GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

Of the five tablets Archos announced last week, the most interesting is the 101. Yes, that’s because it is pretty much aimed right at the iPad, in both specs and size. And if you were wondering just what a 10-inch wide-screen tablet would look like, now you know. First, some numbers.

The 101 has a capacitive 1024 x 768 touch-screen, a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor and a host of ports and radios normally associated with a netbook: HDMI, a microphone, a USB port, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, a front-facing VGA webcam and accelerometers. It even has a kickstand.

As for size, it comes in slimmer and lighter than the iPad, at 12mm thick (the iPad is 13.4mm) and weighs 480 grams (the iPad weighs 680-grams). Best of all the features, though, is the price: $300 for the 8GB model and $350 for the 16GB. That’s $150 cheaper than the 16GB iPad (this comparison is apt as the 101 has no 3G option).

But it comes down to the software and battery life. We don’t have any reports on the power use, but apparently the scaled-up cellphone interface doesn’t work so well. Brad Linder at Lilliputing got his hands on the 101 and said that “thumb-typing in portrait mode is reasonably comfortable, I found text entry in landscape mode to be a bit awkward.” The 101 runs the latest version of Android, v2.2, which is theoretically capable of running Flash.

I wonder if, in the rush to get iPad rivals to market, the manufacturers are missing the point. Touch-screen tablets have been around for years, but it took a brand-new interface design and a big-ass battery before anyone actually started to buy them. And remember, it took Apple years to design it. Until the proper, purpose-built tablets (like HP’s expected WebOS tablets) finally appear, it looks like we’re getting the tablet PCs from the 1990s all over again, only with smaller cases and without Windows.

Archos 101 product page [Archos]

Archos iPad Killer [Giz China]

Closer look at the Archos 101 Android tablet [Lilliputing]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

This rather familiar-looking tablet is in fact one of the first Android tablets in the wild. The Identity TAB comes from South Korea’s KT and will cost 300,000 Won, or around $250, and is almost identical to the upcoming Galaxy Tab from Samsung.

The TAB runs Android 2.2 Froyo, and the TFT LCD (multitouch) screen measures seven-inches, which seems to be a sweet spot for Android tablets. It runs on a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, is packed with 8GB storage and a gyroscope, plus some great additions not found in Apple’s iPad: a 3MP camera (rear-facing), an SD-card slot and a DMB TV Tuner (sweet!).

As with any tablet facing up to the iPad, it will win or lose based on the smoothness and integration of the operating system and hardware (things much more important when you are interacting with on-screen controls directly) and of course an app ecosystem. The Identity TAB does have one other great advantage: It’s in Korea, which means crazy-good internet. The $250 price is for the unit alone. Sign up for a contract and it is free if you pick a $22 per month WiMax contract from SK Telecom, offering an impossible-to-exhaust 50GB of data. One caveat: from the (translated) wording of various descriptions, it is unclear whether WiMax (called WiBro in Korea) is built-in or requires an external unit or dongle.

Despite the embarrassingly derivative design, the TAB certainly looks like a tablet to watch.

KT nation’s first Tablet PC released Android [Today Korea via Akihabara News and Engadget]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Today’s big rumor, coming from an un-named single source by way of the Download Squad blog, is that a Google Chrome tablet, made by HTC and available on the Verizon network, will go on sale on November 26th this year. That’s Black Friday.

An that is all. The author goes on to speculate about the hardware, but that’s guesswork. What of the actual “facts” of the story, though?

HTC would make sense. After all, the hardware-maker is behind many Android phones, and worked with Google on the original G1 Googlephone. That part lines up. As for Verizon, that too is a pretty credible pairing given the net-neutrality furore of the past couple weeks, which has seen Verizon and Google clubbing together to dismiss the need for an un-tiered internet for mobile devices. That, and the fact that Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said back in May that Verizon and Google are “working on tablets together.”

And the launch date? Either genius or incredibly dumb. If Google were to make the announcement ahead of time, it would certainly get a lot of headlines due to the sheer ballsiness of launching a product into the morass of hype that is the busiest shopping day of the year. But once those headlines have come and gone, the product actually could get drowned in that morass and just disappear.

I really don’t know which way to call this. The pieces all fit so well together, but the source is a very odd one. Either way, the prospect of an HTC/Verizon/Google tablet is a rather appealing one. What do you all think?

Google launching a Chrome OS tablet on Verizon, goes on sale November 26 [Download Squad]

Image mockup: Glen Murphy

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

If you thought then Droid X was big, check out the Olivepad from India’s Olive Telecom. The 7-inch tablet, halfway in size between a smartphone and an iPad, will actually make phone calls (although we’d suggest a headset of some kind unless you want to attract amused stares).

The Android 2.1 tablet actually looks pretty sweet, with 3.5G HSUPA, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and even a TV-tuner. It trumps the iPad in two areas: a 3 megapixel camera and a USB port (mini). Memory is limited, with just half a gig of RAM (expandable via SD-card) and the screen resolution is an acceptable-for-the-size 800 x 480 pixels.

What I like most about it is that it has a measure of honesty. While the EVO and other Android phones are really a little to large to call phones, the Olivepad is a flat-out tablet with a vestigial phone attached.

The price, when it launches in India in August, will be somewhere around $500. That makes the iPad look pretty cheap (but then, the iPad won’t fit in your pocket). And one more thing: The Olivepad plays Flash.

Olive Telecom Launches Indias First 3G Tablet [Olive Telecom Via Engadget and Times of India]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Until now, the iPad has faced almost no competition. Soon, though, the Android and WebOS tablets will start to ship in bulk, and things may change. Amongst the first will be Velocity Micro’s Cruz lineup, which brings a wide-screen (16:9) tablet running Google’s Android OS for just $300.

The touch-screen tablet is flanked by an e-reader and a “kid-friendly” (read: drop-resistant) model, which come in at $200 and $150 respectively.

The Cruz tablet really is a cut-down iPad. It has 802.11n Wi-Fi, 800×480 pixels on the little 7-inch screen, 4GB storage (expandable via SD-card, with an 8GB card in the box), an accelerometer, a seven-hour battery-life and (oh Lord, can it be true?) a USB port.

The Cruz is essentially a slab of screen, which is just what a tablet should be. As such, it will succeed or fail on software, which is Apple’s big advantage, and also on battery life (will you really get seven hours?) The seven-inch screen seems like a great idea for some, the iPad is too big but the 16:9 ratio is a little odd for a device that can be used in portrait orientation.

Velocity Micro confuses the customer with the other options. For $100 less ($200), you can opt for the 4:3 “e-reader” which is essentially the same tablet with less memory (none built-in, 2GB card in the box), slower Wi-Fi (802.11g) and a 800×600 display (yes, more pixels, but not capacitive, demoed above).

The tablets all ship September 1st, just six weeks away. Lets see how they shape up to the iPad.

Cruz Tablets [Cruz Reader via Richmond Times Dispatch]

Press release [Engadget]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews