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Korean electronics manufacturer LG may be working on a Google-branded "Nexus" tablet.

Google is preparing its own hardware entry into the Android tablet market in collaboration with device manufacturer LG, according to a report circulating Monday morning. Read More…

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LAS VEGAS — Samsung climbed aboard the increasingly crowded 4G train with a trio of 4G LTE-enabled devices Thursday afternoon at CES 2011.

Among the devices are a new version of the Galaxy Tab. Along with 4G connectivity capability, the new tablet will have an upgraded 5-megapixel back facing camera, distinguished from the current models 3 megapixels.

Samsung didn’t announce when the tablet would be available. It will be exclusive to Verizons 4G network in the U.S.

In addition to the new tablet, Samsung also unveiled a new, yet-to-be named smartphone, provisionally called the 4G LTE. Its yet another launch of a mobile device with a massive super AMOLED screen — it measures in at 4.3-inches — debuting only days after the company had first announced its 4.5-inch Infuse smartphone.

Under the hood, the 4G LTE has a 1 GHz single-core processor. Just like the Infuse, the 4G LTE has an 8-megapixel back facing camera, with a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera for video chat. Both the 4G LTE and the Infuse will run Froyo. Like the tablet, there arent any pricing or availability details being made public yet.

And to round out the announcement, Samsung also introduced its aptly named 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot for Verizons 4G network. The device will work much like other hotspots do, acting as a wireless access point for up to five Wi-Fi enabled devices at once. Its also backward compatible with Verizons 3G network.

See Also:

• Official: Samsung Galaxy Tab $600 on Verizon
• How 7-Inch Android Tablets Can Succeed
• Verizon Mulling Wired Broadband Pricing Tiers For 4G Wireless

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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Like books, e-readers and tablets need protection. Their delicate, computer-like screens can get cracked or smashed by the vagaries of life.

And like books, we spend hours staring at these delicate devices. So why not make them look more like books?

We don’t just want to protect tablets and e-readers, but honor and personalize them, and maybe bring back some of the quaint pleasures of reading an old leather-bound volume at the same time.

The most natural way to signal their special status as reading machines and engines of cultural consumption is to borrow what we know from the look and feel of book covers. And if making an e-reader look like an old hardcover book or a composition notebook adds a little trompe l’oeil fun, so much the better.

This slide show highlights some of the best faux-book covers for e-book readers and tablets.

Above: Covers made by Dodocase for the Kindle 3.

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Some tablets and smartphones ship with an AMOLED display. Newer ones are shipping with a “Super AMOLED” display. What so super about it, and what does all this alphabet soup even mean?

The short version is that a Super AMOLED touchscreen display integrates touch sensors with the glass surface panel, eliminating at least one layer of glass and with it, a layer of air. That’s what makes Super AMOLED super. Only Samsung makes it.

Super AMOLED schematic from Samsung

I said “at least one layer of glass” because AMOLED itself eliminates at least one layer in a display. The current Galaxy Tab, for example, uses a TFT-LCD (Thin-Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Display) screen. Until very recently, TFT-LCD has been the state of the art in thin color displays and is still the only cost-effective option in the vast majority of displays larger than a smartphone screen.

TFT-LCD has approximately four layers: a backlight, a TFT color filter, a touch sensor panel, and an outer glass screen. AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) eliminates the separate backlight. Apple’s iPhone 4, among others, uses a Samsung-made AMOLED display.

AMOLED, however, is known for having problems with glare and readability in direct sunlight, even relative to average LCD screens. By minimizing the number of reflective surfaces and power necessary to achieve vivid color, Super AMOLED was designed in part to address this.

Samsung introduced Super AMOLED to commercial devices this year with the Samsung Wave, which ran their own Bada OS. The Android-powered Samsung Galaxy series of smartphones made the displays popular, and it’s since appeared on Samsung’s Windows Phone 7 handsets as well.

There are other advanced color technologies in the market, all of them super, and all of them extra-expensive: Super LCD recently joined Super IPS and Advanced Super View. But only Super AMOLED has really captured the popular imagination.

A 7-inch Android tablet with an AMOLED display would probably be a serious advance over its current LCD screen. But if it’s “just” AMOLED, something about it would just seem… less than super.

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The much anticipated Kno, an oversized reader/tablet targeted at students and teachers, is taking preorders to ship just before Christmas. Prices run between $599 for a 16 GB single-screen tablet and $999 for a 32 GB dual-screen folio. That’s with an educational discount.

Sound expensive? The 14″ Kno has the same relationship to the 6″ Kindle that college textbooks have to trade paperbacks. Textbooks are big, heavy, they cost a lot of money, they’ve got expensive illustrations, and the publishers are all different.

Kno doesn’t compare itself to other e-readers, or even other tablets. It compares itself to new textbooks. Considering the thousands of dollars students spend on books, the company says — and the tens of thousands they and their parents spend on college — $599 for our entry-level unit is a bargain.

Kno’s extraordinary benefits represent only a tiny fraction of the overall cost of college, but its impact on the student’s career – and the energy it adds to the experience, the thrill of learning, and the ultimate grade – is dramatic,” said Osman Rashid, Co-Founder and CEO of Kno, Inc. “Even better, when you do the math, it actually pays for itself and still saves $1,300 in digital textbook costs.”

That figure is misleading, since it assumes a student purchases all their books new and doesn’t sell them used. What’s more, Rashid, founder of textbook-borrowing site Chegg, knows it.

The Kno is an extremely capable device and deserves to be sold on its own merits. It’s got either one or two 1440×900 LCD touchscreens that support both fingertip navigation and stylus notetaking. It supports either a virtual or a bluetooth keyboard, and it’s backed up by an impressive library of electronic textbooks.

It doesn’t have third-party apps, which will make parents happy: it’s built to read, write, and browse the web. But it can play the major audio and video formats, including Flash. It’s got an NVidia Tegra 2 graphics chip with an A9 dual-core 1GHz processor and 512 MB RAM. Despite this giant display of video power, it still claims up to 6 hours of battery life on “normal campus use” (whatever that means).

The Kno is heavy (2.6 lbs for the single-screen, 5.6 lbs for the dual-screen) by e-reader and tablet standards. But again, that’s not necessarily the relevant comparison. Compared to a bag full of first-year biology and calculus textbooks, 5.6 lbs is light as a feather.

A lot of companies have tried to make e-reading in this space work. It’s more complicated than direct-to-consumer trade publication, because there are just so many stakeholders: students, parents, teachers, authors, publishers, retailers. The timing is tough because the economy’s forcing many people to curtail their academic spending, not ramp it up on new gadgets — which is one reason the company is pushing the money-saving angle. But Kno’s hardware looks good, the pricing is high but reasonably competitive, the company’s strategy is sound, and its people understand those complexities as well as anyone.

I think we can expect a gradual rollout of the product this semester for holiday-season early adopters, and if it’s successful, a big push for back-to-school next fall. we’ll just have to see whether it clicks.

Kno Announces Pricing and Pre-Order Availability for Tablet Textbook; Pays for Itself in 3 Semesters [Press Release]

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With the iPad’s 9.5-inch screen, who needs an iPhone?

Indeed, after six months of using a tablet, I’m ready to ditch my smartphone for something simpler and more reliable.

The phone I want is a feature phone with a 3G connection and the ability to create a Wi-Fi hotspot for tethering my devices to it.

It should have long battery life, be able to grab and hold on to a voice signal with the tenacity of a bear trap, and be compact yet ruggedly durable.

It could even have an E Ink screen for super low battery consumption. Who cares if the screen is low resolution and has a one-second refresh rate, if all you’re using it for is looking at the occasional text message? (Thanks for the suggestion, Tim!)

The result would be a device I could use for phone conversations and basic texting. Mostly, though, it would supply internet connectivity to my other gadgets. I’d use an iPad or my laptop for e-mail, reading articles on the web, composing blog posts, Twitter, and in short everything else.

Basically I want something like the Nokia 3595 I used for years, before getting a first-gen iPhone, except with the addition of 3G data and Wi-Fi tethering.

After six months of semi-regularly using Apple’s tablet, I’m growing increasingly disenchanted with even the iPhone 4’s high-resolution “retina” display. The thing is just too small to use comfortably.

The more I read on my iPhone, the more sad and tired I get. Bending my neck to stare at a tiny, smaller-than-index-card-sized glowing screen a foot or so in front of my face makes me feel as if my world has shrunk to the size of a playing card.

With the iPad, by contrast, I feel like I’m reading a book. It’s too heavy to hold comfortably for extended periods, but I can prop it up in comfortable positions or slouch with it on my lap. I feel more a part of the world.

The iPhone has other problems, too. Don’t get me started on how often AT&T drops my calls or fails to give me a signal at all.

(And I refuse to get a 3G iPad, or pay extra for its month-to-month data service, no matter how good both are. I’m already paying for 3G data with my phone’s plan — why do I need to buy a second data plan?)

I’ve jailbroken the iPhone and am using the amazing app MyWi to give it Wi-Fi tethering capabilities, so whenever I have a signal, it can feed it to my iPad or laptop. That’s a step in the right direction.

I tried the same thing with a Nexus One awhile back, and that worked, too.

Unfortunately, the Nexus One and the iPhone, like all smartphones, are still too big and fragile. I don’t know of any feature phones that offer 3G and tethering.

Now if only I had something durable and compact, with long battery life, that did the same thing.

Is my ideal phone out there? Let me know if I’m overlooking something obvious. I’d love to be proven wrong on this one.

Photo: Jonathan Snyder / Wired.com

Follow us for real-time tech news: Dylan Tweney and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Dylan edits Wired.com’s Gadget Lab blog, and likes to write about technology, science, gadgets, and their impact on society and culture. Follow @dylan20 on Twitter

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The ill-fated JooJoo tablet that debuted the same weekend as the Apple iPad had fallen off the radar for the last few months. But now the Singapore-based Garage Fusion Garage says it will be back next year with a new family of tablets based partly on the Android operating system.

“We want to say we are alive and looking at launching a new product in the first half of next year,” Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan, CEO of Fusion Garage told Wired.com. “We will build a new operating system based in part on Android and launch a family of tablets next year.”

The new tablet will support the Android app store, Android Market.

It’s an ambitious dream for a company that struggled to launch its first tablet, a 12.1-inch touchscreen device, and received a scathing review.

JooJoo started its life as CrunchPad, an ambitious project dreamed up by Web 2.0 chronicler Michael Arrington. Arrington posted a note on his TechCrunch blog outlining the idea for a $200 Linux-based tablet and partnered with Fusion Garage to launch the product.

A fallout between the two led to a lawsuit and Fusion Garage renamed the CrunchPad JooJoo. In March, it launched the JooJoo for $500. But since then buzz about the JooJoo hasn’t been encouraging. The device drew criticism for the bugs in its software and user interface. Documents filed for the JooJoo TechCrunch lawsuit showed just 90 people had pre-ordered the product.

Sales have been better than that, claims Rathakrishnan.

“If those were really the kind of numbers we saw, we wouldn’t be still here today talking about new products,” he says. Fusion Garage has raised an additional $10 million in funding, he claims.

Meanwhile, Fusion Garage has decided to drop the the JooJoo product line. The new tablets are likely to have a different brand.

Though the tablets will be based on Android, it won’t be entirely the Android OS and a skin on top of it, says Rathakrishnan. Fusion Garage plans to take “elements of Android” such as the base kernel and then build on it.

“Think of it as Mac using Unix BSD,” says Rathakrishnan. Fusion Garage now has about 40 employees.

Rathakrishnan says he has learnt from his mistakes.

“With JooJoo we launched prematurely,” he says. “We wanted to be there ahead of everyone else, and we were there before Apple but the product was entirely ready. When you push the envelope, you have more problems than you anticipate.”

Since JooJoo’s launch, Rathakrishnan says his team has worked to make the performance stable and iron out bugs. There’s still work to be done, he says. For instance, though the JooJoo supports Flash it is not GPU-accelerated so it is still slow.

As for upcoming Fusion Garage tablets, they will be ready to take on the big boys of consumer technology–Dell, Samsung, Research In Motion and Asus all of whom have promised or introduced new tablets– claims Rathakrishnan.

“We will differentiate ourselves by innovation,” he says. “What we will produce will redefine the category.”

The JooJoo may have been a bust but Fusion Garage isn’t willing yet to give up on its dreams.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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Apple’s new MacBook Air borrows a lot of things from the iPad, including hyperportability and instant-on flash storage. But the Air won’t use an iPad-like touchscreen. Neither will any of Apple’s laptops. That’s because of what designers call “gorilla arm.”

And while Apple points to its own research on this problem, it’s a widely-recognized issue that touchscreen researchers have known about for decades.

“We’ve done tons of user testing on this,” Steve Jobs said in Wednesday’s press conference, “and it turns out it doesn’t work. Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical. It gives great demo, but after a short period of time you start to fatigue, and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off.”

This why Jobs says Apple’s invested heavily in developing multitouch recognition for its trackpads, both for its laptops, on its current-generation Mighty Mouse and on its new standalone Magic Trackpad.

Avi Greengart of Current Analysis agrees it’s a smart move, borne out of wisdom gathered from watching mobile and desktop users at work.

“Touchscreen on the display is ergonomically terrible for longer interactions,” he says. “So while touchscreens are popular, Apple clearly took what works and is being judicious on how they are taking ideas from the mobile space to the desktop.”

But Apple didn’t have to do its own user testing. They didn’t even have to look at the success or failure of existing touchscreens in the PC marketplace. Researchers have been documenting usability problems with vertical touch surfaces for decades.

“Gorilla arm” is a term engineers coined about thirty years ago to describe what happens when people try to use these interfaces for an extended period of time. It’s the touchscreen equivalent of carpal-tunnel syndrome. According to the New Hacker’s Dictionary, “the arm begins to feel sore, cramped, and oversized the operator looks like a gorilla while using the touch screen and feels like one afterwards.”

According to the NHD, the phenomenon is so well known that it’s become a stock phrase and cautionary tale well beyond touchscreens: “‘Remember the gorilla arm!’ is shorthand for ‘How is this going to fly in real use?’.” You find references to the “gorilla-arm effect” or “gorilla-arm syndrome” again and again in the scholarly literature on UI research and ergonomics, too.

There are other problems with incorporating touch gestures on laptops, regardless of their orientation. Particularly for a laptop as light as the MacBook Air, continually touching and pressing the screen could tip it over, or at least make it wobble. This is one reason I dislike using touchscreen buttons on cameras and camera phones — without a firm grip, you introduce just the right amount of shake to ruin a photo.

Touchscreens work for extended use on tablets, smartphones and some e-readers because you can grip the screen firmly with both hands, and you have the freedom to shift between horizontal, vertical, and diagonal orientations as needed.

On a tablet or smartphone, too, the typing surface and touch surface are almost always on the same plane. Moving back and forth between horizontal typing and vertical multitouch could be as awkward as doing everything on a vertical screen.

This doesn’t mean that anything other than a multitouch trackpad won’t work. As Microsoft Principal Researcher (and multitouch innovator) Bill Buxton says, “Everything is best for something and worst for something else.”

We’ve already seen vertical touchscreens and other interfaces working well when used in short bursts: retail or banking kiosks, digital whiteboards and some technical interfaces. And touchscreen computing is already well-implemented in non-mobile horizontal interfaces, like Microsoft’s Surface. Diagonalized touchscreen surfaces modeled on an architect’s drafting table like Microsoft’s DigiDesk concept are also very promising.

In the near future, we’ll see even more robust implementations of touch and gestural interfaces. But it’s much more complex than just slapping a capacitative touchscreen, however popular they’ve become, into a popular device and hoping that they’ll work together like magic.

Design at this scale, with these stakes, requires close and careful attention to the human body — not just arms, but eyes, hands and posture — and to the context in which devices are used in order to find the best solution in each case.

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Despite the announcement of its first Android tablet last month, Samsung has been coy about the most awaited information of the device: pricing.

Now a leak suggests the Galaxy Tab will be priced at $400 with a two-year contract on Sprint and $600 without a contract. The device could be available starting November 14 in the U.S., according to The Boy Genius Report site.

Samsung has said that the Galaxy Tab will be available on all the four major wireless service providers AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. The tablets include 3G and WiFi connectivity.

The pricing, if correct, will put the Galaxy Tab in an interesting position against the Apple iPad. A 16 GB version of the iPad costs $500 but a 3G data plan from AT&T is available on month-to-month and without a long-term contract.

The Galaxy Tab will be the first major Android tablet to hit the market. The device runs Android 2.2 Froyo operating system and has a 7-inch LCD display with a 1024 x 600 resolution. At 0.8 pounds, the device weighs just about half as much as the iPad. It also supports Adobes Flash Player 10.1 so it can display web pages that run Flash something the iPad cant.

Samsung has said most apps in the Android Market will work on the Galaxy Tab. But already big news publishers such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today are reportedly planning Android apps optimized for the Galaxy Tab.

Photo: Samsung Galaxy Tab

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LG fans waiting for the company to launch a tablet may want to consider the iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab or the BlackBerry PlayBook instead. LG has decided to cancel plans to launch an Android tablet by the end of the year, according to a Reuters report.

LG says it wants to wait for a newer version of Android to support its efforts to bring a tablet to market. That could mean an LG Android tablet is unlikely to launch before mid-2011.

The move is a setback for LG, which is now likely to lose ground to competitors in the tablet category.

Since the launch of the iPad in April, tablets have become one of the hottest consumer products of the year. So far, Apple has sold more than 3 million iPads. Meanwhile, Dell, Samsung and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion have introduced or announced new tablets.

Though, LG has scrapped its Android tablet, the operating system is being used by other tablet makers. The Dell Streak, a device with a 5-inch screen, and the Samsung Galaxy, a tablet with a 7-inch touchscreen display, both use Android OS. The Streak runs Android 1.6 but Dell has said it plans to upgrade it to Android 2.2 later this year, while the Galaxy tablet will debut with Android 2.2 Froyo.

That makes LG’s decision puzzling. LG has had a checkered past when it comes to its tablet plans. The company was working on a prototype based on the Windows 7 operating system but it seems to have abandoned that.

Now it seems LG wants to wait for Android 3.0 ‘Gingerbread,’ which arrives next year.

So far, Google hasn’t been clear on what kind of devices are best supported by the current version of Android OS. Though Android is open source, Google controls the app store, Android Market. Devices that don’t meet Google’s guidelines for Android systems don’t have access to the Android Market.

However, Samsung has been able to convince Google to support its 7-inch tablet. All apps from the Android market can run on the Galaxy Tab though not every app will be optimized for the device.

LG could have done the same.

Photo: Samsung’s Android tablet/Samsung

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Briss is a cross-platform open-source Java application that does one thing and does it well: cropping PDFs. Usually, that’s exactly what you need to format cumbersome documents for a tablet or e-reader’s small screen.

It turns out that to format PDFs for e-reading, cropping is the richest tool you usually need, so long as your cropping tool is as easy, fast and powerful as Briss. It can convert two-page spreads into single vertical pages, slice off extra-wide margins and get rid of ugly metadata like page numbers and chapter headings.

Trimming this information is essential if you’re converting your PDF to an e-book format like EPUB or MOBI; because e-book conversion doesn’t keep the same pagination, you’ll wind up with numbers and text in random spots, usually in the middle of a page. Now that even dedicated e-readers like the Kindle, Nook and Sony Reader support PDF out-of-the-box, it’s optional.

The UI is dead simple, if a touch unforgiving. When loading a PDF file, Briss analyzes it to check for repetitive structures — for instance, that all of the pages are the same size and have roughly the same margins. It usually offers different options for even and odd pages. If the PDF is a two-page spread (i.e., two pages of a book or magazine copied onto a single page in the PDF), it detects that as well.

Then outline the parts of the document you want to keep into different crop areas. If you’re splitting spreads into one-page vertical columns, you might have as many as four. If you have a uniform PDF that just needs its margins trimmed, there might only be one. Briss then applies that crop to every page in the document, outputting a file into the same folder with “_trimmed” appended to it. The original file remains intact.

This is usually as easy as cropping an image in any application, but in some cases with spreads I’ve had to perform crops blind. I usually select half the page to be column one and the other half to be column two, then fine-tune it later. Adobe Photoshop’s can perform the same task with a more sophisticated and reliable interface, but it’s nowhere near as lightweight (or free) as Briss.

The romance-novel/e-book blog Dear Author has more detailed instructions on how to use Calibre to further convert PDFs to e-book-native formats, but in my experience, the new generation of e-readers handles PDFs just fine. In most cases, your PDFs may have been simple photocopy-and-scan jobs without OCR text; converting to a text format without also performing an OCR scan won’t help them anyways.

I also leave the page numbers on books I crop, so I can reference them as easily as I could a print edition. For scholar and student users, e-books’ lack of stable page references makes working from them a huge headache; paginated PDFs don’t have that problem.

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You may soon be able to watch live pro football on your tablet, but unless it’s on Verizon’s network, maybe not the tablet you might like.

NFL VP and media strategist Brian Rolapp told the Wall Street Journal that the league is currently in talks with Verizon about distributing live and rebroadcast games and other content to tablets. “The NFL will be on a tablet,” he said. “It’s a question of what shape or form.” Verizon declined to comment.

Why Verizon? The carrier already has a $720 million four-year exclusive deal to show games and other programming on phones with its NFL Mobile service that was just signed in March. Depending on the terms of that deal (and remember, in March, the iPad wasn’t even in stores yet), tablet computers are most likely not included, but the NFL may find it practically and legally difficult to partner with another wireless provider.

Why would you want to watch an NFL game on a teeny-weeny tablet? Besides being better than watching NFL on a phone, I have two words for you: VGA Adapter.

A Verizon spokesman told the WSJ that the company wants to secure the rights to rebroadcast every NFL game. Suppose you’re on the road, in a hotel, and the local channels aren’t showing your team’s game. Hook up your tablet to the television, and you’ve got it on your screen. You can even catch the Monday night game at the airport while your plane back home is delayed.

Regardless of how the deals eventually shake out, that scenario is definitely appealing to the NFL’s millions of hard-core fans, who are frequently both tech-savvy and constantly hungry for more content, and who have repeatedly demonstrated their devotion with dollars.

Image via NFL.com

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Dell’s 5-inch Streak tablet may not be on a tear but the company is still moving forward with plans to introduce its second Android tablet.

Dell plans to launch a 7-inch tablet “in the next few weeks” and a 10-inch tablet within a year, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.Dell’s founder and chief executive Michael Dell briefly showed the device at a Oracle conference last week but didn’t offer any details about the product.

Dell’s move to a larger screen tablet is in keeping with the company’s strategy of slowly but steadily introducing new handheld devices. In February, Neeraj Choubey, general manager of the tablets division at Dell told Wired.com that the Streak aka Dell 5 Mini would be the first in a series of devices.

“We are going to have a family of tablets,” Choubey said. “The first one is a 5-inch screen but we want to scale that up to a variety of screen sizes.”

Since the introduction of the Apple iPad earlier this year, almost every major PC maker has announced that it is working on devices that can rival the iPad.

Just this month, Samsung, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion and tablet startup Kno announced new products. Samsung showed a 7-inch tablet called Galaxy Tab that will be available on four major U.S. carriers –AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile in time for holiday season shopping.

Meanwhile, RIM has announced the BlackBerry PlayBook, a 7-inch tablet targeted at business users and consumers. The PlayBook is expected to be available early next year.

Tablet startup Kno is focusing on students with 14-inch single screen and dual-screen tablets that are expected to be available by the end of the year.

Apple has sold more than 3 million iPads so far.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has canceled its planned tablet ‘Courier’ while HP is trying to integrate the Palm webOS into its tablet products.

The 7-inch Dell tablet could make the company a real contender in the tablet space. With its 5-inch display, the Streak is more like a super-sized phone than a real tablet. Dell has also priced the Streak like a phone –offering the device for $300 with a two-year contract on AT&T.

So far, there’s no word on pricing for the 7-inch Dell tablet. But Dell will have plenty of competition to keep it real with its upcoming tablet.

Photo: Dell Streak (Jon Snyder/Wired.com)

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Tablet startup Kno has jumped into one of the hottest consumer electronics product categories of the year but the company is counting on two things to set it apart from the competition: a clear focus on students as potential consumers and a massive 14-inch screen size.

“From the students’ perspective you need the real estate to completely see a single page of a textbook without scrolling,” says Osman Rashid, co-founder and CEO of Kno, “and you need enough room to make notes around the edges.”

Kno launched the single screen tablet on Monday. In June, it showed off a dual-screen device that would have two 14-inch LCD touchscreens that fold in like a book. Both the single screen and dual-screen tablets are expected to start shipping at the end of the year. There’s no word yet on pricing.

Meanwhile, here’s a closer look at the features of the single screen tablet.

The Kno will run on an Nvidia Tegra processor and have a capacitive touchscreen. It will also come with a stylus to write notes or draw on the device. The device isn’t lightweight though. The massive 14-inch screen pushes its weight up to 2.6 lbs. Compare that to the 1.5 lbs of the 10-inch Apple iPad.

Rashid says the heft is unlikely to become a strike against the device. The Kno tablet can hold up to 10 semesters worth of content, or 25 to 35 books. That will make the 2.6 pound-device lighter than a backpack filled with half as many paper books, he says.

The Kno divides its home screen into three tabs: ‘My Apps’, ‘My Courses’ and ‘My Library.’ Under the apps tab, the tablet, which runs a version of embedded Linux operating system, has a browser, notebooks, news apps and a RSS reader. Kno plans to release a SDK (Software Developers Kit) so independent programmers can create applications for the device.

The ‘My Courses’ tab features all e-textbooks sorted by the semester. The company plans to have its own bookstore where students can download textbooks from.

Overall, e-textbooks from the Kno bookstore will be about 30 percent to 40 percent cheaper than their hardcover versions, says Rashid.

The Kno will have a battery life of six to eight hours and with a one-hour charge time.

“We are not trying to replace a laptop,” says Rashid. “Instead we are trying to improve on it by making it better for students.”

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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SAN FRANCISCO — BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is jumping into the tablet arena with the ‘PlayBook,’ which will have a 7-inch screen and is designed for both consumers and business users.

“This is an ultra mobile, always on, ultra thin device,” Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of Research In Motion told attendees at the ongoing BlackBerry developer conference. “The first time you hold it, it just feels right and you want to take it everywhere you go.”

The BlackBerry PlayBook is 0.3 inches (9.7 mm) thick, making it thinner than the iPad’s 0.5 inches thickness.

It will include Wi-Fi but no 3G connectivity, making it a tablet that will have to be paired with BlackBerry phones for 3G internet access. RIM did not comment on whether the wireless tethering option will be available with other smartphones too. But it is promising 3G and 4G models in the future.

The device will have a high-resolution 1024 x 600 pixels wide screen display and will be lightweight at just 0.9 lbs, compared to the iPad’s 1.5 lbs.

The PlayBook will run on a 1 GHz dual-core processor and come with 1 GB RAM. It will also include two cameras: a 5 megapixel camera at the back, and a 3 megapixel front-facing camera. The PlayBook also has video recording capability.

The tablet will run QNX, an operating system from a company that Research In Motion bought last year. It will include a HDMI video output and a USB port.

RIM did not announce pricing or exact availability for the PlayBook. The device is expected to hit retail stores early next year.

BlackBerry’s PlayBook the latest challenger to Apple’s iPad, which launched in April. Apple has sold more than 3 million iPads so far, while rivals have been slow to meet the challenge. Dell and Samsung have announced their own tablets, though Samsung’s Galaxy Tab tablet has yet to hit the market. Meanwhile, Microsoft and HP have both canceled planned tablet projects.

RIM has one advantage: The BlackBerry platform is still the number one smartphone operating system because of the company’s strength with business users. Because the PlayBook is tied to the BlackBerry, that may give it a leg up on the market.

BlackBerry’s tablet also hopes to beat rivals by offering a rich web experience, multitasking, a speedy processor, and by attracting developers and publishers to the device.

The PlayBook will support full Flash 10.1, have hardware-accelerated video and 1080p HD video.

Lazaridis hopes the PlayBook will become a favorite among business users.

“The BlackBerry PlayBook, just like the BlackBerry smartphones, will become the enterprise standard,” he told developers.

The PlayBook will support multi-tasking and a native SDK (Software Developers Kit) will be available for the device.

“The PlayBook will be an incredible gaming platform for game designers and a great platform for publishers,” says Dan Dodge, the founder of QNX who is also being billed as the inventor of the PlayBook tablet. “We are giving everyone the full web experience on a very powerful platform.”

Here’s RIM’s preview video for the BlackBerry PlayBook:

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Tablet startup Kno has created a single screen slate specifically for students in the hopes of making electronic textbooks a widespread reality on college campuses.

The tablet will have a 14.1-inch screen, making it the biggest slate available in the market. It will have a touchscreen and a stylus to take notes on the device.

In June, Kno showed off a dual-screen device that would have two 14-inch LCD touchscreens that fold in like a book. The idea behind the device was to make textbook pages fit perfectly across the screen and flow from one digital page to another.

The company plans to ship both the single and dual-screen tablet by the end of the year. However, it hasn’t announced pricing for either of the products. The dual-screen version was expected to cost “under a $1000.”

“Our new tablet will be absolutely cheaper than the dual screen version,” Osman Rashid, co-founder and CEO of Kno said at the TechCrunch Disrupt event where the device was introduced.

Detailed specs for the single screen tablet are not yet available. But it is expected to be powered by a Nvidia Tegra processor. The tablet will also have a stylus for handwriting recognition, a full browser and support Flash.

Apples iPad has led to renewed interest in tablets. Companies such as Dell and Samsung have released tablets in the last few months. But most of those devices are targeted at general consumers. Kno bills itself as the first tablet created exclusively for students.

But Kno’s competition is likely to come from iPad apps. For instance, a startup calledInkling has created a rich, beautifully designed iPad app that delivers textbooks to students. Inkling is working with publishers to offer coursework and texbooks in areas such as biology, management and engineering. Users can pay for just a chapter of a book or buy an entire textbook through the app.

The Kno tablet, says Rashid, will help students do more. The device lets users draw, take notes, create stickies on it, highlight text and collaborate with other students.

Kno, which was started in September last year and now has more than 90 employees, says it has written its own software that will “normalize” books in the PDF format. It will also add interactive elements to the books and allow students to make notes and annotate the margins of an electronic textbooks.

Similar to Amazons Kindle, Kno hopes to have its own bookstore.

The company has inked deals with four major textbook publishers, including McGraw Hill, Pearson and Wiley.

Check out more photos of the Kno:

Kno tablet has a touchscreen and a stylus

Students can take notes and highlight text on the tablet.

Photos: Kno

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

The tablet wars is set to heat up. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion may announce its tablet next week at the company’s developer conference, which starts Monday in San Francisco, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

RIM has already trademarked ‘BlackPad’ and ‘SurfBook’ and it is likely that the new tablet from the company could carry one of these names.

Last month, Chinese language paper Apple Daily reported that RIM has chosen Taiwanese notebook manufacturer Quanta to produce at least two million tablets this year. RIM and Quanta were said to be targeting a $500 price tag for the BlackPad to make it competitive against Apples iPad.

RIM’s new tablet announcement, if it happens next week, will come just weeks after the debut of the Samsung’s 7-inch tablet called the Galaxy Tab.

Since Apple introduced the iPad in April, tablets have made a big comeback and become of the hottest consumer gadgets of the year. Apple has sold more than 3 million iPads. In June, Dell launched the Streak, a tablet with a 5-inch screen. Samsung has already said its tablet will be available on all the four major U.S. carriers — AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile–but hasn’t announced exact pricing or availability.

BlackBerry’s new tablet will be different from its peers. It will support Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G connectivity but through tethering the device to a Blackberry smartphone. Essentially, the tablet has been designed as a “companion” to the phone, according to earlier reports.

The BlackBerry tablet would likely have a 7-inch screen and run a new operating system designed by QNX Software, a company that RIM acquired earlier this year, says the Journal.

RIM has been trying to go beyond its core audience of business users and attract more consumers, especially with the launch of devices such as the recent touchscreen phone Torch. A BlackBerry tablet seems like yet another step in that direction.

Photo: (Sean Hobson/Flickr)

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

If you haven’t heard of the Insignia Infocast, a photos and apps viewer billed as an “internet media display,” it may be time to give this device a second look.

The Infocast has enough hardware chops and an Linux-based operating system to transform it into a kind of a tablet. Some electronics hackers have tweaked it to run a Webkit-based browser and use the device’s native capability to run apps. It’s no iPad but the hack is intriguing.

At $170, the Insignia Infocast is cheap enough to experiment with. The device has a 800 MHz processor, 2 GB memory, a 8-inch LCD touch screen, Wi-Fi connectivity and two USB 2.0 ports. The gadget runs Chumby Linux 2.6 operating system.

“While its marketed as a device for viewing Chumby apps and sharing photos,” says Bunnie Huang, founder at Chumby on his blog, “as far as the DIY crowd is concerned, the Infocast is a Linux machine.”

Since Apple iPads debut in April, the popularity of tablets has surged. Apple sold 2 million iPads in just 60 days of the products launch. Other companies such as Samsung and Dell have introduced tablets. Even DIYers now have the option to put together a tablet for $400 using a BeagleBoard kit.

Hacking the Infocast falls somewhere in between buying an off-the-shelf slick product like the iPad and putting together a tablet from a starter kit.

The Infocast already has some of the software pieces that consumers may want in a tablet such as access to limited apps. These apps include online radio services such as Pandora, media content such as NY Times podcast, photos and videos.

But to take the device to the next level, developers have ported a user interface framework that runs Webkit–the browser engine that powers Safari and Chrome among others.

If you want to take a shot at it, there are instructions on the Chumby wiki and more information on Huang’s blog. For text input, though, you will have to use an USB keyboard plugged into the device.

This is just “scratching the surface on what you can do with the platform,” says Huang. Open source hardware enthusiasts are working on plans to port Android OS on the device.

The catch here is that the Infocast doesn’t have a built-in battery so it has to remain tethered to the wall socket. Still, for intrepid DIYers that shouldn’t be much of a roadblock. There must be a hack for that too.

Photos: Bunnie Huang/Bunnie: Studios

[via Hack a Day]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Android Market Logo via Google Android

The new batch of forthcoming Android tablets are all sporting the new version of Android (2.2, or Froyo). But Google says that this version of Android wasn’t optimized for tablets. This means three things for folks interested in buying an Android tablet this fall.

First: If your tablet is built to certain hardware specifications — specifically, those of an oversized smartphone — you’re good. Samsung’s much-anticipated Galaxy Tab fits the bill, as it really is just a Galaxy smartphone with a much larger screen. If you’re wondering (like I was) why the Galaxy Tab had phone-call capability and was laid out in portrait rather than landscape, there’s your answer.

Second: Functionally, the biggest hurdle is that most tablets won’t be able to use the Android Market, Google’s official store for Android apps. This actually makes sense, as not all of the apps on the market will work each tablet’s different hardware. But luckily, Android, unlike Apple’s iOS, is wide open. There are plenty of other ways to get Android apps onto your machine, including other app stores.

Third: Hugo Barra, Google’s director of mobile products, stopped just short of saying that 2.3 and 2.4 versions of Android, also known as Gingerbread and Honeycomb (Android OS names make me hungry for breakfast cereal), would be optimized for tablets, and presumably there will either be a tablet version or tablet section of the Android Market at that time.

But he also didn’t quite say that. We can play Kremlinology all we want, and suppose that Google is sending subtly coded messages to consumers to wait for the next OS to buy an Android tablet, but it’s quite possible that Google just isn’t sure when or even if it can support a marketplace for everybody’s hardware.

This is the great and frustrating thing about having an wide-open gadget ecology for a platform. On the one hand, you’ve got a much wider variety of hardware options and price points; on the other, it’s much more difficult to provide an easy, unified consumer experience. That’s where we are with Android tablets, and where we’re likely to be next year, too.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Apple iPad will finally have some real competition. Samsung is set to introduce a tablet next month called ‘Galaxy Tab’ that will have a 7-inch touchscreen display.

The device will run Android 2.2 Froyo operating system, include video calling capability and full web browsing—which is likely means support for Flash, according to a teaser video that Samsung posted Tuesday morning. Samsung is expected to announce additional details on September 2 at the IFA Berlin consumer electronics show.

Samsung’s video shows a tablet with a black bezel and four buttons that are similar to what we have seen in Android smartphones.

The Galaxy Tab will be the first tablet from a big consumer electronics maker since Apple’s iPad debuted in April. Earlier this month, Dell launched the Streak, a device with a 5-inch display that has been billed as a tablet but is priced and acts like a phone. Meanwhile, Apple is charging ahead with the iPad. Apple has sold more than 3 million iPads.

Other companies such as HP and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion are also working on tablets. HP has said its slate will use Palm’s web OS operating system but that tablet is unlikely to be released this year. RIM is hoping to get its tablet called ‘BlackPad’, a companion device to the BlackBerry phone out at the end of the year.

Samsung’s choice of a 7-inch screen is interesting. There have been rumors that Apple is working on a similar sized tablet.

So far, Samsung hasn’t revealed details around pricing or when the Galaxy Tab will be available to consumers. But this is a major sign that the tablet market is heating up and new devices that we have been hearing about for months are finally getting closer to market.

Photo: Samsung website

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

In July, the Indian government showed off what it claimed would be a $35 tablet for students in the country. Now, a company is showing a $50 prototype device using Android operating system that could take the low cost tablet dream one step closer to reality.

AllGo Embedded Systems, a Bangalore-based company, has created a tablet that runs on Android 1.6 ‘Donut’ version of the operating system.

As the video above shows, the tablet is built on a reference platform called ‘Stamp’ and has a 7-inch, 800 x 480 pixels resistive touchscreen display–so no iPad like smooth display. The device includes Wi-Fi, USB and ethernet port. Of course all this is in a pretty early stage, so there’s no hardware case or buttons to get a sense of how the device will actually look in consumer hands.

The device is estimated to cost $50 at a volume of about 10,000 units, says the Liliputing site.

Allgo is not the only company hoping to satisfy the desire for low cost computing in India. The One Laptop Per Child project and its founder Nicholas Negroponte have also offered to collaborate with the Indian government to create a tablet for the masses. OLPC has already partnered with Marvell in the U.S. to explore a $75 tablet based on a reference design provided by Marvell.

Indian officials have earlier said they want to offer a Linux-based tablet that will support video conferencing and have open source software on it including Open Office. The device will also have a solar-power option, they said. The Indian government hopes to bring that tablet into production in 2011.

Now clearly, the OS choice seems to have shifted to favor Android. Earlier this month, a prototype Android tablet made an appearance on Indian TV as the low cost tablet. It is not clear who built that system.

Promising as Allgo’s tablet prototype seems for now, it is still in very early stages. Much will depend on the final industrial design–if it is too heavy, students might find it uncomfortable to use. But it is an ambitious attempt and it will be one to watch.

Video: Allgo Embedded Systems

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Black-and-white e-readers are limiting while full color LCD displays such as those in tablets like the iPad can be power hungry and tough on the eyes. That’s why Qualcomm is betting that a new hybrid device that bridge the two worlds could be in the hands of consumers early next year.

Qualcomm is on track to ship 5.7-inch displays in the next few weeks that can shift between black-and-white and color, Jim Cathey, vice-president of business development for Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, told Wired.com.

These displays called ‘Mirasol’ will first go to device makers who are likely to introduce new products based on it early next year, says Cathey.

Last year, e-readers were one of the fastest growing consumer electronics products. But intense competition and pressure from Apple iPad has put many smaller e-reader makers out of business. Meanwhile, many consumers remain undecided when it comes to choosing between e-readers and tablets. Consumers want the convenience of a low power, display that’s lightweight and easy on the eye, with the advantage of a color screen.

With Mirasol, Qualcomm is hoping it can give companies such as Amazon that are reportedly looking beyond black-and-white e-readers an attractive option.

Mirasol displays work by modulating an optical cavity to reflect the desired wavelength of light. The reflected wavelength is proportional to the cavitys depth. Mirasol screens looks more like glossy scientific books rather a full color LCD screen. But the displays consume very little power, are bistable and can play video.

Over the next few months, Qualcomm hopes to ramp up production of the displays. Qualcomm is building a new $2 billion Mirasol production plant in Taiwan, according to a report in DigiTimes.

A “major client has already started the design-in process,” using Mirasol, says DigiTimes.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Black-and-white e-readers are limiting while full color LCD displays such as those in tablets like the iPad can be power hungry and tough on the eyes. That’s why Qualcomm is betting that a new hybrid device that bridge the two worlds could be in the hands of consumers early next year.

Qualcomm is on track to ship 5.7-inch displays in the next few weeks that can shift between black-and-white and color, Jim Cathey, vice-president of business development for Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, told Wired.com.

These displays called ‘Mirasol’ will first go to device makers who are likely to introduce new products based on it early next year, says Cathey.

Last year, e-readers were one of the fastest growing consumer electronics products. But intense competition and pressure from Apple iPad has put many smaller e-reader makers out of business. Meanwhile, many consumers remain undecided when it comes to choosing between e-readers and tablets. Consumers want the convenience of a low power, display that’s lightweight and easy on the eye, with the advantage of a color screen.

With Mirasol, Qualcomm is hoping it can give companies such as Amazon that are reportedly looking beyond black-and-white e-readers an attractive option.

Mirasol displays work by modulating an optical cavity to reflect the desired wavelength of light. The reflected wavelength is proportional to the cavitys depth. Mirasol screens looks more like glossy scientific books rather a full color LCD screen. But the displays consume very little power, are bistable and can play video.

Over the next few months, Qualcomm hopes to ramp up production of the displays. Qualcomm is building a new $2 billion Mirasol production plant in Taiwan, according to a report in DigiTimes.

A “major client has already started the design-in process,” using Mirasol, says DigiTimes.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Dells Android-powered Streak is an intriguing device. Billed as a tablet but priced and sold like a phone, the Streak has more in common with the HTC Evo and Droid X than it does with the iPad.

Teardown specialists iFixit decided to drill into the Streak to see what its internals look like.

Dell has designed the device so that a mechanical engineering degree is not required for a successful disassembly, says iFixit, which was able to reverse engineer the assembly process within minutes.

The Streak’s 5-inch LCD screen has a layer called ‘Gorilla Glass’ on top that is scratch resistant and durable. The LCD is bonded to the front panel glass to increase the strength of the device, as well as the sensitivity of the capacitive touch panel. But that is also likely to increase the cost of fixing the device if you break just the glass.

The front panel’s construction means the device should be able to withstand drops from above waist height, says iFixit.

The 1530 mAh battery on the Streak is easily replaceable and is covered with a sheet of steel, rather than plastic, to decrease its overall thickness.

Streak has a second 2 GB microSD card near the top of the motherboard that holds system and applications files.

The “C”-shaped motherboard of the device comes out easily after disconnecting some cables, says iFixit, and all components are attached to this motherboard.

Overall, the Streak rates high for the ease with which its battery can be replaced and the use of standard connectors for the cables.

But the real panel feels cheap, says iFixit, and deforms easily for a device that costs nearly $600.

Story continues.