We knew Mobile World Congress would be packed with tablet announcements. HTC is entering the tablet market with the 7-inch HTC Flyer running Android 2.4. To be clear Google has defined Android 3.0 as their tablet OS. The HTC Flyer boasts a 1.5 GHz single core CPU, 1 GB RAM, 5 megapixel camera, 1.3 megapixel front camera, and 32 GB of flash storage. What is interesting is the Apple like aluminum unibody construction. The Capacitive screen has 1024×768 resolution and is designed to work with a Stylus for natural handwriting. The battery is designed to support 4 hrs. of continuous video playback; the iPad has about 10 hrs.
LG has officially announced the Optimus Pad, aka the G-Slate for Europe and Asia. The Optimus Pad is running Android 3.0 ,Honeycomb, and sports an 8.9 inch screen with 1280×768 resolution. The device is powered by an NVIDIA 1 GHx Tegra 2 chip. All the essentials are inside like 3G, WiFi, dual camera, and 3D video support. Pricing has not been announced but it should hit the market in March of 2011.
Say what you will about the British, but they know how to do Television. Some of the most spectacular original series you will ever find come from the BBC. But not many of us have the opportunity to spend a lot of time there and I for one am not very good at waiting for stuff to trickle across the pond. Over the years I have played around with using special proxies so that I could spoof an Internet address (and geographical restrictions) and be able to use the BBC iPlayer, but that need has now disappeared!
The BBC has now released an iPlayer app for iOS and Android. Think of it like Hulu, but for the UK. With iPlayer you can catch up on the shows you love, listen to the radio, and read up on what’s new in the world of soap operas, but until now there hasn’t been a neat and tidy way to do it on the Apple iPad or on your Android device. Today that changes, for the iPad at least [iTunes link]. [click to continue…]
Well Hp has been hinting at this tablet for a while and finally it was announced. The new webOS Tablet called the TouchPad actually looks really nice. Just looking at the pictures the TouchPad looks just like an iPad. It also does not seem that HP skimped on the features for their new device. Which might explain why they have been delaying their Windows based tablet.
The Motorola Xoom Super Bowl commercial called the Apple faithful sheep, without stating it out right. They even made reference to 1984 when Apple had their legendary 1984 ad. The phrase blind followers comes to mind when I watch this commercial. [click to continue…]
The Xoom appears to have a February 24 launch date and $800 price tag based. We saw leaked pricing from Verizon earlier and this Best Buy leak seems to confirm. The data pricing on the Xoom will be 1 GB for $20, 3GB for $35, 5GB for $50, or 10 GB for $80. The device is expensive and data plans are expensive. I suspect this is not a subsidized price and data pricing is on a month-to-month basis, thus no contract required. Hopefully we will quickly see some type of a mail-in-rebate, around $300 would be nice.
Alternate virtual keyboards are an aspect that sets Android apart from iOS, Windows Phone 7, and BlackBerry. Every person I have introduced to SwiftKey calls me back weeks later telling me how much they love SwiftKey. If you did not know you can change the virtual keyboard on android, checkout our earlier article on the process.
The split design of SwiftKey’s keyboard reminds me of the Ergonomic keyboards you have on a desktop computer.
Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, and Sony have so much to learn from the jaw dropping animated books created by Moving-tales. Moving-tales offers two animated books currently The Pedlar Lady of Gushing Cross and Twas the Night Before Christmas. I know my kids have watched the stories dozens of times, as have many of their friends.
RIM has moved to full throttle on getting awareness of the BlackBerry Playbook. The latest video has a focus on business users and how the Playbook has an Enterprise focus. It is not that this video is highlighting anything new rather it is targeting enterprises they are likely reviewing the iPad.
I think a short-term challenge is going to be selling the Playbook to users that are quickly switching away from BlackBerry smartphones, which are needed if you want email or BlackBerry Messenger initially. I suspect the 3rd party community will pickup the slack until RIM adds these features, but it will remain a challenge in the business market. On the other hand if RIM can provide equivalent enterprise device management as they do on phones that will be a huge advantage over Android tablets or the iPad.
Over the last year, I had played with a few ‘cheap’ Android tablets, along with the iPad, and the reality is that I keep going back to the iPad. However, late in 2010 I started to follow the release of the Barnes and Noble NOOKColor and the attempts to gain root access and use it not only as a color electronic reader, but also as a Tablet.
I took a leap and invest the $250 to get the NOOKColor. I will say right up front that the results have blown me completely away, in every positive fashion. It is not a perfect match, and there are a few things that don’t really work right, but for the price, the experience has been so much more than I expected that I am quite literally astounded.
