Hasta La Gadget!

At this point, MSI has been showing off its 10-inch Android tablet for a good half a year, but at least this time it’s coming clean with some specs, and they’re actually not half bad. Yep, the company brought its WindPad 100A to CeBIT and has announced that it, like most of the others, is powered by a dual-core Tegra 2 processor and will get some sweet Honeycomb when it hits the market in late May or early June. The model on hand at CeBIT was running some 2.X version of Android, and the hardware was identical to the one we saw back at CES. MSI’s told us that pricing hasn’t been set yet, but hopefully, like Moto’s Sanjay Jha just proclaimed, these tablet prices will be dropping come the second half of the year. Hit the gallery below for some closer hands-on shots.

Tablet shocker! MSI WindPad 100A packs Tegra 2 and will ship with Honeycomb originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Feb 2011 16:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Though we played with ASUS’ Android-powered Eee Pad MeMO back at CES, the company spilled a couple new secrets here at CeBIT today: first, it’ll be running Honeycomb by the time it launches in June — current prototypes are running Gingerbread — and second, certain MeMO bundles will include the MeMic, a separate Bluetooth handset that lets you take calls without holding a giant tablet to your face (it’s pronounced “me-mike,” by the way). Interestingly, the MeMic features a translucent LCD that we’re told will make it to the production units; unfortunately, the units on display were running very early alpha software that had “given out” by the time we arrived at the booth, so we couldn’t get a sense of viewability. In addition to making calls, the MeMic will let you stream music, control media, and perform a few other basic tasks that make sense for a tablet remote.

On the Honeycomb side, ASUS tells us the delay is simple — as it stands, a commercial-grade Honeycomb port doesn’t exist for Qualcomm hardware, which is what the Eee Pad MeMO is running (the Xoom — the only released Honeycomb tablet so far — is running Tegra 2). The company’s confident that it’ll be ready by the time the MeMO’s slated for release in June, however. Follow the break for video!

Continue reading ASUS Eee Pad MeMO and MeMic hands-on (video)

ASUS Eee Pad MeMO and MeMic hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Feb 2011 08:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh yes, the world’s first Android Honeycomb tablet really is here now. As Verizon announced earlier, you can snag a Motorola Xoom for $599.99 with a two-year contract, or splash out $799.99 for just the LTE-ready device. Alas, the WiFi-only version is nowhere to be seen just yet, but maybe some will show up in the stores later if not tomorrow, so hold on to your personal hotspot devices and keep believing. Either way, in case you’re still indecisive over this 10-inch goodness, maybe our review will help.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: Verizon’s been in touch to inform us of a policy change: customers who purchase the off-contract Xoom will now no longer need to be on a month to month plan. That said, we still see “Month to Month” as a compulsory option at the time of updating this post.

Motorola Xoom now available for purchase straight from Verizon, no data activation required (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Feb 2011 23:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola and HP proved that companies can make tablets with UI as usable, if not more so, than the iPad. Now, with the iPad 2 being announced next week, Apple is the one that needs to play catch-up to others. But is it possible without drastically retooling iOS? More »

Pretty much everything coming out of Moto these days is saddled with a tightly-locked bootloader paired with one tamper-resistant scheme or another, making custom kernels — the lifeblood of the phone hacking community — tricky at best, nigh impossible at worst. Of course, there was a glimmer of hope last month when the company said that it was working on a solution that’d cater to the developer community, and it looks like the Xoom might be bearing some of that fruit: the bootloader can be unlocked and relocked at will. Now, we’re thinking that Moto might’ve loosened the reigns a bit here simply because the Xoom is running a completely bone-stock build of Android and, as Honeycomb’s launch device, Google might be showing some influence behind the scenes (the Nexus One and Nexus S both have unlockable bootloaders, for instance)… but it’s a good sign.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Motorola bucks its own trend, leaves Xoom bootloader unlockable originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Feb 2011 17:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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