Liliputing |
- Huawei MediaPad tablet coming to T-Mobile
- Kobo has a 7 inch Android tablet too
- ZTE Smart Tab10 hits the FCC
- This is what Windows 8 looks like on the HP TouchPad (remote desktop)
- Microsoft drops Zune Pass price… kills its best feature
- Did RIM just cancel the BlackBerry PlayBook?
- How to use Jupiter with Ubuntu 11.10 to control netbook power features
- Deals of the Day (9-29-11)
- Samsung unveils a 1.5 GHz dual core chip for tablets, smartphones
- India’s $35 tablet launching next week?
| Huawei MediaPad tablet coming to T-Mobile Posted: 29 Sep 2011 01:43 PM PDT Huawei introduced a new 7 inch Android tablet called the MediaPad this summer. Now it looks like the Chinese company is getting ready to ship the MediaPad to the US, with the help T-Mobile. The folks at TmoNews dug up a few details about an upcoming T-Mobile tablet from Huawei, and it certainly looks a lot like the MediaPad. I suspect T-Mobile will rebrand it before selling the 4G capable tablet in the States though. The tablet features a 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon dual core processor and Android 3.2 Honeycomb operating system. It has a 7 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel IPS display, 16GB of storage and a 4100mAh battery. The MediaPad measures 0.41 inches thick and weighs about 0.86 pounds, supports GPS, 1080p HD video playback, and HDMI output. There’s always a chance that the US version might be a little different from the version announced in June though. TmoNews reports that the tablet could cost about $200 for customers that sign up for a two year service contract, but that price may not be final yet. Huawei MediaPad tablet coming to T-Mobile is a post from: Liliputing
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| Kobo has a 7 inch Android tablet too Posted: 29 Sep 2011 12:21 PM PDT Barnes & Noble launched one first. This week Amazon followed suit. Now Kobo wants in on the action. The digital bookstore is launching a color eBook Reader with a 7 inch display and Google Android operating system. The Kobo Vox showed up briefly on Canadian electronics store Future Shop’s website. The page has been removed, but MobileRead forum member mighty_worm grabbed some images and details before the page disappeared. The tablet may cost about $250, weigh about 0.9 pounds and feature a 7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display. It apparently runs Google Android and has 8GB of storage, a microSD card slot, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, and a speaker. The listed specs also mention support for Adobe DRM, EPUB, and PDF files. I’d be surprised if those details were wrong, as they also apply to all of Kobo’s existing devices and apps.    While Kobo hasn’t officially announced the Vox tablet yet, the device did show up recently at the FCC. The Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble NOOK Color both featured tweaked versions of the Android operating system designed to highlight digital media and apps purchased from each company’s own content stores. It’s not clear whether Kobo will take a similar approach or if the company will release an all-purpose tablet that just happens to come with the Kobo Android app front and center. Kobo has a 7 inch Android tablet too is a post from: Liliputing
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| Posted: 29 Sep 2011 12:12 PM PDT Chinese device maker ZTE plans to start selling Android tablets in America this year — and it looks like they’ll come in at least two sizes. A few days ago the ZTE Smart Tab7 showed up at the FCC website. Today it was joined by the Smart Tab10. ZTE hasn’t made any official announcements about these tablets, but all signs point to them being identical to the 7 and 10 inch tablets Vodafone plans to offer in Europe under the “Smart Tab” name. Those tablets feature 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon dual core processors, Google Android 3.2 Honeycomb, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage. The tablets have 1280 x 800 pixel displays and front and rear cameras. It’s not clear which US wireless carrier ZTE hopes to partner with, but the Smart Tab10 will support both WiFi and 3G connectivity.
ZTE Smart Tab10 hits the FCC is a post from: Liliputing
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| This is what Windows 8 looks like on the HP TouchPad (remote desktop) Posted: 29 Sep 2011 11:13 AM PDT Windows 8 will be the first full version of Windows to support ARM-based processors as well as x86 chips. It’s not yet clear what the minimum specifications will be, or if you’ll be able to easily load Windows 8 on an existing ARM-based tablet such as the Apple iPad, Motorola XOOM, or HP TouchPad. But now that HP has discontinued the TouchPad (and sold off remaining inventory for prices as low as $99), there’s a lot of interest in installing alternate operating systems on the tablet. The HP TouchPad ships with webOS 3.0 software. The tablet has a 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon dual core processor and a 9.7 inch, 1024 x 768 pixel capacitive touchscreen display. That just happens to be the minimum resolution required to run Windows 8′s new touch-friendly Metro style applications. We’ve already seen what Ubuntu Linux looks like on the HP TouchPad, and the developers at CyanognMod are working hard to port Android to run on the tablet. Now YouTube user fireworks368 has posted a video which gives a pretty good idea of what Windows 8 would look like on the tablet. There’s currently no way to actually install Windows 8 on an ARM-based device (unless you work for Microsoft or one of its partners), because the developer preview of the operating system that was released recently only support x86 chips. But fireworks368 installed Windows 8 on an older laptop computer then used the recently released SplashTop HD app for webOS to remotely login to the computer. The results are pretty interesting. The Windows 8 start screen looks great on the tablet, and you can use your fingers to scroll and click. You don’t get the Windows 8 keyboard or utilities when using SplashTop this way though — instead you use the webOS keyboard to type. Unfortunately everything looks a little sluggish in the demo video. It’s not clear how much of that is because Windows 8 is running on an older laptop, how much is because of lag associated with using the remote desktop app, and how much is because Windows 8 in this setup is expecting keyboard and mouse input, not touch input. Still, until Microsoft releases Windows 8 for ARM, this is about as close as anyone’s going to get to running Microsoft’s next-generation operating system on an HP TouchPad — or any ARM-based tablet. via RootzWiki This is what Windows 8 looks like on the HP TouchPad (remote desktop) is a post from: Liliputing
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| Microsoft drops Zune Pass price… kills its best feature Posted: 29 Sep 2011 10:10 AM PDT Microsoft’s Zune Pass service lets subscribers listen to 14 million songs on-demand for a monthly fee. Right now you can also download and save up to 10 of those songs each month for no additional charge. It’s sort of like buying an album every month and getting a free on-demand radio service for your PC, Zune media player, or Windows Phone device while you’re at it. On Monday that all changes. Microsoft will roll out new pricing on October 3rd. The good news is that a Zune Pass subscription will drop from $14.99 per month to $9.99. The service will also expand to include Canada (right now it’s US-only). The bad news is that the 10 free songs per month feature will go away at the same time. If you’re already a subscriber you’ll be able to stick with the higher-priced plan and keep your 10 downloads per month. But if that sounds like a good deal and you’re not already a subscriber, you might want to think about signing up before Monday. The new $9.99 pricing makes sense — since that’s the price that Spotify, Slacker, MOG, Rdio, and pretty much every other music-on-demand service charges. It would just be nice if Microsoft continued to offer the premium service for new customers as well. Microsoft drops Zune Pass price… kills its best feature is a post from: Liliputing
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| Did RIM just cancel the BlackBerry PlayBook? Posted: 29 Sep 2011 09:07 AM PDT Update: RIM says it’s not killing the PlayBook and that the company remains “committed to the tablet market.” Research in Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook is a nice looking little tablet with a 7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display and a speedy 1 GHz TI OMAP4 dual core processor. In fact, Amazon apparently liked the design enough that it contracted with Quanta, the Taiwanese manufacturer of the tablet to build the $200 Amazon Kindle Fire. The two tablets look almost identical. But there are a few key differences. The Kindle Fire is an inexpensive device that’s bundled with Amazon’s digital media stores as way to give users an excuse to buy music, movies, apps, and eBooks from Amazon, while the BlackBerry PlayBook is a $500 general purpose tablet that’s gained little traction in the market. Amazon expects to sell hundreds of millions of Kindle Fire units. RIM has likely only shipped around 700,000 so far — and now there’s a rumor going around that the company may be pulling the plug on the tablet altogether. Last week we heard that RIM had reduced its orders with Quanta, and now Barron’s reports that the company may have stopped production altogether. We should probably take the news with a grain of salt, since it’s coming from an industry analyst and not from RIM executives. But apparently he did a little digging and found that Quanta simply isn’t making any more PlayBook tablets. It’s possible that this just means RIM has an overabundance of tablets at the moment and needs to sell through them before placing orders for any new units. But with Quanta already reportedly laying offer workers, the future for this 7 inch tablet doesn’t look all that bright. RIM officials launched a two-pronged approach to drum up BlackBerry PlayBook sales recently. First, there are promotions underway that let you pick up the tablet for as little as $300 from several retailers in the US and Canada. The company is also expected to roll out a software update in the coming weeks which will add support for native email, calendar and contact apps as well as some Google Android applications. Even if the PlayBook is effectively dead, RIM could still launch another tablet in the future, or take another approach to try to gain ground in the tablet space, but the Barron’s report says future tablet plans may also be cancelled. Honestly, maybe it’s time to call it quits. At this point few companies that aren’t called Apple are thriving in the tablet space. Last year, after Apple’s iPad started selling like hotcakes, it made sense for every consumer electronics company on the planet to develop a tablet to try to get in on the fun. But at this point it’s not clear whether there’s a massive demand for tablets… or just for iPads. Some niche devices, such as the Barnes & Noble NOOK Color seem to be selling well, and I suspect the Amazon Kindle Fire may do well for the same reasons — neither device is trying to beat the iPad at its own game. And overall Android tablet market share may continue to grow slowly as Google and its hardware partners refine their designs. But I’d be surprised if there’s a single non-Apple device maker that will make a huge splash in the general-purpose tablet space in the next 12 months — especially by going it alone and using an operating system developed in-house. HP clearly decided that it couldn’t pull off that trick, and canceled the HP TouchPad tablet after just 45 days on the market. RIM’s PlayBook has been around a little longer than that, but sales have been similarly sluggish. Update: Although RIM says it’s not pulling out of the tablet space, the company still has a tough road ahead of it and the recent price cuts may just be the first step in either turning things around… or signalling the beginning of the end. via Business Insider Did RIM just cancel the BlackBerry PlayBook? is a post from: Liliputing
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| How to use Jupiter with Ubuntu 11.10 to control netbook power features Posted: 29 Sep 2011 07:56 AM PDT The Jupiter applet for Linux has offers netbook users a way to control the clock speed of Intel Atom chips and some other advanced features. Jupiter has been available for a few years, but up until recently there was no easy way to use Jupiter with Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot. That’s not a huge surprise, since Ubuntu 11.10 won’t officially launch until October, but beta versions of the popular Linux distribution have been available for a while. Now the folks at WebUpd8 have put together instructions for installing a hacked version of Jupiter that supports Oneiric Ocelot. Basically you need to download the special version of Jupiter from the WebUpd8 repository, install a custom Eee utility if you’re using an Asus netbook, and you should be good to go. Once installed, you can use Jupiter to change the clock speed of an Intel Atom processor to adjust for “power saving,” “high performance” or “maximum performance” modes. High performance is basically the default clock speed, while power saving underclocks the processor a bit to offer better battery life and maximum overclocks it by a small amount to give you a tiny performance boost. Jupiter also gives you quick access to other settings including the screen orientation, screen resolution, and wireless options for many netbooks.
How to use Jupiter with Ubuntu 11.10 to control netbook power features is a post from: Liliputing
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| Posted: 29 Sep 2011 07:15 AM PDT The Motorola XOOM WiFi Android tablet normally sells for $499, but Woot is selling it for $150 off today. Or if you’re looking for a budget tablet, there are a few good deals on mediocre tablets for $100 or less today. Here’s a roundup of some of the days deepest discounts on mobile gadgets and accessories.
Best Buy also joined Staples and Office Depot in offering the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet for $200 off today. You can pick up a 16GB model for $300 You can find more bargains in our daily deals section. Deals of the Day (9-29-11) is a post from: Liliputing
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| Samsung unveils a 1.5 GHz dual core chip for tablets, smartphones Posted: 29 Sep 2011 06:11 AM PDT
Samsung says the Exynos 4212 features graphics capabilities that are 50 percent faster than those found in the 1.2 GHz Exynos 4210 processor — but still uses about 30 percent less power, which should lead to longer battery life. The new 32nm ARM Cortex-A9 chip supports 1080p HD video playback and HDMI 1.4 video processing. Samsung says it will start offering the new chip to manufactuers by the end of the year, which means we could start seeing Exynos 4212-powered devices in early 2012 — although to be honest, there aren’t a lot of Exynos 4210 products in the wild right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see new products with both the 4210 and the 4212 chips in 2012. It sometimes takes a while for manufacturers to bring products to market — NVIDA’s Tegra 2 platform didn’t exactly catch fire right away either, but now it powers the vast majority of devices running Google Android 3.0 Honeycomb and up. Samsung unveils a 1.5 GHz dual core chip for tablets, smartphones is a post from: Liliputing
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| India’s $35 tablet launching next week? Posted: 29 Sep 2011 05:25 AM PDT Think that new $199 Amazon Kindle Fire tablet is cheap? Indian officials plan to launch a tablet for students on October 5th that will be available for just $35. We’ve been hearing stories about the cheap Indian tablet since last summer — and it’s not the country’s first foray into cheap computers. Officials promised a $10 laptop way back in 2009, but it turned out to be just an inexpensive computer without a keyboard or monitor. The new tablet, on the other hand, appears to be a real tablet. At least, we’ve seen prototypes pop up a few times over the past year or so. It’s expected to have a 7 inch resistive touchscreen display, a USB port, WiFi connectivity, and a camera. The last I’d heard, the Indian Government was working with HCL technologies to produce the tablet. Earlier this year there was a report that it cost closer to $125 than $35 to build the tablet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if costs have come down considerably since then. Over the past few months it’s become pretty common for inexpensive tablets to go on sale for $100 or less. Since India is targeting the education market, I also wouldn’t be surprised if the government ends up subsidizing the cost of this tablet a bit. I don’t expect the $35 tablet to be a very good tablet. I suspect it will have a slow processor, a lousy display, and other features that make it much less fun to use than a high-end tablet. But the goal isn’t necessarily to provide a tablet that’s fun to use… but rather, one that provides students with tools to connect to the internet for research, communication, and other activities in a country where many people might not otherwise be able to afford a computer and internet access. via Engadget India’s $35 tablet launching next week? is a post from: Liliputing
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Samsung has introduced the latest member of its Exynos processor lineup. The 
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