Hasta La Gadget!

Last time on Days of our Rumored Amazon Tablets’ Lives: Bezos teased us with a “stay tuned” cliffhanger, but shook his head at the notion of a color E Ink Kindle this year. While DigiTimes spilled its cup of beans about the devices’ possible use of Fringe Field Switching displays and fabrication by Quanta Computer, the Wall Street Journal threw its two cents in with a report pegging a couple of new Kindles for Q3. Now loose-lipped sources are feeding the DigiTimes hearsay flames with a leaked supplier parts list that has Wintek, J Touch and CPT providing touch panels with NVIDIA processors at the tabs’ cores. The Seattle-based company also purportedly plans to ship four million of these 7- and 10-inch slates by 2011’s end. So, what to believe? We’ll find out in due time, but with all this gossipy buzz you can place your bets on something.

Amazon tablet rumors flare on leaked supplier parts list originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This isn’t the first time Toshiba has showed up fashionably late to a party. Back in 2009, long after most every other consumer electronics maker big and small had jumped on the netbook bandwagon, the company belatedly released its first mini, the NB205. And it was fantastic. So we were optimistic when the outfit finally got around to releasing the Thrive, its first Android tablet for the US market. Surely, we thought, it’s learned a thing or two from everybody else’s mistakes.

And in that regard, at least, this 10-inch tablet doesn’t disappoint. It has full-sized USB and HDMI ports, an SD card slot, and a removable battery — all features you’d sooner find on a laptop. It comes with a raft of practical apps already installed, so that you don’t have to go hunting for them in Android Market. It’s one of the first out of the gate with Android 3.1, an undeniably improved version of Honeycomb. Oh, and it starts at $429, undercutting many of its competitors. Right there, in less than a paragraph, we’ve laid out why you might want this over any of the other umpteen tabs crowding the market. But should you get one? Well, folks, we’ll need more than a paragraph to tackle that. Join us after the break, won’t you?

Continue reading Toshiba Thrive review

Toshiba Thrive review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jul 2011 18:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell quietly pulls the Streak to perform an update, might bring it back next month? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Two Lenovo tablets in the same evening? Nah, it’s not the midsummer sun melting your cerebrum, but the same result just might happen after you ingest this one. True to rumors, the ThinkPad Tablet (yeah, that’s seriously the whole name) will indeed be shipping with a full-size USB port and an optional dedicated folio / case, and oddly enough, it’s that very peripheral that could set this unit apart from the masses. While it’s obviously no big chore to find a Bluetooth-enabled keyboard folio for the iPad, you probably won’t find a perfectly matching case with a tried-and-true Lenovo keyboard and a newfangled optical trackpad unless you’re ponying up for this guy. Internally, we’re looking at the same 1GHz Tegra 2 silicon as found in the more consumery IdeaPad K1, a 10.1-inch (1280 x 800) IPS display, a battery good for up to 8.7 hours of use, 1GB of RAM, 16/32/64GB of storage, 3-in-1 card reader, A-GPS, an accelerometer, ambient light sensor, front (2MP) / rear (5MP) cameras, a mini HDMI port (1080p capable!) and Lenovo’s own app launcher / app market.

In our discussions with Lenovo, it was made fairly clear that this guy was being aimed more at companies and less at consumers, but there’s absolutely nothing stopping the latter from enjoying a solid Honeycomb experience here. In fact, the ability to plug in a common mouse or trackpad (or combo device, for that matter) makes it far more useful than many of the ultraslim slates it’ll inevitably go up against. Also unique to the Tablet is a built-in active stylus, which is tailor-made to jot down highly important information cartoons in the company’s homegrown note-taking program.

The full-size USB port also puts it squarely in Eee Transformer territory, with the Keyboard Folio shown above making perfect use of it. In practice, the accessory worked beautifully, and while the $99 price tag may seem a bit steep, it’s not exactly cheap to go out and get a third-party case, keyboard and mouse. The company’s demanding $499 (and up) for it’s Android 3.1-based biz slate, with initial shipments starting today. Peek the hands-on video just after the break!

Continue reading Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet and Keyboard Folio case hands-on (video)

Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet and Keyboard Folio case hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 00:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You read that correctly — Netflix streaming is about to get really real on impending Honeycomb tablets. One of the nuggets that makes Lenovo’s newly unveiled IdeaPad K1 so special is the internal DRM module that allows it to play nice with a fresh build of the Netflix app. As we saw back at MWC with the LG Revolution, future Android 3.x tablets (with an unspecified hardware inclusion) will not only support native Watch Instantly streaming over mini-HDMI / HDMI, but it’ll also enable something totally new: local storage. The fresh build of the app — which will remain exclusive to Lenovo for “a short while” — will have a heretofore unseen option that’ll let subscribers store flicks locally for offline viewing. We’re told by Lenovo that files can be stored on the internal flash as well as on microSD cards, and while we’ve yet to get a hands-on look at the app, we’ll be doing everything we can to change that.

Just to answer the obvious question: no, your existing Honeycomb tablet won’t be able to support this goodness through a firmware update. You’ll actually need a slate with the requisite hardware within to take advantage, and it’s hard to say at this point who will follow Lenovo down the path. We’re hoping that the added functionality won’t lead to a boost in Netflix’s monthly rate, but given the history of the app, we can’t say we’re too terrified about that possibility. So, how fast will the APK be ripped from the fabric of a K1 and thrown out onto the web? Somewhere between “quickly” and “you’ve got to be kidding me,” we’re surmising.

Netflix to stream natively from HDMI-equipped tablets, enable local storage with hardware DRM module originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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