz dual-core OMAP4 CPU, but also the price point -- $249 for the 8-inch version and $349 for the larger 10-incher. Throw in the intriguing prospect of a 250GB mechanical hard drive or 16GB of flash storage, and you've got two products that could potentially shake up the Android tablet market.
Nearly a full month before its launch in the US, Google and Samsung gave all of the attendees at Google I/O 2011 a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 with Android 3.0 onboard. This GTab, the WiFi-only 32GB version, has been considered by many to be "the Android tablet to beat the iPad 2? (sorry, I refuse to call anything a "killer") due to its size, thickness, and weight all being extremely comparable if not better than the iPad 2. So, we took some time to give the Tab 10.1 a full once over to see exactly how well it stood up against the other devices out there.
Hannspree is primarily known for its somewhat gimmicky range of TVs and monitors -- if you ever need a TV embedded in the stomach of a cuddly toy then Hannspree has just the thing for you. Its move into the tablet PC market was therefore rather unexpected. However the new Hannspad actually turns out to be quite a pleasant surprise.
A new version of Android will be available in November, initally on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone. Much of the analysis of this Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android is focused on the implications of it running on both smartphones and tablets, where older versions of Android ran on one or the other, as well as shiny new gimmicks such as face recognition to unlock a handset.
Windows 8 running on a tablet is looking promising, but it will be so long before it hits the market that it's impossible to tell how it will compare with devices of the future.
Hewlett-Packard has announced the Pavilion dm1(z) consumer ultraportable last month, but hasn’t forgot about business users. The company is going to launch soon the HP 3115m, a rebadget version of the dm1z, offering the same 11.6-inch form factor and similar internal compontents as its consumer counterprt.
Now that HP’s new CEO Meg Whitman has committed to keeping its PC division, FoxNews.com’s report from early last week that the company is currently testing Windows 8 on the TouchPad makes a lot more sense.
PC makers Hewlett-Packard and Dell are turning to Windows 8 as their next tablet operating system, thanks to fierce competition in the Android tablet market spurred most recently by Amazon's Kindle Fire.
The HP TouchPad and Android-powered tablets are barely making a dent in the stellar sales of the Apple iPad. The numbers are so bad that iPad rivals are starting to slash the prices of their devices, with HP offering a $50 "instant rebate" on its TouchPad tablet.
Like Dell, HP is hoping that is can compete better with the iPad in a corporate setting, rather than on consumer store shelves. It’s just announced an updated version of its Slate business tablet that runs Windows 7 and features a slew of improvements. Dubbed the Slate 2, it comes with an Intel Atom Z670 processor
The dm1 now sports a charcoal or black soft-touch lid which replaces a glossy one in the previous generation dm1, as well as new AMD Fusion Zacate E-300 and E-450 chips, with available Intel Core i3 option.
The new version is specced with a choice of new AMD E-series dual-core 'Zacate' CPUs with on-board GPUs - and discrete Radeon HD graphics chips - or Intel 'Sandy Bridge' second-gen Core i processors, also with on-chip graphics but no discrete GPU too.
When Hewlett-Packard's iPad challenger, the TouchPad, arrives on July 1, the tablet will have to struggle in a limited pool of apps, just like its Android counterparts. At the core of the iPad's success, the App Store is the steam powering developers' engines to make cool apps for those who shell out upward of $500 for a tablet--but HP does not have that for the TouchPad.
Near field communication (NFC) is becoming the hottest and most buzz-worthy feature on mobile devices this year, and apparently Hewlett-Packard just can't resist the trend either.
After less than two months on sale, HP has pulled the plug on the TouchPad tablet and is so desperate to get rid of them that it is having a firesale, selling the 16GB TouchPad for $99 and the 32GB model for $149.
HP has learned from Apple. Not simply by mimicking - or judging it to be the correct size in any case - the iPad's 9.7in screen defined dimensions, but by avoiding the obvious operating system: Android.
The TouchPad would have made a great competitor for the original iPad, but its design, features, and speed put it behind today's crop of tablet heavyweights.
With solid hardware and a user-friendly operating system based around multitasking and intuitive organization, the HP TouchPad is the best non-Apple tablet we've tested. There aren't a lot of apps yet, but Android Honeycomb tablet manufacturers should be a little nervous.
What a difference a year makes. Had HP's TouchPad - which went on sale in the UK this past Friday - debuted 12 months ago, maybe even as few as seven, it would have stood tall alongside the competition.
HP's TouchPad, the company's response to the Apple iPad, is hitting stores tomorrow and the first reviews are in. The TouchPad is the first iPad competitor to adopt Apple's screen form factor (4:3, while most Android tablets are 16:9), and also the first non-Android contender, running HP's WebOS.
iSuppli believes that HP's WebOS-powered Touchpad tablet has an estimated $318 worth of parts, with a manufacturing cost of $10. The 32GB 3G iPad 2, by comparison, had $325 worth of parts.
HP is about to enter the tablet market to take on Android and iOS with its WebOS platform. HP has been relatively quiet about the product, aside from the initial showing, and has managed, so far, to keep any major leaks about the product from hitting the web.
Hewlett-Packard told CNET on Monday that it will deliver a future update to boost the TouchPad's functionality. HP also said it has seen "huge spikes" in TouchPad activation in the wake of the decision to discount the tablet.
Hewlett-Packard on Monday announced its latest netbook, which offers significant application and graphics performance improvements with Intel's newest Atom processor.
HP's TouchPad could emerge as a viable competitor to Apple's iPad tablet in a burgeoning market filled with disappointing competitors, industry analysts said this week.
Ever since the TouchPad was introduced back in February, Hewlett-Packard has insisted that this webOS-based tablet is not an iPad competitor but something else entirely. Nevertheless, the comparisons can't be stopped.
Our pals over at PreCentral have found themselves in possession of what apparently is a release schedule from "a major U.S. retailer," and it's got a number of Android tablets listed, including a few new ones. Let's break it down:
HTC EVO View 4G owners get a bonus holiday gift today in the form of an Android Honeycomb update. Previously, the 7-inch tablet was running a tablet-optimized version of HTC's Sense interface over Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). Right now, you'll have to manually update your EVO View, but Sprint says it will push the upgrade over-the-air to users in 2012.
Chinese handset maker Huawei has taken the wraps off its latest tablet: the 7in, Android 3.2-based MediaPad - the first of its kind to run that version of the Google OS, Huawei claimed.
If you thought that Hyundai just made car's you'd be wrong, they've got their fingers in quite a few pies and they've just come out with the Hyundai IT A7. It is a 7 inch Android tablet has Allwinner A10 CPU running at 1.5GHz along side 8 GB, and RAM of 512 MB DDR.
Archos sends word that its G9 series of tablets, which includes 8-inch and 10-inch models, will be upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich during the first quarter of next year. The Archos 101 G9 and Archos 80 G9, which launched with Honeycomb, were unveiled earlier this year as Archos' first products to ship with the Android Market.
One thing Google didn't show us when Ice Cream Sandwich was announced in October was Android 4.0 running on a tablet. NVDIA's taken care of that for us and is doing so on the ASUS Transformer Prime, one of the more compelling Android tablets we've seen thus far.
A new iteration of the DroidKungFu Android Trojan has been uncovered, presented as a legitimate app update in order to sneak its way onto your Android phone. It uses a new exploit to gain access to devices. First brought to light by Lookout Mobile Security last week, this new variant, which Lookout calls LeNa, uses social engineering to trick users into giving the installer super-user access on devices. Once deployed, the malware attaches itself to a native system process.
If you're still maintaining multiple IM clients on your device, then you'll know how frustrating it can be at times having to keep them all in check. Luckily, there are some apps out there that combine all those platforms and one such app is IM+.
India's largest mobile operator, Bharti Airtel, and second largest, Reliance Communications, are bundling Android tablets priced at between US$220 and $285 with their mobile services, in a bid to increase use of their data plans.
Here at the Toy Fair 2012, the fact technology dominates kids' entertainment is clear as day. Inspiration Works aims to capitalise on this trend with a tablet specifically targeted towards nippers.
Intel CEO Paul Otellini is continuing to push the PC processor company's Ultrabooks vision to the press. The thin and light notebook design, which Intel first announced last May, became a reality earlier this month with Asus and Acer both launching their own Ultrabooks-based laptops. In a new video interview this week with the cable TV-based Fox Business Network, Otellini said that a new version of the Ultrabooks would be released in 2012, around the time of the launch of Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system.
Intel on Wednesday started shipping the latest Atom chips for netbooks, an important step to sustain growth of the low-cost PCs in the wake of the tablet onslaught.
Launched at the Computex trade show in Taiwan Monday, Ultrabook is Intel's new name for a class of full-performance laptops in ultra-slim cases. The chipmaker says the devices will be less than an inch thin, will offer long battery life, will cost less than $1000, and will offer tablet-like "instant-on" capabilities. In short, it will look a lot like the current Apple MacBook Air.
Intel announced some excellent financial numbers for the fourth quarter of 2011 on Thursday. During the PC processor company's financial conference call with analysts, Intel CEO Paul Otellini talked about several subjects, including a hint about when we might see products based on Windows 8 in store shelves.
Intel on Tuesday announced a new class of ultraportable laptops called Ultrabooks that promise longer battery life, are less than 0.8-inches thick, and priced under $1000. Intel announced the laptops at Computex 2011 and said Ultrabooks will merge the performance capabilities of modern laptops with "tablet-like features such as instant-on functionality." Intel is making a big bet on the new-ish laptop category and predicts that 40 percent of consumer laptops sold worldwide by the end of 2012 will be Ultrabooks.
This is the WIMM Wearable Platform (which I will be referring to strictly as "WIMM.") It's a tiny Android-powered module that will someday soon be used in watches, bike-mount computers, wearable interfaces, and anything else a clever company can come up with. It's the product of WIMM Labs, an all-star Silicon Valley company that has partnered with iPhone manufacturer Foxconn to usher in the era of the "first screen" and "micro apps."
Regular readers of this blog know my affinity for the tablet. I like using them, I find they fit my life very well and it's a common site to see me with one tablet or another in my hands. I believe that I am not alone with my preference for the slate, but when it comes to hard numbers there haven't been any to indicate that there is a sizable market for any tablet other than the iPad.
An IHS-iSuppli analyst believes Android and the cadre of tablet makers that use Google's operating system won't catch up to Apple's iPad and iOS anytime soon.
When you think of Italy, you think of Ferrari, Pasta, beautiful architecture. You might not think of Android and with good reason. However, Italian company Olivetti has set out to change all that by launching a pair of Android tablets, a 10 inch Honeycomb device and a 7-inch Froyo (yes, Froyo) device.
It's one thing to base your entire company's reputation off the wholesale infringement of popular gaming devices, but JinXing Digital decided to kick things up a notch. As spotted by the Gadgeteer, the Shenzhen-based group has officially released a tablet that manages to steal design notes and intellectual property from Apple, Sony, and Nintendo. Even crazier, the entire device sells for a paltry 140 dollars.
We are already seeing tablets with keyboard docks, but none as practical as the HP tc1100 hybrid design from years past. Let’s bring it back with Windows 8.
18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books
Thousands of popular apps and games
Ultra-fast web browsing - Amazon Silk
Free cloud storage for all your Amazon content
Vibrant color touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle
Fast, powerful dual-core processor
Amazon Prime members enjoy unlimited, instant streaming of over 10,000 popular movies and TV shows
7" multi-touch display with IPS (in-plane switching) technology and anti-reflective treatment, 1024 x 600 pixel resolution at 169 ppi, 16 million colors.
The Amazon Kindle Fire, which was announced last month, will debut in mid-November. It's a content consumption device that will integrate with all of Amazon's media services. As we near the release, Amazon continues to announce more content deals for its Prime instant video service. Prime was strictly about free two-day shipping until recently when they added the ability to stream thousands of movies and tv shows with the membership. The latest is PBS, which is providing a variety of shows including day-after availability for some titles.
Three months ago, online retailing giant Amazon didn't even sell a tablet computer, but today the firm controls a stunning 40 percent of the market for Android-based tablets, according to one market analyst. But whichever numbers you choose to believe, one thing is certain: With its lowball pricing, Amazon is sure to capture serious market share in this nascent market with its Kindle Fire device.
Amazon announced its Android-based Kindle tablet, the Kindle Fire, on Wednesday as expected as well as two touch-based Kindle eBook readers and a low-end Kindle eBook reader without touch. But Amazon thoroughly undercut even the wildest estimates for the cost of the eagerly anticipated Kindle Fire, which will retail for just $200.
While Apple is rightly credited for starting the media tablet market, a latecomer rival has created the purest of such devices. While Apple bristles at the notion that the iPad is simply a consumption device, Amazon embraces the concept wholeheartedly. The resulting product, the Kindle Fire, isn't just a viable alternative as a result. In many ways it's the better tablet.
Amazon's Kindle Fire was one of the hottest devices tracked by ad network Millennial Media in November though it didn't debut until halfway through the month.
Amazon.com, is pricing the new Kindle Fire tablet at $199, dramatically undercutting the Apple iPad, which starts at $499, Bloomberg reports. The low price point is finding an enthusiastic audience on the Street, where AMZN shares are on the rise Wednesday morning.
People throw around a lot of big phrases when they talk about the Kindle Fire -- "iPad killer" being an oldie but goodie. But after spending some time with the 7-inch Fire, one thing is abundantly clear: this ain't no iPad killer. This right here is something else entirely. Less a "tablet" in the sense we've come to think of it than a content-delivery device, the Kindle Fire is a window to serious, non-stop entertainment consumption. And Amazon shopping. Lots of Amazon shopping.
A new report analyzing app usage purports to show that, in just three months, Amazon's Kindle Fire has dethroned the Samsung Galaxy Tab as the top Android tablet — at least when it comes to people actually spending time on their devices.
The Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet are likely the hottest tech products for the holiday season and fill both eReader and Android tablet needs for less than $250.
RBC Capital analyst Ross Sandler reached that conclusion in a research note this morning, after he assessed the results of a proprietary survey of 216 Kindle Fire owners.
Amazon has been a little bit less than forthcoming about how well its Kindle Fire Android tablet has been doing, saying only that it has sold "millions." Now the company has given a little more insight to that claim -- it's a million per week.
Amazon's Kindle Fire was expected to be a success because of the Amazon brand name and $199 price point, but the tablet has continued to outsell predictions and is now the best selling item on Amazon for the eighth straight week. Black Friday saw enormous interest in not only the Fire, but the entire Kindle family, Amazon said, though it didn't actually release any numbers to back that up.
Assuming Amazon is able to sell 2.5 million tablets in the fourth quarter, Munster says the loss on each Kindle Fire could drill down earnings by 10 to 20 percent. However, as other analysts have noted, Amazon isn't counting on sales from the hardware.
Amazon is pushing out a free over-the-air software update for the Kindle Fire, that fixes a batch of problems with the tablet. The update comes just over a week after Amazon vowed to address users' complaints with the $200 low-cost iPad alternative.
Amazon's had quite the learning curve over the past 10 months, first with the Amazon Appstore (remember when AT&T phones couldn't use it?), and now it's taking another giant leap forward with the Kindle Fire tablet. We already know it won't have the Android Market on board. That makes sense. But what about in-app purchases? That's one of the more important features Google rolled out this year.
Amazon's new Kindle Fire is almost certain to be a financial success for Amazon, and may finally make a name for Google's Android in tablets. If only the success and acclaim were deserved.
Amazon's Kindle Fire could actually bring more new iPad customers to Apple, according to one analyst who says the company isn't worried about the season's hottest new tablet.
Even if Amazon started out underwater on the Kindle Fire’s manufacturing costs, the company is already in the black on my account. Not bad for a month’s work.
We've been patiently sitting back and watching the rumors surrounding Amazon's supposed Android tablet, because, frankly, that's all they've been. Rumor and conjecture. But TechCrunch's MG Siegler this afternoon has penned a first-person opus, detailing time with a test unit. We'll not attempt to steal any thunder here -- definitely go read the full post linked below. But here are the big strokes:
It's a 7-inch tablet-style device.
It's running Android, insofar as that's what's under the hood. But much like the Nook Color, it doesn't look like Android in the least.
Don't bother looking for Google apps, or the Android Market. They're not there. That's hardly a surprise, that Amazon has the Amazon Appstore, which will purchase and load Android apps just fine. Amazon Cloud Player and Amazon Instant Video will be deeply integrated. The Kindle app is the default reader, natch.
And because it's off the reservation, don't bother looking for Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich updates. This thing's totally on its own.
Cost will be $250, same as the Nook Color.
And expect Amazon to market the hell out of it online.
When Amazon announced its new Kindle Fire Android tablet, it also announced a new piece of web-browsing software called Silk. And that piece of software has some people worried about Amazon getting ahold of a lot of private data.
The battle to fight Apple's success with the iPad's tablets has centered on making competitive products that might also be cheaper to purchase. Now, according to an article on the Digitimes web site, more Taiwan-based manufacturers of smartphones and tablets are reportedly getting orders for two finger based touch screens which are cheaper to make than touch screens that can use all 10 fingers at once.
T'was only a matter of time, right? The Android Market -- and all of its hidden secrets apps -- now runs just fine on the Amazon Kindle Fire. There are a couple of caveats if you want to get this done.
A new survey from Appcelerator indicates that app developers are excited about the potential with Amazon's new Kindle Fire tablet. The Android-ish tablet creates some issues as well, but it more than makes up for it with access to an audience of mobile device users that are accustomed to spending money.
The Kindle Fire is an unusual device with one of the most extensively modified Android skins available. Amazon might have hit some aspects of the device just right, like the integration with the Amazon cloud, but for every hit there is a miss like the sluggish Silk browser and or limited home screen. Amazon might have altered the look and feel of Android, but there is a lot of the core OS under the hood.
As you've undoubtedly heard, Amazon's Kindle Fire has been elevated--in the eyes of some who really should know better--as a device that can be fairly compared to Apple's iPad. Even Amazon has stepped in it with a silly Kindle vs. iPad comparison table. Goofy tables and cherry-picked accolades aside, I regret the comparison.
An Android Forums user said he discovered rooting was possible late Tuesday by using the Android software development kit provided by Google and a one-click rooting tool called SuperOneClick 2.2. Rooting is the Android equivalent of jailbreaking for an iOS device.
With millions of units sold in the past weeks, it's safe to say the Kindle Fire can be considered a wildly successful product. Traditionally very secretive about sales figures when it comes to the Kindle line, Amazon broke its silence to announce that the Fire is the most successful Kindle device to date.
A supposed leaked document from Amazon shows Kindle Fire pre-sales are about to surpass those of the iPad, which would instantly make it the fastest-selling tablet of all time. Oooh, burn!
Amazon announced the Kindle Fire, a 7-inch tablet with an emphasis on simplicity and Amazon content, on Sept. 28. That day, Amazon sold more Kindle Fires than any of the company's e-readers combined, eDataSource said.
As early adopters crack open their Kindle Fires this month, the rest of the country is watching. Is Amazon.com's new $199 gadget as good as the $499 iPad 2 or the $249 Nook Tablet?
We still don’t know exactly how many Kindle Fire tablets Amazon was able to sell since the device’s release in November, but getting sales numbers isn’t the only way to figure out the market penetration of a mobile device.
Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley lowered his Apple iPad estimates to 13 million from 14 million for the December quarter, citing “potentially lower inventory levels combined with increased competition from the $200 Kindle Fire”.
There's the trifecta, folks. We've got ADB access on the Kindle Fire, you can already root the Kindle Fire with SuperOneClick, and Amazon's already dropped the source code for public consumption, which is darn nice of them.
One of the Kindle Fire's most hyped features is the Amazon Silk web browser. Amazon took great pains to explain how its idea of a browser was unique on tablets. The powerful Amazon Web Services (AWS) back end is used to compress, cache, and serve content to the Kindle Fire, thus accelerating the page load process.
Leading online retailer Amazon.com has never been forthcoming with exact sales figures for its Kindle e-reader platform. Instead, the company uses ambiguities like "the current generation Kindle is selling twice as many units as the previous generation," or that the current generation is the fastest-selling model yet.
The price is great, but the Amazon Kindle Fire is more of a second-generation Barnes & Nobles Nook knock-off than a major Android tablet release, never mind being an iPad killer.
Let's start off with this -- no it's not ready, and no we don't know when it will be. Now that we got that out of the way, XDA forums member JackpotCalvin has gotten a build of CM7 to boot on the Kindle Fire.
Verizon this morning officially announced it will carry the Motorola Xoom 2 and Xoom 2 Media Edition as the XYBOARD 10.1 and XYBOARD 8.2, respectively. Both tablets will launch with Android 3.2 Honeycomb but will be upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
The Kindle Fire is not due to be released for a month yet, but Amazon has already updated its Android developer FAQ with information about developing apps for the Kindle Fire. As expected, the minimalist hardware and highly modified build of Android on the e-reader-tablet hybrid will present some interesting challenges for developers, and could also affect the user experience.
With a commitment to Android well under way, purchasing HP's WebOS sounds a bit outlandish for Amazon. Or does it spell a path towards differentiation and unique value add?
There are simply too many compromises in the Kindle Fire to make it a viable competitor to the iPad. Fire’s sure to gobble up the low-end of the market, but an iPad it’s not.
Dell could be the first to release a tablet ready for Windows 8, but leaked details suggest that Dell will launch the tablet in October equipped with Windows 7. The Dell Latitude ST (the more likely official name of the device codenamed 'Peju') faces a challenging array of tablet competitors, but it caters to a different audience.
Educational toymaker LeapFrog Enterprises announced on Wednesday a $99 tablet called the "LeapPad," deliberately positioned as a child's version of an Apple iPad.
Confirmed details for the 7-inch IdeaPad are rather slim still but rumors are suggesting this one will be powered by a TI OMAP3621 processor, a 7-inch 1024 x 600 touchscreen and various other goodies like 3G connectivity, SDCard slot, front and rear-facing cameras all rounded out with a 3700mAh battery. Not great but not bad either, you can find one more pic after the break.
Lenovo announced a new US$199 IdeaPad tablet with a 7-inch screen and Google's Android OS in response to the surge in demand for inexpensive tablets, the company said on Thursday.
We're all wondering when our Honeycomb tablets are going to be getting an update to Ice Cream Sandwich, I'm still waiting on my Motorola Xoom! Lenovo has confirmed atleast that the ThinkPad and the IdeaPad tablets are going to be getting the Android 4.0 update. The only down side to the news is that they've named the 2nd quarter of 2012 as their release time frame.
We have taken a look at the Lenovo IdeaPad A1 tablet in the past, and the forums have been building up in anticipation of its arrival, and that time appears to be now. Lenovo has made the IdeaPad A1, the little brother to the IdeaPad K1, available for order on their site starting at $199 for the 2GB model, and $249 for one with 16GB of storage. Is the $199 price tag enough to make you overlook the fact that it runs Gingerbread, or will you be passing in favor a Honeycomb tablet?
Go into our product database, select Tablet Devices (Windows), click the weight and screen size column headers and you'll get a list showing the lightest 10" Windows Tablet. The only device that comes in at under 800gm is the Viliv X10 which, as we now know, isn't going to happen. The Lenovo Ideapad P1will be dropping into that list very shortly as one of the lightest Windows Tablets there is. It's a trend that's happening more and more now that Oaktrail is here.
The S2 features the an IPS display with a 1280 x 800 resolution, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8960 dual-core processor at 1.5 GHz, 1 GB of RAM, up to 64 GB system memory, WLAN 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, GPS/AGPS, microSD slot, microHDMI port, SIM slot available on 3G model, 1.3 MP front and a 8 MP rear camera.
The Lenovo K2110 IdeaTab tablet with the Intel Atom Z2460 "Medfield" 1.6 GHz processor running Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS was showcased at the CES Show last week.
Lenovo, currently the third biggest PC maker in the world (behind HP and Dell) has now launched its first entries in the very crowded tablet PC space. Today the company announced that it has started selling the IdeaPad Tablet K1, a consumer based tablet that is running Android 3.1. In early August it will begin selling the ThinkPad Tablet, another Android 3.1 product that's aimed at the business market.
Lenovo's answer to the iPad, the LePad, went through months of delays before finally being launched in one market, and now there's already talk of another.
Anybody have a hankering for another Android 3.0 tablet/laptop combo? The ASUS EeePad Transformer is already out in Europe and is headed to the United States this week. And hot on its heels this summer may be the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet.
Lenovo has released the official press photos of the IdeaPad K1 Android tablet and the ThinkPad Android tablet on their Picasa account. No details came with these, but we already knew a little bit and can learn more from the photos.
It runs Android 3.1 "Honeycomb" version on the 10.1-inch multitouch 1280 x 800 IPS screen and sports the Nvidia Tegra 2 mobile platform, as well as 16, 32, or 64GB of internal storage, 1GB RAM, and a 2-cell Li-Polymer battery delivering up to 8 hours of battery life.
Lenovo President Rory Read said earlier this month that the company is working on an Android-based ThinkPad tablet, and the gadget has now had its first outing, in Brazil.
Lenovo this morning announced a pretty cool option for its Android-based ThinkPad Tablet, adding the Qualcomm Gobi 3000 chipset so you can get online on any network in the world, be it GSM or CDMA.
The Lenovo ThinkPad X220 takes top honors among tablet PCs, combining choice aspects of a capable ultraportable business laptop with a multitouch Windows tablet.
Is a gadget defined by its size? Some gadgets certainly are: an iPod turns into a jukebox if it's made five feet tall and installed in a bar somewhere. A netbook becomes a laptop when it becomes larger than twelve inches. Other attempts at sizing distinctions, however, are more problematic: a television, for example, is still a television whether it is 120-inches wide or small enough to wear on your wrist.
The good news is that the 3G-less Xoom will be available from March 27 and will cost $599, a price match to the equivalent iPad 2. The bad news is that Motorola still hasn't fixed some of the issues with the Xoom, and the 3G version still costs more than the equivalent iPad.
A 3G verison of the LG optimus Pad is destined for Rogers according to an insider with early access to some of the Canadian carrier's sales literature. For all you kids keeping score at home, the Optimus Pad is the international version of the LG G-Slate, which features the same Tegra 2 CPU and gigabyte of RAM we're used to seeing in premium Android tablets by now, and wraps it all up in a 8.9 inch (that's 22.6 cm, 'eh?) form factor with a twist -- two HD cameras on the rear of the unit allow for 3D video capture.
In an unusual move LG waited until after CES to launch the Optimus Pad LTE, guess they didn’t want to get lost in the windfall of news. The 8.9 inch tablet is a direct sequel to its original predecessor with a 1280×768 IPS screen but with an added 4G connectivity for Internet access.
How nice it is to see a company that started in the UMPC era reach their 4th product iteration. No-one really talks about these thin and efficient desktops but Linutops continued survival indicates that there's a market out there.
Hardware maker Hercules this week gave Linux fans a nice boost by unveiling two new additions to its eCAFÉ netbook line that use ARM processors and run the open source operating system.
Logitech this morning announced that it's teamed up with ZAGG and worked up a keyboard case for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Android tablet. It's in the same vein as the keyboard case for the iPad 2 in that it's a keyboard that doubles as a protective case with a soft interior when the tablet's not in use. The exterior is made of aluminum.
Lookout Security & Antivirus is one of the most popular security apps for the Android platform. Whether you're installing apps from suspect third-party app stores or just want to ensure that the Android Market is secure, Lookout will scan apps upon installation to make sure they will not harm your device. Lookout has been available for phones and some tablets up until today, but now all Android tablets are supported. They have said every version of Honeycomb and even Ice Cream Sandwich will be supported.
One of the main drivers behind the high price of ultrathin or ultraportable laptops is the steep cost of their solid state drives, but that might all be changing soon. SandForce, the company responsible for the processors in many of the drives, announced a breakthrough manufacturing process that should result in more affordable solid state drives - and the laptops that use them.
SanDisk is introducing a new MP3 player today. It's called the Sansa Zip Clip, sells for under $50, and has a 1.1? color screen, 4GB of storage, a MicroSD slot, a stopwatch, and an FM radio. Until the company alerted me to the news, I'd sort of forgotten that anyone was releasing new stand-alone MP3 players. But hearing about it got me thinking about a newer market dominated by Apple--tablets.
Many were excited when Microsoft finally showed off its Windows 8 tablet interface. The new interface shows how Microsoft is bringing the look and feel of the Windows Phone platform to the tablet environment.
At the upcoming BUILD conference, taking place next week, it is being reported that Microsoft will be showing off a Windows 8 tablet that was manufactured by Samsung.
Microsoft Windows Phone President Andy Lees' restatement of Microsoft's tablet positioning has kicked off again the debate as to whether tablets and PCs are one and the same.
One of the key features touted at the announcement of Windows Phone 7 last year was the limited hardware specifications that Microsoft permitted for the first wave of devices. A key advantage of the decision to restrict the hardware configurations available to manufacturers, we were told, was that this would limit fragmentation, and result in a smoother and more reliable update process.
Microsoft and Quanta Computer have signed (what we presume is a giant stack of legal papers) an agreement that protects and licenses Quanta by providing "broad coverage under Microsoft's patent portfolio for Quanta's tablets, smartphones and other consumer devices running the Android or Chrome Platform". The full details of the agreement haven't been disclosed, and likely never will be, but it's another deal where Microsoft will earn money on the back of software using the Linux kernel.
Cheap Android tablets are nothing new, but Sunyvale, Calif., company MIPS Technologies looks to be one of the first out of the gate with a cheap Ice Cream Sandwich tablet. The first version is launching as a 7-incher -- 8- and 9-inch tablets are on the way. It's running a 1GHz MIPS-Based XBurst CPU with a Vivante GC860 GPU has the usual Wifi, Bluetooth, HDMI and microSD features.
The HP TouchPad tablet has been a recent target of hardware and software mod groups looking to expand the functionality of the webOS device. A number of groups have been trying to get the tablet to run on Google's Android operating system. Now a group of modders calling themselves Team Touchdroid have managed to put in 10 point multi-touch support for the device's touch screen.
We've seen the leaks and rumors, and now the Motorola Xoom 2 and Xoom 2 Media Edition are both officially official. The 10.1-inch Xoom 2 and its 8.2-inch media-focused sibling will go on sale in the UK and Ireland from mid-November, at retailers including the Carphone Warehouse, PC World and Dixons.
The ET1 or Enterprise Tablet 1 runs Android 2.3.4 on a 7-inch capacitive multi-touch display with 1024×600 resolution, 350-nit brightness, and Gorilla glass on the top of it. The tablet diferentiate itself from consumer oriented ones by delivering a higher level of ruggedness which meets MIL ST D 810G standards, a hot-swapable battery, a multi-user login feature with different level of accessability for different users, business-use apps, remote manageability, security enhanced with data encryption, and a camera which suports bar code capturing.
Motorola announced its ET1 tablet this morning, which its calling an Enterprise-class tablet "designed for a variety of vertical markets." The Gingerbread-powered ET1 is designed for durability and security with some pretty respectable guts under the hood:
Android 2.3.4 with enhanced Enterprise functionality
7 inch, 1024 x 600 display at 350 NIT, with Gorilla Glass
OMAP4 Dual-core processor at 1 GHz
1 GB RAM
4 GB Flash memory with pre-installed 4 GB microSD card
Motorola has officially announced the Android 3.1 update rolling out to Verizon Xoom owners this week, first detailed by Google yesterday in San Francisco. Improvements will include:
Support for the new Android Market movie rentals service with thousands of titles available for immediate viewing on the Motorola XOOM's high-resolution display or on a larger screen via HDMI
Full support for the final release of Adobe® Flash® Player 10.2, delivering significant performance enhancements when viewing rich Flash content on the web
Resizable widgets to enable further customization of home screens
Support for USB-connected peripherals and accessories, such as keyboards, mice, game controllers and digital cameras
Expanded Bluetooth features to support Bluetooth headsets in Google Talk™ video chats and Bluetooth mouse support in addition to additional shortcut keys with the Bluetooth keyboard
Picture Transfer Protocol Feature support to enable easier transfer of photo files to your PC without the need for drivers
Motorola was one of the first companies to release an Android-powered tablet with the Motorola Xoom. The first version of the tablet launched in February 2011. Later the company released other versions, including a so-called "family edition", and late in 2011 a tablet with the name the Droid Xyboard was released. However, it looks like the company can't get anyone to buy a tablet from them, no matter what the name is.
At the start of the year, Motorola had a great platform to release the Xoom. Running Android 3.1 (Honeycomb), and boasting an nVidia Tegra 2 running at 1GHz, the Xoom could have sold much more respectably. It was going to be the flagship Android tablet, and it would have ensured Google's promotion of the Xoom. However, things turned out rather differently.
Know how to dig yourself an even deeper hole, after your website inadvertently leaks upcoming products? Ask the site that blogs about them first to remove the screenshots. Not before other sites grabbed them too, though...
Back when they were announced, UK and Ireland were pegged for a mid-November release of the Motorola Xoom 2 and Xoom 2 Media Editon and now Motorola is expanding its release to France:
Hot on the heels of Motorola's Xoom 2 announcement this morning, UK retailer Clove has given us the first details of the British pricing for both of Moto's new Android tablets. The 10.1-inch Motorola Xoom 2 will sell for £390.00, while the 8.2-inch Xoom 2 Media Edition will £358.80. Both prices include VAT at 20%.
We have seen the Motorola Xoom Family Edition a time or two already, and today Motorola has made it official, and it will be an exclusive to Best Buy. The tablet is aimed at being a kids media tablet by day, but still being able to keep up once the kids go to bed with the professional stuff that needs to get done. The tablet brings quite a few features in tow with it, such as
Runs on Android 3.1, built specifically for tablets
1GHz dual-core processor for lightning-fast responsiveness
10.1" HS IPS HD screen display with capacitive multi-touch
5MP back camera with flash, with 720p video webcam
Preloaded with almost $40 worth of applications, plus Zoodles™, the award-winning Kid Mode application
Preloaded with MotoPack by Motorola XOOM (App Downloader by Motorola)
Preloaded with Quickoffice™ Pro HD for seamless productivity at work
Preloaded with MotoPrint -- the application that allows you to print straight from the Web browser
Preloaded with fun games like Asphalt 6 from Gameloft and SIM City Deluxe
16GB built-in memory
Battery lasts up to 10 hours for video playback and Web browsing
Access to more than 250,000 apps in Android Market™
If you've been following recent Motorola Xoom developments, you'll know that the first "Google Experience" tablet has just been updated to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Alongside the update, Carphone Warehouse, one of the main sellers of Xooms in the UK, has cut the price of the Wifi-only model to £249.99.
Verizon slammed Apple with a commercial showing the iPhone on the Island of Misfit Toys, but now we see them holding an expensive tablet that belongs on that same island. In January, I started out thinking the Verizon Motorola Xoom price was reasonable based on a specifications comparison, but then after further thought I came to the conclusion that no tablet over $500 can compete with the iPad. Now after getting my own hands on a Motorola Xoom and spending a day with it I can say that my recent thoughts on tablet pricing remain valid and Honeycomb is not yet ready to compete with the Apple iPad.
Is the Xoom really ready for prime time? That's a pretty loaded question depending on whom you ask. Most folks who have picked up a Motorola Xoom have reported that the browser works considerably well with the exception that Verizon's 3G network is a little slow.
Motorola has released a really fantastic 8.2" tablet, the Motorola Xyboard. This Android tablet has a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB RAM, 5 megapixel camera with 720p HD video recording (1.3 megapixel front), bluetooth 2.1, Android 3.2 and, as the name suggests, an 8.2? display (1280×800).
The message from Taiwan's computer manufacturers: lower the price of Windows 8 tablet components and software or the devices will be so expensive that consumers won't want them.
The WindPad Enjoy 10 and Enjoy 7, which are being shown in a small room away from the show floor, will start shipping to retailers at the end of July, priced at US$299 for the 10-inch version and $199 for the 7-inch version, said MSI product manager Rory Chen.
How much would you pay for a 10in tablet running Windows 7 Home Premium? Whatever your answer, you could still be asked to pay as much as £650 for MSI's WindPad 100, which is just such a gadget.
Generally, I prefer Galaxy Tab 10.1 to iPad 2. I like how the device feels in the hand, and I'm now accustomed to its longer, narrower shape when held in portrait mode. I find Tab to be generally faster and more responsive than iPad 2, and Android 3.1 is considerably more pleasing than iOS 4. I could go on -- and would -- in a full review, which I was saving for Samsung's TouchWiz UX user interface/skin that released Friday. I can't install it -- hell, I can't even come close.
For the last two, years my main computers have been a Quad-Core desktop that I use for hosting live sessions, podcasts and some video editing, and two mobile devices. The Gigabyte Touchnote Convertible Netbook has been my laptop and a Fujitsu U820 (actually a Japanese version U/B50N) UMPC has been used as my hot-desktop (as shown in this article.)
On Wednesday, August 24th, a group of technology enthusiasts convened for Microsoft's annual Tech Ed conference in Auckland, New Zealand. Microsoft reportedly showcased a plethora of new gadgets in a session entitled "Windows Devices." One of these devices is an Windows 8 ready unbranded slate which has never been seen before. Two pictures were taken and posted online by self-described Microsoft fanboy and IT consultant Alan Burchill from a session with Microsoft Principal Architect Patrick Hevesi.
I've had some contact with Netbook Navigator about their Nav7 Tablet. When it starts shipping next month it's going take the 7" UMPC market out of a long , dry spell.
The 1015PX basically shares the same guts and case as last year's 1015PEM, though with an upgraded brain. Here are the specs:
Screen: 10.1-inch, 1024 x 600 display
Processor: Intel Atom N570 dual core at 1.66Ghz
Hard drive: 250GB
RAM: up to 2GB of DDR3 memory
Connectivity: Bluetooth 3.0, LAN, Wireless N
Camera: 0.3 M Pixel Camera
Plugs/slots: VGA Connector; 3 USB 2.0; Ethernet; 1 Audio Jack (headphone/mic according to Asus's website but differs from product page on Amazon and Newegg); SD/SDHC/MMC card reader
While Netflix has had a Android app for its streaming video and TV show business for the past few months, the app was made only for Android 2.2 or 2.3 devices. There was no way that owners of Android-based tablets such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab or the Motorola Xoom could run the Netflix app since it didn't support the tablet-only Android 3.0 operating system. That's thankfully not the case anymore as Netflix has just announced a new update to its Android app.
Earlier this week, Mozilla released Firefox 9.0, the latest version of the popular web browser. However, that's not all the company released this week. Mozilla also launched a new version of its Android port of Firefox via the Android Marketplace. This new mobile version of Firefox now has been optimized to work on Android-based tablet products.
Tablets based on Intel's first dedicated tablet processor may not be a monster hit among consumers like Apple's iPad, but they could find adoption in enterprises, analysts said this week.
Netbooks may become rather cheaper next September, when Intel introduces the next generation of Atom processor for mini laptops at prices well below what it's charging for the current one.
Google is apparently preparing its own entry in the growing Android tablet competition. Reports say Google is working with LG on a Nexus-branded tablet running the Android Honeycomb 3.0 software.
With the app, you can access video on demand from the NFL Network, read news from around the league or filtered by team, follow live games and check stats. Gamecenter looks particularly good on the larger screen and will be essential for fans who can't watch or want to follow multiple games at once.
The traditional Windows desktop will not be included on Windows 8 tablets and other devices running on ARM-based processors, according to online reports. Instead, ARM devices will have only the Metro user interface that first debuted on Windows Phone 7 devices.
There's something like 8,142 different Android Tablets on sale right now yet it seems like no one is really using them. I mean, I've yet to see one in public! But that's an inexact method of testing. More exact? How the iPad usage obliterates Android tablets in web traffic. According to Comscore, iPads made up for 97.2% of all tablet web traffic. That leaves 2.8% for the other tablets to split.
A Nokia executive from France has inadvertently let slip a few interesting details for 2012. The company will indeed broaden its portfolio of Windows Phone devices for the US market with a bigger, higher-end device than the Lumia 800. And it will be releasing a Windows 8 tablet ... in June 2012.
When the Microsoft-Nokia strategic alliance was first announced in February, there was absolutely no mention of money: Nokia, seemingly on its own accord, had decided that Windows Phone 7 was the future of its smartphone efforts. A week later it emerged that Microsoft and Google had been competing for Nokia's affections -- a bidding war that concluded with Microsoft agreeing to pay Nokia billions of dollars to help market and develop Windows phones.
With Nokia's Windows Phone-based Lumia 800 and 710 smartphones now out in the open for all to see, the company may be setting its sights on producing tablets with Windows 8. The news arrives by way of Nokia CEO Stephen Elop in an interview with The Financial Times.
A little over a week ago, I wondered whether the world needed tablets that were significantly less costly and significantly less fancy than the iPad and its most prominent rivals. A couple of commenters said that such a beast already existed: Barnes & Noble's Nook Color e-reader. They had a point. At $249, B&N's Android-based tablet is half the price of the cheapest iPad. Its 7? color screen and industrial design are quite nice, but it doesn't have a 1-GHz dual-core processor or cameras or gobs of storage (it has a merely adequate 8GB) or 3G or other features which are becoming de facto accouterments on higher-end models.
If you loved the Nook Color, which quickly went from e-reader status to beloved hacker tablet, you're going to love the new Barnes & Nobile Nook Tablet. And make no mistake, boys and girls: It may be a be an e-reader at its heart. But with beefed up specs, it's got the teeth of a full-fledged tablet.
Since its release on November 16, there has been a flurry of activity around Barnes & Noble's first tablet offering, the Nook Tablet. It's not surprising either, previous devices such as the Nook and Nook Color e-readers were pretty popular to root to get running Android, even offering Nook2Android MicroSD cards capable of booting Google's OS for those that may not be confident tinkerers.
As is often the case with gadgets, finding the best 7-inch tablet is a matter of figuring out your personal needs. Below, I’ll divvy up the strengths of the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire so you can figure out what’s most important.
Sold by a company called Nook2Android, a Sandisk microSD card preloaded with Android 2.3 Gingerbread and the Android Market essentially transforms Nook Color readers into Android tablets.
Symantec today announced the release of Norton Tablet Security ($39.99/year), which offers antitheft and antivirus/antimalware protection for Android tablets. This product aims to protect both the device itself and the user's privacy.
Microsoft made some shocking news nearly a year ago when it announced that it would develop a version of its next Windows operating system that would run on processors based on designs from ARM in addition to its normal x86 version for Intel and AMD chips. Now NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, speaking at a tech conference in Asia earlier today, said Microsoft should only have the ARM version of Windows run on tablet devices, at least at first.
Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has a made a presentation of its stunning tablet prototype running Windows 8 at current CES. This prototype is powered by Nvidia’s flagsip Tegra 3 chip that shows plenty of performance in smooth handling of resource-hungry Metro UI of Windows 8, as you can witness from the video:
The Nvidia corporation will drop Android support for its devices running on the Harmony platform, according to a post on its official developer forums by Andrew Edelsten, Tegra Developer Relations. This means that devices using the Harmony platform at their core -- the Viewsonic gTablet and ViewPad7, Advent Vega, Toshiba Folio 100, and Notion Ink Adam -- will not have drivers built for video acceleration for any current or future releases of Android.
O2 says that as of 1400 GMT today it has fixed, the problem, and that "technical changes" as part of "routine maintenance" were to blame for the issue, which affected customers from Jan. 10 until today. The network's full statement is available on its official blog.
The elusive company is back with the Ocosmos OCS9 -- Ocosmos has tantalized us with awesome UMPC concepts for years, but the devices have always turned to vaporware seemingly just prior to release. Well, it seems Ocosmos is at it again, but this time, we're certain that they'll actually be bringing a product to market, thanks to the folks at Dynamism.
Looks like the list of retailers preparing to sell the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (read our full review) is shaping up quite nicely. First we had Best Buy, and now it looks like OfficeMax is getting into the game as well, thanks to this comparison sheet snagged by our sister site, PreCentral.
Although it's been a long time coming, the Acer Iconia Tab A500 is now hitting some store shelves -- and one of those stores, as announced today is OfficeMax. Wasting no more time, OfficeMax has made the Android 3.0 Honeycomb powered tablet available today for $449.99.
The Onkyo TW317 [tracking page] is a rare breed of soon-to-be-extinct computer known as a "capacitive touchscreen Windows 7 Slate". What this means is that the TW317 lacks a real keyboard or mouse.
More than 100 different Android device designs have been released over the last three years, but there have only been a handful of "ruggedized" smartphones (Motorola i1, Defy, Casio G'Zone Commando) and no rugged tablets. Thursday, Panasonic announced it will be releasing the first enterprise-grade rugged Android tablet under its Toughbook line in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Panasonic has some good news for the kinds of people who worry about using their tablets in the rain, dropping them on a concrete floor, or using them outdoors in the desert.
Getting a massive speed bump from Intel's Atom to Core i5, the Panasonic Toughbook H2 is made for outdoor use with its easily-legible 10-inch screen, rugged exterior and hot-swappable batteries. Inside lurks 4GB of RAM, plus a 2MP camera and barcode/RFID/fingerprint reader.
Even if you're only casually following the developments in the tablet ecosystem, you've probably heard a little something about the HTC Flyer. It's the tablet that works with a pen. Not a stylus, mind you, but a pen. "A stylus is just a dead stick," HTC PR guy Keith Nowak told me during a briefing today. A stylus is used for navigation, he explained, but you don't need the pen to navigate the Flyer. In fact, you don't use it to navigate at all. You draw. You write. You scribble. Well, only if you want to, that is. The pen is an optional accessory.
PhatWare, makers of WritePad, CalliGrapher, PenOffice, and PhatNotes, launched the public beta of PhatPad for Android on Wednesday, a brainstorming, note taking and free drawing app for tablets.
Adobe has kicked its support for Android tablets up a few notches today, launching six all-new image and design tools specifically for owners of tablets running Google's Honeycomb version of the OS.
RIM has started to slash prices for its little-loved BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in the US amid channel talk on this side of the pond that the fondleslabs are shifting more slowly than expected and inventory levels are out of control.
Fess up: You bought a $99 TouchPad, didn't you. It's OK. We did, too. While you can't yet run Android on it, the buzz is that now that it's cheap, a whole lot more people are going to work to get it done. So you could end up with a $99 Android tablet. Sure, it's not exactly a dual-core Honeycomb monster, but it's a $99 tablet, right?
Mobile is the new frontier of videoconferencing, with several vendors bringing mobile devices into the fold for video meetings. Polycom is set to become the latest, with high-definition calling capability on the Apple iPad, Motorola Xoom and Galaxy Tab.
Thats right folks, our old friend Mr Blurrycam is back in town and this week brings pictures of a Motorola Android tablet that could well be a 7-incher.
While the iPad continues to be a big success, the tablet market offers a harsher climate to vendors other than Apple -- and pricing strategies may be an important factor in their difficulties.
How much would Hardware 2,0 users be willing to pay for a Windows 8 tablet? Well, the votes are in, and it should make Microsoft and hardware OEMs sit up and pay close attention to the pricing of Windows 8 tablets:
Over the last couple of years, companies have come to view me as a writer who mostly covers Android. I suppose it's pretty true, but I like to think that I'm not exhibiting any sort of bias toward it, but rather just covering Android stories because there are simply more companies utilizing it than any other mobile OS, and more interesting stories are born from it every week because of this.
RIM has taken the wraps off the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, and so far the reviews seem to be mixed. Shortcomings aside, though, the tablet has a number of qualities that make it uniquely suited for business use.
They're a bit late, but Android tablets with quad-core processors are coming this year, according to Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia's chief executive. The chipmaker expects Android tablets supercharged with quad-core chips to hit shelves in time for Christmas, according to a Wall Street Journal report, but smartphones powered by these chips are unlikely to show up until next year.
Just two weeks after drastically reducing its expectations for Android tablet shipments comes word that Acer is drawing down its third-quarter 2011 forecast for the number of notebooks it will ship.
I hear from quite a few readers that they think Windows 7 tablets are the cat's meow. But it looks like more people than not agree with me that those tablets are just not what the majority find palatable.
The Blackberry Playbook from Research in Motion may have just launched but now the company is already dealing with a recall that will affect 1,000 units of its new tablet device. The Wall Street Journal reports that the units are being recalled by RIM because the operating system installed on those tablets could keep users from launching the first setup for the device.
Not an inherently bad spec, either. 10in, 1024 x 768 capacitive touchscreen; 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 derived processor; 512MB of DDR 3 memory; HDMI and USB portage; and a 2Mp webcam.
On one hand, the HP TouchPad faces an uphill battle in the tablet market because the Apple iPad has been such a hit with the public and continues to gain momentum. On the other hand, the TouchPad has a great opportunity because the iPad's current rivals -- Android tablets and the BlackBerry PlayBook -- haven't exactly set the world on fire, and Microsoft and Intel haven't shown up yet with a true iPad competitor.
The PlayBook is described by makers RIM as the first professional-grade tablet. RIM, of course, is best known for its e-mail handset, the BlackBerry. A good deal larger and minus the distinctive keyboard, RIM's Playbook is a handsome machine, well-designed and with great build quality.
There is a lot of excitement for the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet, but don’t forget to take a look at the BlackBerry PlayBook during this limited time price drop too.
If you've been waiting patiently for RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook to hit stores, your wait is over. After a few delays, one of which was thought to be from an issue with the PlayBook's Flash compatibility, the iPad competitor finally hit stores today.
RIM's BlackBerry Tablet OS 1.0, which debuts on the PlayBook tablet, currently lacks critical components, but it could fill out very well, bringing the BlackBerry brand into the 2010s.
Research in Motion has delayed the release of its next PlayBook operating system to February, disappointing news for a company that had to deal with worldwide data and messaging outages this month on its BlackBerry phones.
Research in Motion is denying a report that it has stopped production of its Blackberry Playbook tablets. The rumors began today via a Barron's report. It quoted a note from Collins Stewart chip analyst John Vinh who claimed that the manufacturing company Quanta "has essentially halted production of the tablet. Additionally, our due diligence indicates that (RIM) has canceled development of additional tablet projects."
RIM announced today that it would take a $485 million charge against weak PlayBook sales as well as a $50 million charge related to a three-day network outage in October. The news sent the company's stock price slumping and caps a dismal year. The PlayBook, once seen as RIM's ticket to renewed relevance and strong performance in the consumer sector, has become a boat anchor.
Research In Motion, known for its BlackBerry phones, may discontinue making its Wi-Fi only PlayBook tablet -- right now the only model of PlayBook available. The company could still forge ahead with plans for a PlayBook that also uses cellular connectivity.
With BlackBerry World 2011 coming to a close, you knew there had to be some unannounced news waiting to come out of the conference, right? We have been told by multiple sources that RIM is planning on releasing its followup to the BlackBerry PlayBook around the holidays this year. That's clearly less than a year from the April launch of the original PlayBook -- and the 4G versions aren't even out yet -- but there is a key differentiating factor here... the screen size.
Research in Motion plans to use the Consumer Electronics Show to highlight its BlackBerry PlayBook 2.0 operating system. The OS, due in February, comes as the company’s future and strategy are increasingly called into question.
The consensus view is that RIM is screwed and that it will lose enterprise, service revenue and money on every PlayBook it sells. Here’s what could go right.
In case you've been wondering what tablets, aside from the Motorola Xoom may be heading towards Canada we have some unconfirmed but nonetheless nice rumors for you. The above image is a comparison chart, which according to the details is an internal document from Rogers outlining the differences between the iPad 2, LG Optimus Pad and the Huawei S7 tablets.
Rogers has just put the official stamp on one of their Holiday promotions and I have to say, it's a pretty sweet deal if you're looking to be picking up a new device in the near future. Starting today, with qualifying purchases Rogers will be giving you a free or discounted Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. So what is a qualifying purchase? Glad you asked:
HP may be getting ready to launch its WebOS-based HP TouchPad device on Friday but that doesn't mean the PC maker is dumping its support for Windows-based products. Indeed, a new article on Fast Company hints strongly that HP might have tablets that will have Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system inside.
Dutch site Android Planet is reporting that HTC has been secretly inviting industry insiders and media to an event happening on June 27th in London to announce the "latest addition to the HTC portfolio". The are a couple of likely candidates including the oft-rumored Kingdom, the 4.3 inch 1.2 GHz single core better-than-mid-level Android device. However, a device thought to be the Kingdom was just spotted going through the FCC with Sprint WiMax bands, making a launch announcement in London unlikely. The more likely story? HTC's first entry into the Honeycomb-based tablet market.
Research In Motion has reportedly put the brakes on a 10-inch PlayBook tablet and is instead focusing on a new BlackBerry "superphone," according to enthusiast site N4BB.
Details are inevitably vague. German-language site TabTech gives the screen size but doesn't provide a resolution. The Samsung tablet will run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, it says, but no one would have assumed otherwise.
Thursday was probably not the best day that Samsung's legal team has ever encountered. Fresh off a decision in Australia to ban sales of the Galaxy Tab, a U.S. judge has ruled that the device likely infringes on patents held by Apple but avoided taking the extra step of imposing a preliminary injunction.
Usually we have to wait for some brave individual to take screwdrivers, spudgers and the like to a device before we get to see what's lurking inside. This time, however, Samsung's saved you the trouble of voiding your warranty and being left with a heap of broken circuitry, with an official teardown of the Galaxy Note, its unique phone/tablet hybrid.
At the SID Display Week 2011 International Symposium May 17-19, Samsung Electronics is demonstrating the industry's first 10.1-inch WQXGA (2560 x 1600) format PenTile RGBW tablet display, an ultra-high resolution, liquid crystal display (LCD). The prototype demonstration marks the first time this resolution has been available for the tablet market in the popular -- 10.1-inch -- format, rivaling the highest resolution smartphone displays now on the market. Samsung expects to have commercial availability of this technology for tablet applications later this year.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 is at the top of our pile right now for tablets. We're still using the Sony S and the ASUS Transformer Prime, but the 7.7? form factor just fits better with our on the go work flow.
Samsung has released a new tablet, the Galaxy Tab 7.7 which runs 3.2 on a 1.4 GHz dual-core processor, with no official word on an Android 4.0 update. The Galaxy Tab 7.7 includes a front-facing 2-megapixel camera, along with a 3-megapixel camera on the back. The OS takes advantage of Samsung's most recent TouchWiz interface, adding a tray of useful utilities to the bottom of the screen.
Samsung has added the Galaxy Tab 7.7 to the company's Android tablet lineup. The Tab 7.7 features a 7.7-inch 1280×800 screen which uses Super AMOLED Plus technology and that's the first tablet with Samsung's tech providing great colors and viewing angles.
AT&T users, take a load off. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 (AT&T) is an enhanced version of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 ($469, 3.5 stars), which we think is one of the finest Android tablets out there. It's a slimmer, lighter tablet alternative to the unusually heavy and bulky HTC Jetstream ($599, 3 stars), AT&T's other LTE tablet.
In child psychology there's a concept called the middle child syndrome, where the kid in-between feels unloved by the parents or jealous of attention given the older and younger siblings. Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 might just be that middle child. I'm not loving it.
If you think there isn't much more to say about Samsung's Galaxy line of tablets, you're probably right. Since the Galaxy Tab 10.1 launched this past summer, it has been dissected and discussed a million times over. We love the screen, we love the thinness, and we almost love TouchWiz. And these feelings translate to the younger brother in the Galaxy Tab line, the 8.9. So instead of bending your ear about things we've already said, let me take a different perspective. We know what the Galaxy line has to offer, but what does the 8.9-inch form factor do to push the line even further? And most important, what can consumers get from the more compact size that they simply cannot with the 10.1?
When we first got a look at the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10-inch at Mobile World Congress, it was your usual trade show free-for all. But the upcoming Honeycomb device (when's this thing gonna drop, anyway?) has shed its Samsung shackles and apparently paraded around the streets of Paris for the AndroidHD blog, which churned out 11 minutes of quality video in return.
Following up our video look at the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 tablet, we checked out its big brother the full-sized Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. The 10.1 was first announced back at Mobile World Congress (see Phil's hands-on), but the 10.1 announced today is destined for US soils and is a little nicer in that it's much thinner.
Both Rogers and TELUS have brought the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 to Canada, with the device now being available across retail locations today. Much like the US launch -- the WiFi only equipped Galaxy Tab 10.1 has been available for a while but the carrier released versions are touting that HSPA+ goodness some users simply must have in their Android tablets.
While many folks have already snapped up their WiFi-only Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1's like they were going out of style, others have been holding out for the 3G/4G equipped version that's soon-to-be released from Verizon. If you're among those who held out, you can now hit up the Verizon site to place your pre-order for either a 16GB or 32GB version coming in your choice of color be it black or grey.
The famous of all the custom ROM, CyanogenMod has released a custom ROM for Galaxy Tab 10.1. The worth mention thing about this firmware update is that the CyanogenMod 9 ROM exactly looks like the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 launches today, but you'll only be able to get one if you're in New York City. The Best Buy at Union Square has a 10-day exclusive of the new tablet, which is shipping with Android 3.1.
A German court today banned the sale of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in its country, arguing that the device infringed Apple patents. According to the AFP, which first reported on the story, judge Johanna Brueckner-Hoffmann said that there is a "clear impression of similarity" between the iPad and Galaxy Tab 10.1.
As much as I'm sure we'd all like it if Samsung could send everyone a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 a demo unit, it's just simply never going to happen. That said, it's still nice to know that Samsung is thinking about those users and as such have now offered up an online simulator for folks to play around with and explore all the features the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 brings to the table.
News is quickly spreading that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 units given away to Google IO attendees yesterday are completely unlocked and ripe for all sorts of hackery, including quick and easy rooting. If you're among the lucky few to have your hands on one of these desirable devices, all you need to do to gain root access is push a zip file over ADB, reboot into recovery mode and run your newly-transferred file.
Not being left behind in all the Samsung Canada love, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 will be making its way to Canadian carriers in addition to the Samsung Galaxy S II. Samsung will start off with the WiFi only versions being made available sometime in July at various store locations and then will follow up that release with Rogers, Bell and TELUS making available the 3G enabled versions.
Samsung is holding a press conference to unveil the TouchWiz update for the US Galaxy Tab 10.1 August 3 at the Samsung Experience at Columbus Circle in New York. They plan a live showing and full demonstration of the new TouchWiz for tablets, and will sideload the update on-site during the briefing, as well as for the general public afterwards. It's not often that we would want to see a manufacturer UI placed on a stock Android device, but everything we've seen and heard about TouchWiz for the Tab 10.1 makes us think this will be a bit different.
Those of you who've picked up Samsung's recently released Galaxy Tab 10.1 may be interested to know there's now a kernel available overclocking its Tegra 2 processor to 1.4GHz. This kernel uses the 2.6.36.4 base, BFQ I/O scheduler, and increases the voltages to supply more power required for the overclock. You'll want to keep in mind this is a preview kernel so use caution when speeding up your Tab 10.1
It's impossible not to compare the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 to the iPad. For one, all tablets are stacked up against Apple's juggernaut and the question, "Will this be the tablet that beats the iPad?" inevitably gets asked. And the Galaxy Tab 10.1, which launched across the country on June 17, has been redesigned specifically to take on the iPad 2, and came out thinner and slightly lighter than Apple's offering.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, in its current form, was born out of a response to Apple's sleek and thin iPad 2 tablet. The original Galaxy Tab 10.1, which hadn't reached market yet, just couldn't compete, so Samsung went back the drawing board and turned out this beauty of a tablet in record time. And this one can compete.
The Galaxy Tab 10.1 comes in both gray and white versions. It has a 1GHz dual-core NVidia Tegra 2 application processor, 1GB of RAM, a 10.1-inch touchscreen display (1280×800), a 2.0 MP front camera and 3.0 MP rear camera. The tablet comes with Android 3.1 Honeycomb installed.
American Airlines has partnered with Samsung Mobile to bring the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 to select flights this year. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 will replace the personal entertainment devices currently outfitted in some premium cabins.
The funny thing about the small army of Android tablets that've come out over the last few months is that they've all been nearly exactly the same, software-wise. With TouchWiz, Samsung's the first to tweak Google's Honeycomb to its own, different whims.
At the Samsung "78910? event in Orlando during the 2011 CTIA tech show, it was announced that Samsung was planning to reveal two different Honeycomb tablets that were designed to outshine the iPad and the Motorola Xoom. The Galaxy Tab 8.9 and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 offered up an extremely thin profile, lighter than the competition, and included unique accessories like the Bluetooth Stylus.
Looks like the onslaught of Galaxy Tab 10.1s is about to begin. A version sporting the 850MHz and 1900MHz 3G radio bands has made its way through the FCC. That could well point toward release on AT&T in the United States, or in parts further north.
A version of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 with T-Mobile (and several Canadian carriers') AWS bands has passed through the FCC, in a form factor that's unchanged from the Wifi version we all know and love.
There has been a few rumors floating around about Samsung have an 11.6 inch Galaxy Tab, some people have actually said that they saw it back stage at CES but weren't able to take photo's. Bob Freking has decided to come up with a concept design of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 11.6 based on the leaked news.
Good morning Android Central readers! Today, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is available. The Tab had a special launch event in NYC last week, but it's finally available online and at Best Buy and other retailers nationwide. If you're picking up Tab today, be sure to post in the forums and let us know what you think of it.
RIM's loss is Samsung's gain, apparently, as BlackBerry senior product manager Ryan Bidan apparently has taken a job with Samsung as director of product marketing, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The Samsung NC215s netbook featuring solar panels on the lid is now available for pre-order on Amazon, priced at $399. This solar-powered technology will help keep the netbook running and will keep the battery charged, but there is no word yet on its effectiveness.
Will the tablet kill off the netbook? Probably not. Granted the netbook has never quite fulfilled its promise due to a combination of prices that went up with specifications that didn't. Even so, I've yet to find a fondleslab that can truly replace my Windows 7/Ubuntu dual-booting Samsung N140.
Samsung has yanked the Android 3.2 Honeycomb update it posted last night for the Wi-Fi only version of its Galaxy Tab 10.1in after it quickly emerged that the software disables Wi-Fi.
Samsung has changed its tablet strategy and this time the company has an approach that is a lot more competitive with the Apple iPad on price, form factor, and overall features. We'll have to wait until we do a full review of the new Samsung devices to decide if the overall product experience approaches what Apple has to offer, but since the Samsung tablet doesn't arrive until early summer and will be running Android 3.0, that gives Google time to repair the Honeycomb problems we saw in the Motorola Xoom and it gives developers time to write a lot more tablet-optimized apps for Android 3.0.
Unveiled at IFA 2011, the Samsung Galaxy Note runs on a 1.4GHz dual-core CPU with Android 2.3 Gingerbread. It packs a 5.3in display with a 1280 x 800 resolution and an 8Mp camera, and comes in the choice of 16GB or 32GB versions.
Samsung has posted the kernel source for the Galaxy Tab 10.1, allowing Tegra kernel developers to get to work and Tab 10.1 users to get ready for what they build for us. As usual, the average user won't be able to do much with these files, but for developers they are electronic gold, allowing for overclocking and additional features that make the Tab 10.1 different, and maybe even better with custom software.
The Samsung Series 7 Slate fills the gap between wimpy Windows tablets and clunky convertible laptops, providing a powerful processing and portable solution.
In 5.5 years of testing, this is the first time I've ever seen a sub-1kg device break 100,000 in the CrystalMark test. The Series 7 Tablet is a serious bit of kit and really showcase just what Windows 7 tablet features can do.
Windows 7 tablets may be unpopular, but Samsung's Series 7 Tablet has a lot to offer those who want a powerful tablet with laptop features. The Series 7 Tablet packs the same hardware specs as the Samsung Series 7 laptops -- in a thin 2-pound 11.6-inch slate form that pairs with an external keyboard.
In an email purportedly sent by Samsung to its retail partners, the manufacturer said: "Following the introduction of our new strategy in 2012, we stop the product range in 10.1in in Q1 2012 for the benefit of ultraportable products and Ultrabooks to be launched in 2012."
Tablet users may need more storage capacity in the future, and Samsung Semiconductor on Thursday announced it is now making its fastest solid-state drives for tablets and laptops with capacity of up to 512GB.
Samsung is under fire from Apple, sending the iPad maker a proposal to end their patent dispute in Australia in hopes of selling their Android-based Galaxy Tab down under. But even as the Korean manufacturer defends its Android devices, it's also made a licensing deal with Microsoft. Despite all the misgivings of creating Android devices for global distribution, Samsung pushes onward with a surprising tablet launch this morning.
South Korea's Samsung Electronics launched a new version of its Galaxy Tab in its home market Wednesday in a bid to lure consumers away from Apple's iPad.
Now you see it, now you don't: Samsung Electronics erased all traces of the Galaxy Tab 7.7 from its exhibition stand at the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) in Berlin on Saturday, just two days after launching the tablet there.
Samsung Electronics today alleged that the interlocutory injunction awarded to Apple against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 was incorrect and a leap of logic, all the while pushing for the case to be expedited in the courts.
"If you see a stylus," Steve Jobs famously said at the original iPhone launch, "they blew it." Here at the IFA show in Berlin, Samsung just announced the Galaxy Note, a new device that's got a stylus--and which revels in that fact. Samsung is calling it "a new category of device," but to me, it feels like a 2011 take on an old idea: the PalmPilot-style Personal Digital Assistant.
It's strange nowadays to buy a gadget that is completely devoid of a USB port. But manufacturers want their devices to be slim and seamless, which is why it wasn't all that surprising that Samsung said that its Galaxy Tab 10.1 would come without the seemingly-essential data transfer port.
Quite unexpectedly I found myself in possession of some very hot, illegal property last week. Not a looted plasma TV but rather the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, which thanks to legal injunctions is disappearing from channels all over Europe. Vodafone is the latest to cancel its orders.
We have seen a lot of tablet devices that use the Android operating system, whilst Apple's popular iPad uses its own iOS operating system. On Wednesday Samsung announced its new tablet PC, the Series 7 Slate. It's one of the few such products that's running Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system. Once more, according to a story on Thisismynext.com, Samsung says it has "every intention on making the Series 7 Slate upgradeable to Windows 8." The company didn't go into any details on how this upgrade will work but did say it will partner with Microsoft for this effort. That makes the Series 7 Slate PC the first such Windows 7 product that will have at least some kind of Windows 8 upgrade program.
When it comes to tablets, Apple's iPad so dominates the market that some analysts have wondered whether consumers will have an appetite for any other device.
Greetings from the CTIA Wireless show in Orlando, where Samsung just announced two new Galaxy Tab tablets running Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb. The new version of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has a 10.1? display at 1280 by 800, a 1-GHz dual-core CPU, dual-antenna Wi-Fi, a 3-megapixel camera in the back and a 2-megapixel one up front. And at 8.6mm and 595 grams, it's slightly thinner and slightly lighter than the surprisingly thin and light iPad 2. The Galaxy Tab 8.9 is a similar tablet with a screen that's a bit smaller than the one on the iPad 2 rather than a bit larger.
Skype has released version 2.5 of its application for Android, which allows Android-based tablets such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Motorola Xoom to use its video calling feature, it said in a blog post on Wednesday.
Most tablets on the market today host solid state drives and flash memory. Archos has introduced two new tablet computers with Seagate physical hard drives on board.
Intel has changed the launch date of its Cedar Trail-M platform that is targeted for netbooks from September to November. The reason for the delay is a problem with graphics drivers and failing certification for Windows 7. Cedar Trail is the code name being used for Intel's next generation Atom chips built using the 32nm manufacturing node. A talking point over the Cedar Trail chipset has been that it represents the first netbook platform-based Intel 32nm technology. The platform is described as a unified architecture that packs the processing cores and the graphics processing unit on the same die. The graphics core includes support for DirectX 10.1 and hardware decoding capabilities for HD content, including MPEG2, VC1, AVC, H.264 and Blu-ray 2.0.
Slingbox, the popular set-top box that allows you to watch your TV in a variety of places, today released Slingplayer for Tablets optimized for Honeycomb. There has been a Slingplayer for phones for quite some time, but it wasn't specially designed for a large-screen experience.
Solar powered devices are just starting to enter the market and Samsung released the NC215s this past summer and we've only now gotten our hands on time with it.
Sonos, the maker of the high-end wireless stereo system, today announced that it's updated its Android application to include support for Android tablets. And, yes, that includes the Amazon Kindle Fire, which you see here.
The Xperia line of mobile phones will soon have some new and smaller editions. Engadget reports today that Sony Ericsson has just revealed plans to release the Xperia Mini and Xperia Mini Pro smartphone. Both versions will be running the newest version of the Android phone operating system (version 2.3. also known as Gingerbread).Both phones will also have a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor running things inside.
When the UMPC world had a little more momentum than it does today, Sony had a few high-end offerings that stood head and shoulders above most other models in that they had some amazing engineering and used some relatively high-end CPUs. The Sony UX range had a huge fan-base and still stands on its own against competitors today. Looking at the Freestyle PC that was revealed in a Sony presentation a few days ago, I see another unique product. Is this a sub 10" slider?
The recently unveiled Sony S 9.4-inch Android Honeycomb tablet is now available in the US. The offered multimedia-oriented slate is available as the 16GB Sony SGPT111US/S and 32GB SGPT112US/S.
Sony has finally unveiled the S1 and S2; two uniquely shaped tablets, that it says, are for the more status minded buyer. Though both run the Android operating system, neither is shaped like the mostly etch-a-sketch designs currently on the market. The S1 has a folded back looking top that was designed to look and feel like a magazine that has been folded back. Company reps say that makes it more comfortable to hold in one hand. The S2 is a dual screen tablet embedded in a clam-shell case that can be opened and closed, making it look, as one observer at
I really love Sony for trying something different. Between this foldable Tablet P and the company's indescribably-shaped (but very palmable) Tablet S they are genuinely trying to leave the hardware pack mentality behind. But enough congratulations. How good is it?
Now here's an odd one. Sony has created what looks like a monster Nintendo 3DS but is actually an Android Honeycomb tablet computer. So you get a sort of flattened tube that folds out to reveal two screens. Will it work? Should it work?
The Android-based Sony Tablet S is good looking and well designed, but it's underpowered, overpriced, and doesn't pull Sony's multimedia services together in a convincing way.
Are you a home theater enthusiast building the ultimate man cave? Sony's Tablet S is the strongest Android-based contender offering unique features for that specific segment. With DLNA compliance and IR remote control apps, it deserves special attention.
With all of the Android tablets starting to look alike, Sony is taking a different spin. In fact, Sony's S2 could revive some of the cool concepts introduced by the Microsoft Courier and OLPC XO-2.
With its speedy dual-core AMD E-350 processor, large 500GB hard drive, and a size that is at once compact and large enough for comfortable typing and viewing, the Sony VAIO VPC-YB15KX/S is a strong new entry in the netbook market.
The Sony VAIO VPC-YB35KX is a competent netbook, with an AMD APU that offers a decent combination of processing and graphics, and a healthy feature set that includes stereo Bluetooth, HDMI, and two card reader slots. Its battery life is a bit of a letdown, but it's not so bad as to be a deal breaker.
Although the expected iPad competition never really heated up last year, 2011 is going to be a different story, with a slate (ahem) full of Android-based tablets, the HP TouchPad, the Research in Motion (RIM) PlayBook, and others. This week, however, a number of interesting new iPad competitors have cropped up, lending credence to the notion that 2011 really will be the year of the tablet.
Samsung today announced that the University of Southern Mississippi (Southern Miss, to those of us from south of the Mason-Dixon Line) has purchased 1,000 Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets to provide to students in its Honors College pilot program.
Tablet shoppers will have three new devices to compare to the iPad 2 this holiday season including Asus' newly announced Eee Pad Transformer Prime, the first tablet to feature Nvidia's new Tegra 3 quad-core processor. The Prime joins Amazon's Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble's Nook Tablet as the latest set of tablet devices hitting store shelves before the end of the year. Asus says the Prime will be available in December, presumably in time for holiday gift giving, starting at $500 for a 32GB device running the Honeycomb version of Android. Asus also promises the Prime will get an upgrade to Android's next flavor, Ice Cream Sandwich, at a later date.
Amazon and Apple's battle for online supremacy was ratcheted up with the launch of the Amazon Appstore for Android, and it could become even more heated if Amazon takes on the iPad by producing its own Android tablet.
If you are an Android fan and you are tired of hearing all about the iPad 2, then this is the video for you. YouTube user AndroidHD posted a video spanning an entire day spent with the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, the oversized (well, Xoom-sized) version of the Galaxy Tab.
The Android 3.1 tablet that needs no introduction (OK, OK, it's the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1) finds its way into Sprint's inventory on June 24. It's the same Wifi-only version, only Sprint's pairing it up with a 3G/4G Wifi hotspot from either Sierra Wireless or Novatel.
The use of an electron's spin polarization in addition to its charge to realize ultrafast, low-power electronics-like functionality is fast becoming a reality. One of the major obstacles that remains to be addressed effectively, however, is the generation of the high-purity 'spin current' needed for reliable 'spintronics' devices.
You'd expect that anyone who plunks down a few hundred bucks for an iPad would make a point of using it to read news thereafter instead of messing around with newspapers and magazines, and you'd be right: 42% of tablet and e-reader owners say they are now less likely to read printed newspapers, and 40% say the same about print magazines, according to a survey of more than 3,000 people conducted by gfK MRI.
The T-Mobile G-Slate will bring 3D flavors to the Android tablet market starting April 20, when the device goes on sale for $529 (after a $100 mail-in rebate). Sporting an 8.9-inch display, the G-Slate aims to differentiate itself not only in size from the 10-inch and 7-inch tablets, but also by featuring two cameras on the back to shoot 3D videos and watch them on the display (with special glasses).
Attention potential Motorola Xoom buyers: the T-Mobile G-Slate with Google (by LG) has Honeycomb, too--as well as a slightly smaller design and 3D capabilities.
It's been a few days since we first learned the T-Mobile LG G-Slate would be getting its Android 3.1 update soon. And that day has now come. Pushing out over the air, the update will roll out in waves, meaning not everybody's going to get it at the same time. You'll see a notice on your tablet when the update's ready.
T-Mobile has been experimenting with handing out rental Android tablets to baseball fans at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, Calif., for $10 per game, according to a T-Mobile press release and the Los Angeles Times.
Odds are, if you ask anyone waiting in line for an iPad 2, they'll list plenty of reasons why they're lusting after Apple's latest camera-equipped tablet.
Tablets are everywhere, everyone will be buying tablets. That seems to be the mantra for those forecasting consumer electronics sales, but the truth is the iPad is the only tablet that is selling in numbers. While it may seem prudent to base tablet forecasts on the healthy sales numbers of the iPad, the fact is the only proven market for tablets has been built by Apple. Not a single competing tablet has garnered enough consumer sales to even prove there is a market, much less affect it.
Intel execs poured cold water on overheated predictions for tablet sales today, pointing out to investors that notebook shipments still massively outnumber fondleslabs, and there is little prospect of that changing.
Tablets were a hot gift item and it seems they were even more popular since Pew reports that tablet and ereader ownership has actually doubled over the holiday season. About 10 percent of Americans owned each in December, but both had surged to 19 percent in January. There was relatively little overlap, as 18 percent owned one or the other before the holiday rush while 29 percent had either an e-reader or a tablet in January.
A first-of-its-kind tablet with Google's Android 4.0 priced under US$100 is now available in China, and will reach other countries soon, according to companies that helped build the device.
JP Morgan's Mark Moskowitz said that Apple was likely to have a market share of 70.9 percent by the end of the year, and revised previous estimates of total tablet sales for the year from 46.1 million to 51.9 million units, Apple Insider reports.
Netbooks declined 13 percent from their first quarter shipment of 8.4 million netbooks, but, more importantly, tablet shipments really boomed: In the first quarter of this year, just 6.4 million tablets shipped--making the second quarter shipments a 112.5 percent increase.
Today, DisplaySearch issued the most unusual of tablet forecasts -- one that looks at the totality of the market and takes Windows into consideration. Gartner and IDC use a separate "media tablet" category for Android tablets and iPad, based on the operating system, choosing to classify "Tablet PCs" running Windows as personal computers. DisplaySearch has more sensibly made the designation around processors -- ARM and x86 -- which better defines the market for the future, and isn't the future what a forecast is all about?
Apple CEO Steve Jobs may have been onto something when he said that "PCs are going to be like trucks," as some tablet owners are reportedly letting their PCs gather dust.
Poll Position surveyed 1155 registered U.S. voters this month and found an astonishing 46 percent of them said they think tablets like the iPad will eventually replace the laptop. 34.8 percent, by comparison, think the laptop will still stick around, and 19.2 percent had no opinion on the matter.
The co-sponsor of Asia's leading IT trade fair is expecting up to 100 tablet computers to be launched at the event in May, with technology firms vying for a slice of Apple's success with the iPad.
In the burgeoning tablet computer market, Google and its legion of hardware partners appear to be recreating the conditions that helped crown the Android operating system king of the hill in smartphones.
Although it might feel like there are endless options for the consumer, most of the devices are more similar than they are different, especially in terms of software. While iOS is limited to Apple's products, Google's Android can be found on just about all other mobile devices -- tablets or smartphones.
MSI recently expanded its ultraportable offerings with the addition of two last generation X-Slim notebooks. Although they're designed to be lightweight and compact, the X460 notebooks also strive to be powerful, courtesy of Intel's Sandy Bridge processors. The flagship model comes with Intel's Core i7-2630QM, packing the quad-core chip while boasting an 8-hour battery life.
The parade of expected Windows 7 tablets has begun, as the TEGA v2 began shipping late last year. I picked one up and have been using it for a few months, and it's time to give it some pixels. Sharp-eyed readers may be thinking the TEGA v2 looks like the just released ViewSonic ViewPad 10, and you are correct.
If MS-DOS, Windows, Android, the IBM PC, $99 TouchPad, and $200 Kindle Fire have taught us anything about technology it’s that being cheaper -- if not better -- than the competition one of the fastest and surest routes to success.
When you're drowning in a sea of Android tablets, all you want is someone to throw you a life-preserver of awesome. Sadly, what looks like it might be a life-preserver often turns out to be yet another bucket of water.
For under $150, the Coby Kyros MID7015 Android-based tablet is a pretty impressive device. Find out how Donovan Colbert thinks it stacks up against the iPad.
The HTC Jetstream, formerly known as the Puccini, is headed to AT&T on September 4th. It's running Android 3.1 on a 10.1-inch screen (nice!) and will be AT&T's first tablet with real 4G LTE (really nice!). For some reason though, it's going to cost $700 (ugh).
Hey, look, it's Samsung's rumored Windows 8 tablet, appearing in a box before it's announced. The word on the cyber street is that this thing packs quad-cores, but we'll find out soon. Shocker: it looks kinda like an iPad!
I hang out at wireless carrier stores a lot; they likely think I am a lurker of some sort up to no good. I like to keep up with what the carriers have going on in the smartphone space, and lately turned my attention to the tablet offerings they have.
Let's say you need a UMPC. It's not as uncommon as some people think. It might not be the consumers cup of tea but in industry, mobility counts for a lot. Logistics, amateur pilots, health industry, blue-light industry, traveling geeks and other situations where full capability, compatibility and flexibility in the smallest package is key.
Tablets are powerful computers, and using one with a good keyboard can function as a decent laptop replacement. I put two Honeycomb tablets to the test to see which is better for this purpose.
The ThinkPad Tablet by Lenovo is a Honeycomb slate that has typical ThinkPad engineering and quality of construction. It is as comfortable in the boardroom as it is the living room.
Android is criticized for the lack of apps optimized for tablets in the Market. Apps are the lifeblood of any mobile platform, and the Android tablet offerings are not growing at a fast pace. There are some good Android apps for tablets available, and I have already latched onto a few that provide good utility for me on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 running Honeycomb 3.1.
If you were already amazed by the thinness of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the iPad 2, prepare to have your mind blown. Toshiba's AT200 checks in at 7.7mm, which is about 1mm thinner than the two aforementioned tablets.
Looking like a before and after picture from a battle with anorexia, Toshiba's super thin AT200 tablet couldn't have more contrast with the Toshiba Thrive. The new tablet is the sliver-sized champion of the current tablet market. Measuring just 7.7mm thick, the AT200 is 1.1mm thinner than the iPad 2 and .1 mm slimmer than the next thinnest competitor the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.
Third time lucky for Toshiba? Its Folio 100 Android tablet was a failure and its second attempt, the Thrive, didn't make it across the Atlantic to the UK and suffered sleep problems. So it's having another go, with a thinner model said to be shown at the IFA show later this week.
Announced at the IFA consumer electronics show this past September, the 7.7mm-thick, 558g AT200 was said by Toshiba to be set to ship before the end of 2011.
Few netbooks have been truly cheap - well, few of the decent ones, anyway - but now we're at the third generation of Intel's Atom processor family, an opportunity has arisen for netbook makers to offer less pricey models based on older chippery.
Thanks to NDevil.com I have a Toshiba NB550D in my hands for a few days while they have my Asus Aspire One 522. Having just spent a lot of time with the 522 with testing and upgrading, its the perfect time to compare it with another AMD Brazos device.
Due out in the US in December - Toshiba UK has yet to respond to our request for local availability and pricing details - the Thrive 7 sports a 1280 x 800 resolution touchscreen, SRS Labs-powered sound system and an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor running Android 3.2.
The 13.3" Portege Z835-P330 is currently the cheapest ultrabook on the US market, with a price of $800. This price is maybe a surprise for many, because the 0.6-inch thin 2.5-pound laptop was expected to start at about $1,000 after the first announcement.
Toshiba has unveiled details of its forthcoming Android slate, previously known as the Toshiba Tablet. Officially dubbed the Thrive, the Tosh fondleslab is set to undercut the fruity market leader according to the US pricing it has announced.
In the vast sea of Android tablets, it can take a bit to stand out. Toshiba managed to do so with the original Thrive tablet thanks to a bevy of full-size ports that no other tablet saw fit to include. On the other hand, a good many other Android tablets are thinner and lighter, too. But the Thrive bucked that trend and gained a decent following.
Oh, Toshiba Thrive, where do you fit in this sea of tablets? Having succeeded where the Folio 100 fell short, there are still the doubters and the skeptics, brushing off your bulk as the ultimate design faux pas.
Another day. Another Android tablet to consider. The latest one comes from Toshiba and its Thrive. The Thrive is bulky, but has some perks that folks have been wanting--notably a USB port, removable battery and full-sized SD slot. But aggressive pricing of the Thrive can allow Toshiba to wipe the floor with higher priced Android tablets.
Whether you like them or not, there's no getting around the fact that Apple has been a major proponent of the thin-and-light mantra, with both the MacBook Air and iPad making their notebook and tablet rivals look embarrassingly fat and heavy. But Apple's competitors are fighting back.
The Toshiba Thrive may not be the tablet for you, but Toshiba doesn't appear to be stopping its Android development any time soon. In fact, the above image is that of a purported tablet Toshiba is expected to announce at IFA.
First things first: The AT200 is not Toshiba's first stab at crafting a compelling tablet offering. That honor goes to the Thrive, a tablet whose appeal was limited by its rather bulky design.
Even though Palm is a dead brand, and the future of WebOS is uncertain now that HP is reconsidering its position in the consumer electronics market, the vanishingly popular TouchPad tablet today is receiving an over-the-air update to webOS 3.0.4.
Channel analyst Context says HP TouchPad flogged nearly 31,000 devices across the UK, Germany and France in August -- twice the amount in July -- after a very slow start to the month and confirmation mid-way through it was quitting the slab game.
To settle all the confusion about the TouchWiz interface and whether or not it will be included on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, we reached out to Samsung. They let us know that the TouchWiz UI will not be available at launch, but will come via a separate OTA download for all Wifi Tab 10.1 users. We'll certainly let you know when this happens.
Google hasn't really said anything ?about tablets since their announcement yesterday of Android 4.0, but today, Asus Chariman, Jonney Shih revealed the next big Android tablet.
People are still unsure exactly what to make of Windows 8 and its ability to run on any type of device. No one is really sure what to make of the fact that tablet optimized apps will need to be written from scratch, but legacy Windows apps will still run, too. This be-all approach may work for Microsoft, but Windows 8 will fail in the mobile space if it exposes the user to two areas of legacy Windows operation not appropriate for mobile devices.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Program and Oxfam issued a joint appeal on Friday asking the international community to provide the "political, moral and financial means" necessary to fight the severe drought affecting more than 10 million people in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Uganda, the Associated Press reports.
I know that 1.3KG can feel different in different form factors but the thin and light laptops shouldn't be ignored if you're thinking about ultra mobility. For example, if you need a device to operate for 7-8 hours while typing offline but want to turn up the power dial to 11 now and then for a bit of 720p editing and rendering or gaming, the Samsung 900X3A is one to take a look at.
Ultrabooks will capture more than 40 percent of the laptop market by 2015, becoming, in effect, a counterweight to tablets like Apple's iPad, according to market researcher IHS-iSuppli.
Many of us now-a-days are trying to replace lugging around those clunky laptops with a new shiny Android tablet, but one thing that holds many back is attempting to type for long periods of time on any given tablet.
A minor but aggravating double standard has been overturned: Verizon has waived its $35 Android tablet activation fee, retroactive to March 1st. There had been no such surcharge for iPad purchases, because honestly what is an activation fee, anyway? Other than, you know, a way to squeeze every last bit of blood from the stone that is your wallet.
Not only is the Viewpad 10pro one of the first Oaktrail-based (Intel Atom Z670) tablets to ship, it's also the first with Bluestacks on it. Bluestacks is an 'Android player' that simulates an Android environment in order to run Android programs. Like Myriad Dalvic Turbo, it's a system with a lot of unanswered questions. Sideloading, GPS, network usage, power, speed.
Viewsonic has announced the ViewPad E70, a 7-inch tablet running Ice Cream Sandwich with an interesting price-point -- $169.99. For under 200 bucks, you'll get a 1GHz CPU, 4GB internal storage, micro SD card slot, HDMI out and a front facing camera. Viewsonic hasn't given out the full set of specifications just yet, so we're only sure of the above.
ViewSonic has unveiled the ViewPad 7e, a 7-inch Android tablet that retails for $200. The company is touting the tablet as a content consumption device that's great for surfing, reading and mobile entertainment.
ViewSonic's dual OS tablet, the ViewPad 10pro, is now available for pre-order via Amazon.com. That's the good news. The bad news is the tablet that runs both Windows 7 and Android 2.3 OS is in danger of being outdated before it loses that "new car smell". Here is why.
We don't all need the latest and greatest Android tablets and ViewSonic is launching devices that meet those who want to save money without too much compromise.
As a holdover until Microsoft ships the tablet-friendly Windows 8, I like the idea of a Windows 7 tablet that also runs Android. Sure, Windows 7 doesn’t play nicely with touch screens, but it’s a great operating system for getting work done, and when you’re finished, you can switch to Android for leisure.
Viewsonic has announced the ViewPad 7e -- a Gingerbread running tablet that checks in just under $200. With a 7-inch 800x600 screen, a 1GHz ARM A8 CPU, front and rear cameras (.3MP and 3MP respectively) and the ViewScene 3D interface on top of Android 2.3, this looks to be a player in the same market space as the Kindle Fire.
The ViewPad e70 is powered by a 1GHz processor and has a 4GB of internal storage, which can be expanded up to 32GB via microSD card. According to ViewSonic, the ViewPad e70 supports 1080p HDMI output, allowing users easily stream multimedia content.
The ViewSonic ViewPad 10pro tablet offers some nice touches, like Android accessibility within Windows 7 and a slick new keyboard from Swype, but flaws like limited storage space and an unresponsive touch screen can't be overlooked.
ViewSonic's Atom Z670-powered viewPad 10pro tablet offers the best of both worlds -- the apps and 1080p HD video quality of an Android Gingerbread device, as well as the familiarity of the Windows 7 environment. Are dual-OS tablets the way of the future?
Life hasn't been easy for tablet manufacturers competing with Apple's iPad. Perennially unable to compete with Apple's tablet on features and interest, rivals have attempted to veer in another direction entirely: By undercutting the iPad's $500 price tag.
Verizon has just announced that they have partnered with FuzeBox, and will be featuring Fuze Meeting as part of the BSA (Business Solutions Alliance) program. If you're unfamiliar with Fuze Meeting, it's an online collaboration tool that provides virtual meetings via computers, tablets, and smartphones. As Michael Toto, director, Enterprise and Government Partnerships at Verizon Wireless says:
Attempting to put more competitive pressure on Apple's iPad, both Sprint and Verizon Wireless dropped the price of the Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet to $199.99 when signing a two-year contract. The price cut is the third this year, after the Tab debuted in October of last year.
The Vizio 8" (yes, that's the name) now supports Hulu Plus, the first tablet to officially do so. To be fair, Vizio's latest device runs Gingerbread instead of Honeycomb, so you can't really take this as a sign of things around the corner for the XOOM, Galaxy Tab 10.1, and other higher-end tablets. Nevertheless, it's a welcome addition to what the Vizio 8" has to offer.
The Vizio Tablet will come with an 8-inch, 1,024x768 capacitive touch screen and allow people to connect to the Web via Wi-Fi, the company said. The platform will also support Bluetooth. Vizio's tablet will come with built-in GPS and feature 2GB of on-board storage. The device supports up to 32GB of storage through the use of a microSD card.
In August, US LCD TV leader Vizio launched its 8" Android tablet for an agreeable $299 at most common big box retailers. Today, streaming TV provider Hulu announced it has partnered with Vizio to bring Hulu Plus to its new tablet.
Are you a Vodafone customer who has been looking for a new Android tablet, but haven't exactly decided which one you wanted? Well Vodafone is throwing another one into the mix for you, the Vodafone Smart Tab, which is a 10-inch, Android 3.2 tablet with 16GB of internal memory. If your interested in learning more about the device, be sure to hit the source link for more information.
There are a couple of things I want to bring to your attention about the WeTab 11.6" Atom-based Tablet, currently available in Europe. Firstly, they've obviously got to migrate everything from Meego to Tizen now. They've released an up-beat statement saying they'll be ready for the release in 2012 but my heart goes out to this company that put many eggs in the Meego basket.
Weird: By flopping so badly, HP's TouchPad tablet has become a monstrous hit. After HP CEO Léo Apotheker decided to terminate HP's WebOS hardware business, the company slashed the entry-level TouchPad, which sold for $499 just a couple of weeks ago, to $99. The new price is causing riots at Best Buy and has made the TouchPad the #1 electronics product on Amazon.
I have a lot of sympathy for people who steal their technology from the hearse, just as its driving through the gates of the great technology knackers' yard.
We spent so long clamoring for any kind of iOS multitasking that maybe we forgot to specify what kind of multitasking we wanted. Or maybe we just never realized it could be as tidy and wonderful and yes as this mockup.
The BlackBerry PlayBook is available for pre-order, and will be on the street in a matter of weeks. I am not sure the RIM tablet will see much consumer success, but then consumers have never been RIM's primary market. Consumer tablets aside, the PlayBook has some unique features that make it an ideal tablet from a business or IT admin perspective.
I was planning to write about the new White House cyberpolicies (and I'll probably circle back around to them next week), but when ZDNet's gamification guy, Peter Cohen, sent me a note about how Congress-critters are using iPads, I couldn't pass it up.
Ah, the HP Touchpad. When it was previewed, it looked amazing. When it was reviewed, it was smashed. When it was launched, it was ignored. When HP killed webOS and dropped the price to $100, it sold out? Yes. And now it's selling for more than retail on eBay.
It's easy to think that because the iPad is the king of the tablets that others players have little chance of making a splash. Not true. HP's TouchPad might be just the thing to shake things up a little.
If you have been waiting for the Wifi-only version of the Motorola Xoom to launch officially, today is your lucky day. Of course, some places were selling them early, and one of our readers did some great hands-on time with his device, but the Wifi-only Xoom is now available to all to purchase.
The publishing companies are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, because they think the ebook will kill the print book, but actually it will make book publishing more profitable.
Online retail giant Amazon.com will slip into the earnings confessional after the close of trading this afternoon, and expectations appear to be running high ahead of the event. Wall Street is currently expecting a fourth-quarter profit of 19 cents per share from Amazon, a figure that is down sharply from earnings of 91 cents per share in the same quarter last year.
In Microsoft's official press release that centered on Gates' speech, it stated flat out, "Gates predicted that the Tablet would become the most popular form of PC within five years." Gates showed off working prototypes of the Tablet PC design, running the just launched Windows XP operating system.
Yesterday, there was news that Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" may be delivered through the Mac App Store. That may not be the only delivery method for updates that Apple may soon be changing. 9to5Mac reports that Verizon and Apple are working to bring over-the-air updates to iOS 5 after its release this fall.
Now that developers have in their hands a pre-release version of Windows 8 running on a special edition of the Samsung Series 7 tablet, analysts are weighing in on how many developers will ultimately build Windows tablet applications.
Netbook owners certainly took note during Microsoft President of Windows Steven Sinofsky's Windows 8 unveiling at the BUILD conference. Early on in the presentation, Sinofsky whipped out his three-year old Lenovo netbook, the very same unit he exhibited at the dev conference three years prior, and showed the crowd of eager Microsoft developers his first generation device running Windows 8.
ARM processors power the vast majority of tablets and smartphones sold globally. And for the first time with Windows 8, a mainstream Windows operating system will run on both ARM and Intel chips.
If our hands-on slideshow of Windows 8 Developer Preview wasn't quite your thing, check out our video review below. We can now tell you that this tablet is a Samsung, Intel Core i5-powered tablet. It is 900 grams (2lbs) and about 13mm at its thickest point. The tablet, when it actually appears on the market later this year, will be powered b Windows 7 -- but Microsoft worked with Samsung to get Windows 8 running on this particular device.
Five-finger multi-touch, 720p cameras and 1366-by-768 resolution screens will be among the requirements for Windows 8 tablets, according to documentation from Microsoft.
Next week could be a big one for Microsoft, as it's rumored to show off Windows 8 tablet software for the first time. Sources tell Bloomberg that a prototype Windows tablet will be demonstrated on hardware powered by Nvidia's Tegra processor, but the most important elements, for now, will be software and user interface.
The Samsung Series 700 tablet will be coming soon, and when it does, it will have Windows 7 on-board. But Samsung likes to get products into developers' hands, as evidenced by its Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Chromebook giveaways to attendees at Google's I/O developers conference.
What has a 1,366-by-768-pixel screen with a minimum of five touch inputs; at least one USB 2.0 port; Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; a three-axis accelerometer; power, rotation lock, and volume buttons; 10GB or more of free storage space when taken out of the box; and a Windows key button measuring at least 10.5mm in diameter in the center of the bottom bezel?
Microsoft is facing up to the million-dollar question: how does it compete with Apple's iPad and Google's Android when Windows was designed for keyboard and mouse rather than touch control?
If you were worried that, like Windows Phone 7, Windows 8 would be locked in landscape mode, fear not! On the Building Windows 8 blog, Microsoft has outlined that while landscape is certainly the prevalent orientation, Windows 8 will be fully optimized for portrait usage.
Just a few moments ago, Steven Sinofsky took to the stage at the Anaheim Conference Center in California and announced the imminent arrival of Windows 8 Developer Preview. If you want a sneak peek at the OS itself, check out our hands-on slideshow of its key features. Later today we'll also have a hands-on video review of the first tablet running Windows 8.
The quad-core chips will be part of the Snapdragon S4 product line and are based on ARM architecture. The S4 chips, which will include single-core and dual-core options, will run at clock speeds between 1.5GHz and 2.5GHz.
For a very long time, Microsoft refused to acknowledge that the fabled Courier tablet concept even existed. Then, the product was simultaneously confirmed and killed in April of 2010. While some brushed this product off as so much foolishness, others mourned its loss as a missed opportunity. At last the full story of the life and times of the Courier has come out, and the reasons for its premature death are surprising and a little troubling.
In what is a sure sign of a maturing marketplace, Wisair - one of the few providers of Wireless USB silicons - will soon be offering single CMOS chip solution meant for the tablet marketplace. To highlight this new chip's abilities, Wisair will be showing off an Android-based tablet with wireless streaming capabilities. Needless to say, this is indeed big news.
Microsoft wowed everyone last month at it's BUILD event in Anaheim, California, where the company took the wraps off their "biggest bet yet"; Windows 8.
When usually scoff when we hear about Android tablets going for $199. But when we hear about stalwart retailer X10 selling one for $199, we'll at least give things a listen. The X10 AirPad promises to be the "best tablet on the market for under $200."
Coincidentally on the same day the iPad 2 is available for purchase the announcement was made today that the Motorola Xoom will now feature Flash. But will that be enough to help the already languid Xoom sales?
It's a question we get all the time, so let's answer it. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has Gorilla Glass. And given the history Samsung has with using Corning, the latest press release confirming that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is making use of Gorilla Glass shouldn't really come as much of a surprise but it's certainly comforting.
Zinio, the popular magazine reading application that gained enormous popularity on iOS, is now available on Android. With the app, which is only available for tablets running Honeycomb, users can browse and consume their favorite magazines.
