Hasta La Gadget!

For over a month, we’ve held onto a document — allegedly a Staples tablet guide — that’s been looking increasingly wrong as the days fly by. Tablet release dates were too soon, and prices were far too high, which made us think it was either a forgery or sorely out of date. (Curious? See our copy after the break.) This week, however, Droid-Life published a far more likely looking copy of the very same thing, which appears to be both quite recent and fairly interesting. You’ll see that Samsung’s 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab makes a cameo, as does the 7-inch HP Opal we told you about early this year, and both the BlackBerry PlayBook and Dell Streak 7’s appearances align with recent rumors we’ve seen. The only outlier is an April release date for the Motorola Xoom WiFi, which ads peg for March 27th. The rest is practically a who’s who of upcoming tablets, so we’ll spare you the full churn of the rumor mill. If you want to know what we know about the lot, simply refer to our coverage below.

Update: Oh, and that HTC tablet is listed as a 10-inch one — could it be the EVO View we’ve been waiting for? [Thanks, Morgan]

Read – Dell Streak 10
Read – Acer Iconia Tab
Read – Toshiba’s unnamed Tegra 2 / Honeycomb tablet
Read – HP TouchPad

[Thanks, Billy F.]

Continue reading Staples’ slate of slates leaks out, corroborates Samsung 8.9-incher and the HP Opal?

Staples’ slate of slates leaks out, corroborates Samsung 8.9-incher and the HP Opal? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acer’s slab like media center remote is a thick trackpad with a screen

This is Acer’s upcoming media-center remote, as revealed in its FCC filing. Aside from its beautiful black slab-like design, the little box packs some rather cool features.

The Slab (as it probably isn’t destined to be named) is what would happen if you ripped the multi-touch trackpad from your laptop, and stuffed it with some LEDs. The touch-sensitive pad connects wirelessly to the target computer using a USB dongle, and starts up in mouse-mode. You can control a cursor with a finger, scroll with two fingers and even tilt to control the media center thanks to an accelerometer.

Hit the right button, though, and things get interesting. The LEDs light up and shows the positions of “buttons” for volume, play/pause and so on. You also get “video” and “music” buttons to help navigate your content.

It comes on like the chunky ThinkPad of the remote-control world, and that’s not a bad thing.

An FCC filing isn’t a launch plan, nor even a press release, but my guess would be on this turning up in stores sooner rather than later. Price, name and launch date therefore remain unknown.

Acer Slab filing [FCC via Wireless Goodness]

See Also:

• Our Remote Controls Are Amazing, Yet Nobody's Happy
• Apple Redefines Remote Control — Now, It's Your Cellphone
• The Real Original Remote Control: Zenith Space Command
• Peel Turns iPhone into Dongle-Free Universal Remote
• Hacker Builds Floating Jedi-Training Remote Droid

One manufacturer who has not boarded on the Windows Phone train to commerceville is Acer, who is certainly all over when it comes to Android. Why no WP7 love? No word on that front, but we’re told that may be changing this fall. The company is reportedly looking at releasing one or more handsets for the platform to coincide with the first major Windows Phone update, currently given the saucy nom de guerre “Mango.” That’s right about when we’re expecting our first Nokia WP7 handsets, which means things could be getting interesting in Microsoftia this September.

Acer jumping on the Windows Phone 7 bandwagon this fall? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Feb 2011 05:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, would you look at what finally powered on! Yep, Acer’s brought its 4.8-inch phone / tablet to MWC, and not only is it finally ready to show off that beautiful 1024 x 480-resolution display but it also gave it a real name — it’s now the Iconia Smart. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Acer’s “100 percent phone, 100 percent tablet” that was introduced back in November, it packs a Snapdragon processor, Android 2.3, and is said to be coming to a US carrier sometime in April.

Now that we’re all up to speed on the details, we’re ready to tell you that the device is a pretty cool one. It’s obviously going to be for those with big pockets — it’s one long phone — but the high resolution 4.8-inch widescreen panel makes it incredibly unique and nice for viewing pictures and movies. The actual feel of the phone is quite good — it’s made primarily of plastic, but the border surrounding the display seemed to be made out of some sort of metal. As we note in the video, the four buttons look as if they are flush with the bezel, but they’re actually fairly stiff physical buttons. So, how’s the software? Naturally Acer’s taken to skinning Gingerbread a bit here — there’s an assortment of Acer widgets as well as that retooled homescreen you’re seeing in the picture above. That said, we actually like Acer’s neat webpage and media carousel widget. Hit the break for a short hands-on video.

Continue reading Acer Iconia Smart hands-on (video)

Acer Iconia Smart hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Feb 2011 12:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Acer debuts GN245HQ monitor with HDMI 3D support from NVIDIA

Acer debuts GN245HQ monitor with HDMI 3D support from NVIDIA originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Feb 2011 08:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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