Welcome to Engadget’s back to school guide! The end of summer vacation isn’t nearly as much fun as the weeks that come before, but a chance to update your tech tools likely helps to ease the pain. Today, we’re leaning back with our tablets — and you can head to the back to school hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the month. Be sure to keep checking back — at the end of August we’ll be giving away a ton of the gear featured in our guides — you can hit up the hub page right here!
Your back may be straining from the textbooks, laptop, gym gear and lunch in that dangling overstuffed messenger, but you’re still gonna want to save room for one more item — a tablet. After all, while you can surf, tweet, play games and watch video from your other devices, there’s nothing like doing it from a simple glass window that sits in the palm of your hand. As the hardware gets more powerful, these devices are rapidly becoming versatile enough to let you justify leaving the laptop at home on less-intensive days, so why not check out our picks of the finest devices you should be using and abusing before, during and after class.
It’s becoming a habit of Amazon’s to report on the rise of the e-book at the expense of physical texts, and their latest announcement is no different. Sales figures show that in the UK, 114 Kindle purchases have been made for every 100 printed copies so far in 2012. A similar statistic was achieved in the US last year, but whether these are true indications of e-book supremacy is up for discussion. Free downloads were excluded from the tally, but those released via Kindle Direct Publishing without a paper twin were counted. The Guardian also notes that these are unaudited figures, so there may be a digit awry here or there. And with a few physical stores still around, there’s no need to panic-buy that Kindle just yet.
Well, looky here. Engadget’s very own parent company AOL has released its Play music player app for Kindle Fire, and the interface here is actually considerably different from what you’d get on the straight Android version, available in Google Play. The product people behind the application say they re-tooled the design to match the Fire’s 7-inch, 1,024 x 600 screen (and also, the tablet’s heavily skinned UI, based on Android). Other than the facelift, there seems to be a good deal of overlap in functionality between this and the Google Play version: access to more than 55,000 Shoutcast radio stations and the ability to share favorite songs over Twitter and Facebook. Also like the main Android version, there’s a so-called CD Listening Party feature that opens up free, complete albums, with selections changing weekly. (Naturally, you can also use the app to listen to your own MP3s stored locally on the device, but you probably gathered that.) Play will be available as a free, ad-supported app, though you can also get an advert-free version for 99 cents. Download tomorrow, though (that would be Wednesday, Eastern Standard Time), and you can get the premium one gratis.
While we expect Amazon to refresh its Kindle Fire tablet sooner rather than later, Demos Parneros, president of US retail for Staples, has told Reuters that the online book-seller has bigger plans. Amazon apparently aims to introduce five or six new devices (or SKUs, stock-keeping units), though as noted by Android Central‘s Phil Nickinson, these could thin out to just two tablet models and several storage variants. According to the exec, the tablets will come in a range of sizes and would include a new ten-inch device — going directly against another popular tablet. No word on whether these five or six device would include a smartphone, as screen sizes get increasingly closer. Amazon has also announced that it’ll be creating a new R&D hub in London, focusing on its services and APIs for TVs, consoles, smartphones and PCs, aimed squarely at rolling these out across the globe. The original Kindle Fire — and its Android app store — is still not available outside of America. However, public plans for the new Amazon base currently center on relocating both Lovefilm and Pushbutton to this new hub. However, it’s been about a year; about time for Europe to get a taste of Amazon’s wallet-friendly tab.
Welcome to the start of another fabulous week of tech, gadgets, entertainment, and everything in-between here on SlashGear! Start your morning off right with a foretelling of a tablet future for Nokia, complete with a hinge for folding over! Next have a peek at the Sony Xperia NXT series as its available in the USA this week! If you’re working with Skype, you might want to keep an eye on this message leak bug that’s been creeping around your software’s insides.
The folks at Huawei are getting set up to offer a wider range of storage products for the near future. It’s seeming more and more likely that Steve Ballmer will be revealing the details of Office 15 later today. Have a peek at the Gauntlet keyboard-glove that’ll be perfect for your Google Glass early next year.
You can now order Raspberry Pi in general, pre-orders having been shipped and the online store ready for action. There’s a bit of talk surrounding iPad challengers this morning, starting with a new 10-inch Kindle Fire. Those of you that own the HTC Desire HD, you might be out of luck as far as Ice Cream Sandwich goes.
The folks at Activision and Marvel Comics have finally made way for a Deadpool-centric game that’ll be released later this year. The relationship between Anonymous and WikiLeaks has beed detailed in part. It appears that SpaceX is ready to complete its Dragon design review – kids in space next year!
Al Capone’s 1928 Caddilac will be heading to auction very soon. The New York Times has reported that they’ve got sources confirming the iPad Mini. Google’s Project Glass has had its Artificial intelligence and controls detailed in full in a patent application. Microsoft has sold its share of MSNBC.com in its entirety to Comcast.
If you head to a Target store anytime between now and somewhere around the end of October, you’re going to have a tough time finding yourself a tablet that isn’t also an iPad. SlashGear has learned from several tipsters (including two Target employees) that they’ll not be carrying any tablet computers, other than the iPad, until late in the year, much closer to the year-end holiday season. This of course includes the ill-fated Kindle Fire which you’ll no longer find online and is being blown-out on the end-caps at Target stores nationwide.
Online sales of tablets from several well-known tablet manufacturers such as ASUS, Acer, and Sony, will continue while in-store sales will be completely cut off at all or nearly all Target stores in the USA. This comes not least of all, we must assume, because of less-than-stellar offline sales over the past few months. We spoke with one employee earlier today on the subject, and though he wished to remain anonymous due to the nature of the subject, he was quite open about the situation:
“We had [tablets] out for a while, the iPad is still out, but they wont be out now at least in this area now until Christmas. … We sold just a couple back when they were out here, some Acer tablets, they sold to people who specifically were real anti-Apple, other than that not much [as far as tablet sales go.]” – Anonymous Target Employee
This should come as no surprise for a couple of reasons to SlashGear readers, first of all because Target made a statement on the Kindle lineup back in May:
“Target continually evaluates its product assortment to deliver the best quality and prices for our guests. Target is phasing out Kindles and Amazon- and Kindle-branded products in the spring of 2012. We will continue to offer our guests a full assortment of ereaders and supporting accessories including the Nook.” – Target
Above: Target’s previous tablet selection in-stores circa Spring 2012
Google may have introduced the Nexus 7 at a low $199 price point, but Amazon brought the Kindle Fire to the masses last year at the same price point. Although it was running a forked version of Android, it could be rooted and hacked to run custom ROMs. Now some enterprising hackers on xda-developers have ported the latest version of Android, Jelly Bean, across to Amazon’s cheap tablet.
Not much is known about the ROM right now, although it looks like basic functionality is working. Users will need to root their Kindle Fire first, then flash the provided ROM and Google Apps package. A quick fix is then needed in order to restore WiFi functionality, but after that you should be good to go. The only major feature that’s missing is hardware acceleration for video playback. Texas Instruments hasn’t added in code to support Jelly Bean just yet, so users may be waiting before they can get perfectly smooth playback in apps like YouTube and Netflix.
Other than that, you’re getting the full AOSP experience, with the ROM compiled from the latest source (4.1.1). Google were keen to point out the new features at I/O which included Project Butter, introducing frame buffering and VSync for dramatically improved performance and fluidity throughout Android. Google Now, meanwhile, acts as a personal assistant that will monitor your habits and surroundings while serving up relevant information such as the weather or local transit points. Notifications have also been improved, and some mild UI changes have been made.
Get ready Kindle Fire fans, Amazon is throwing down the gaming gauntlet and taking on all comers. The content giant just announced GameCircle, a new tool available to developers publishing games on its customized Android platform. It allows the easy integration of an achievement system and leader boards that don’t pull a user out of a game. Instead a simple pop up launches when you’ve been awarded a new trophy and closing it out lets you go right back to where you were (presumably cutting ropes, flinging birds or shooting zombies). Perhaps most exciting though, is the ability to sync progress between devices. Wherever you leave off, your data is sent to Amazon’s magical cloud and pulled back down in the event that you sign on to a new device or accidentally delete your game. Of course, we’re not too sure how much time you spend switching between Kindle Fires… unless….
We might as well call 2012 the year of the 3D map. We’ve seen both Apple and Google show their cards, but GigaOM now hears that Amazon has jumped in by acquiring newcomer UpNext. The details are scant, but the approximately $2.5 million deal would give Amazon the startup’s 3D, Android-native maps of 50 US cities, complete with navigation and extra information about notable buildings. The online reseller hasn’t confirmed whether or not the acquisition is happening, which leaves it very much in rumor territory for now. That said, it’s not hard to imagine Amazon taking that leap. The Kindle Fire is cut out of the official Android ecosystem and won’t get built-in 3D maps without effort on its creator’s part — a buyout would certainly put that mapping on the fast track.
Google’s IO 2012 keynote has been and gone, and while the developer event as a whole isn’t over, you can certainly tell where the focus is by what made it onto the opening agenda. I’d already laid out my expectations for IO over at the Google Developers Blog, but there have been some surprises along the way too.
Jelly Bean was the obvious inclusion, and Google balanced its enthusiasm about the new Android version from a technological perspective – with encrypted apps and the perfectly named “Project Butter” for smoothing out the UI – with features that will make more of a difference for end-users. The new notifications system should make a major difference to Android usability, meaning you spend less time jumping between apps, while the Google Voice Search should present an interesting challenge to Siri.
I’ll need to spend some proper time with “Google now” before I can decide whether it brings any real worth to the table. Proper understanding of context is sorely missing from the mobile device market- our handsets can do no shortage of tasks, but they still wait for us to instruct them – though there are potentially significant privacy concerns which I think Google will likely be picked up on sooner rather than later.
The Nexus 7 is a double-hitter of a device, the tablet response not only to concerns that Android developers were opting out of slate-scale app creation, but to Amazon’s strongly-selling Kindle Fire. $200 is a very competitive price, without cutting on specifications, and Jelly Bean comes with all the bells and whistles you need for a tablet OS.
Of course, OS support wasn’t what let Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich down, it was the significant absence of any meaningful tablet application support from third-party developers. The Nexus 7′s low price should help get test units into coders’ hands, at least, though it will take more than a fanfare this week to decide whether Android can catch up on larger screen content with Apple’s iPad.
As for the Nexus Q, I’ll take some more convincing on that. $299 is a lot for a device that also needs an Android phone or tablet in order to work, and Google’s awkward presentation didn’t do a particularly good job of explaining why you’d rather have a Nexus Q than, say, an Apple TV, a Sonos system, or even just a cheap DLNA streamer.
The big surprise today was Google Glasses. Sergey Brin’s “surprise” interruption of the IO presentation, sporting Project Glass himself and then summoning a daredevil army of similarly-augmented skydivers, stunt bikers, abseilers and others onto the stage was a masterstroke of entertainment, and you could feel the enthusiasm and excitement in the auditorium. That the segment ended with a pre-order promise – albeit one at a not-inconsiderable $1,500 – was a suitably outlandish high-point, though we’ll have to wait until early 2013 to actually see Google make good on those investments.
Google Glasses are a long way off. More pressing is how the Nexus 7 holds up to the Kindle Fire (and, though it may not be quite a direct competitor, the iPad) and how quickly manufacturers can get Jelly Bean out to existing devices. Google may be putting a new system of early Android update access into place to speed that process for future iterations, but it looks to have come too late for Jelly Bean updates. We’ll have more from Google IO 2012 over the rest of the week.
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