Hasta La Gadget!

It looks like the JooJoo tablet may actually beat the Apple iPad to market after all. There has been some question about the availability of the device, thanks in no small part to ongoing legal challenges from Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch. Arrington originally partnered with the tablet’s manufacturer, Fusion Garage, to develop what he called the CrunchPad. But after a falling out, Fusion Garage went it alone, renaming the device the JooJoo.

Fusion Garage showed the device off to press in January of last year, beating Apple’s iPad announcement by more than a month. Since the iPad’s debut, however, information has been scarce from Fusion Garage. Today, however, the company announced that the device has begun shipping. Customers who preordered the tablet can expect to get one in their hands as early as March 29th.

Interested parties can preorder the JooJoo from Fusion Garage’s site for $499.

In the wireless industry, $100 is a rather magical psychological barrier — a price point below which consumers generally have a much easier time pulling the trigger on a sweet upgrade. So when you offer a phone for $200, a percentage of your target demographic is generally going to drop out of the race with cries of “too rich for my blood.” No worries with this new HTC HD2 for T-Mobile, though, because it turns out that a number of resellers are already discounting the phone right down into that $99.99 sweet spot despite the fact that it was just launched this very week. Most notably, anyone agreeing to a two-year contract through Amazon can get the phone for less than a Benjamin, and that’s upfront — no mail-in rebate craziness to contend with. Certainly makes the phone — arguably WinMo 6.5’s last real hurrah — a more appealing buy, doesn’t it?

T-Mobile HD2 can be had for $100 from Amazon, others originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Mar 2010 13:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hot Tub Time Machine—the title itself speaks volumes. But with time travel guaranteed from the outset, the movie’s jokes aren’t just about the past, they’re about what you’re supposed to do when you get there. More »

After a few false starts and some controversy over refunds, JooJoo–the tablet formerly known as CrunchPad–has finally started shipping.

Fusion Garage, the Singapore-based company behind JooJoo, says its tablets are now on their way to U.S. customers who pre-ordered them. JooJoo fans who pre-ordered the device should get it by Monday, March 29.

That’s interesting timing for JooJoo. Apple’s iPad will be available to consumers starting April 3. The $500 JooJoo is similar to the iPad in terms of looks. But it has a 12.1-inch touchscreen display, compared to the iPad’s 9.7 inch touchscreen. The JooJoo is Wi-Fi capable but offers no 3G connectivity option. It does, however, support full Flash. The tablets can be bought only from JooJoo’s website.

Earlier this month, JooJoo revamped its user interface and changed its home screen to display a polished grid of icons. It now includes features such as different sized virtual keyboards, one of which is designed for one-handed operation.

Still, it is unlikely that the JooJoo can beat Apple’s marketing machine for the iPad or ink the kind of deals that Apple has with book publishers and content providers to make the iPad more than just a web browsing device.

See Also:

• Hands On With the JooJoo, Formerly Known as CrunchPad
• JooJoo Tablet Faces Uphill Battle Against iPad
• JooJoo Tablet Gets a Makeover Before Launch
• Startup Disses Arrington, Relaunches CrunchPad Tablet as JooJoo
• iPad Could See 50 Tablet Rivals This Year

Photo: JooJoo (Jim Merithew/Wired.com)

Franklin Wireless supplies modems (primarily of the CDMA variety) to a number of carriers across the Western Hemisphere, and they’ve introduced a handful of rather interesting new products in that vein here at CTIA this week. First up, the U600 is an EV-DO Rev. A / WiMAX hybrid USB modem with a 270-degree swiveling USB connector for those ridiculously hard-to-manage ports (ahem, Apple), integrated GPS, and zero-CD installation — all pretty standard features these days, and we saw a Sprint-branded unit at Franklin’s booth which leads us to believe we’ll be seeing it at retail shortly.

Much more interesting, though, was a pair of pocketable WiFi routers — the R526 and R536 — that support EV-DO and EV-DO / WiMAX, respectively. Most of the units were unbranded, but we did spy an R536 done up in snow white with a Clear logo slapped up top, so you can pretty much gather that this thing will be filling a glaring hole in Clear’s lineup (right now, the best you can do is a USB modem plus the Clear Spot, which is basically a branded Cradlepoint). What intrigued us about the R536 the most was the fact that it’s got the functionality of an Overdrive packed into a smaller, more MiFi-esque form factor without any of the Overdrive’s bells and whistles, so it’ll be a great alternative as long as it performs well and has enough juice to last a couple hours off the power grid; the 3G-only R526, meanwhile, had an Ethernet jack stuck on the side, which is kind of cool in the rare event that you need to connect a WiFi-less device and you don’t want to go through the hassle of installing a new driver. The R526 launches in April (with what carrier, we’re not sure) — as does the U600 — while the R536 should start to trickle out in May.

Franklin Wireless intros U600 WiMAX modem, R526 and R536 mobile routers originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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