Hasta La Gadget!

Chances are that we’ll find out for sure next month at CES, but PC World has it on authority that BenQ will be throwing its hat into the overcrowded Android tablet ring early next year. The so-called R100 will be a 10.1-inch device, complete with a 1024 x 600 resolution touchscreen, an unspecified flavor of Android and a Samsung-built ARM CPU humming along at 833MHz. Moreover, we’re told that the battery will run for a solid 12 hours before begging for mercy (and calling it a night), and it can also be used with a stylus — you know, for handling both simplified and traditional Chinese handwriting. 8GB of internal storage, an SD slot, mini-USB port, a 3.5mm headphone jack and a mini-HDMI socket are also marked for inclusion, and of course, an 802.11b/g/n radio will be planted right alongside a Bluetooth module. There’s no mention of a price just yet, and a company representative noted that images wouldn’t be available until the device “was officially launched.” Bah! Humbug!

BenQ rumored to debut 10.1-inch R100 Android tablet in early 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Dec 2010 05:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft plans to introduce a special version of Windows for low-power mobile devices like tablets at next month’s Consumer Electronics Show, according to multiple reports.

The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg claim to have both heard that Microsoft will discuss a version of Windows that supports mobile ARM chips and other low-power processors. The Journal adds that the new Windows OS isn’t expected to be available for two years.

My instant reaction to these reports: WTF?

Microsoft already has a new version of Windows designed for mobile devices: Windows Phone 7. The company hired new executives, spent million of dollars on development facilities, rethought its entire mobile strategy and took an entire year to whip up a touch-friendly mobile OS from scratch.

In terms of power and features, Windows Phone 7 hasn’t caught up with Android or iOS yet, but it’s a solid start. It’s certainly more fit for tabletization than the desktop Windows. There are many reasons why a Windows 7– based tablet makes no sense.

Windows Phone 7 is also light-years ahead of Microsoft’s previous mobile OS, Windows Mobile, to say nothing of Windows CE, Microsoft’s first mobile OS, which lives on as an “embedded” OS powering hospital devices, manufacturing equipment, point-of-sale devices, and the like.

So why in the world would Microsoft throw more money and talent at a new mobile version of Windows when it’s already made great progress on a newer, better one?

I like the well-informed Mary Jo Foley’s skeptical interpretation of the news. She thinks that Microsoft will announce a new version of Windows Embedded Compact, a trimmed-down version of Windows CE made especially for enterprise devices. That OS, which is currently in beta, already runs on ARM, and might make a suitable platform for Windows-powered tablets, especially the kind attached to your UPS driver’s barcode scanner.

Among other points, Foley notes that the timing is right, and that Microsoft announced tablet partners earlier this year who are already in the business of making Windows Embedded Compact devices.

That outcome would make a lot more sense to me, and if Foley’s right, Microsoft’s “tablet” news won’t be as exciting for the average gadget geek aching for a Microsoft-powered iPad competitor (unless you have a urinary tract disorder).

See Also:

• 7 Reasons You Won't Want a Windows 7 Slate
• It's Not Easy to Make a Tablet, Stantum Slate PC Proves
• Microsoft Touts Home Entertainment at CES Keynote
• HP's Windows 7 Slate Strikes at the iPad
• Official: HP Slate Will Run WebOS

Photo: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talks up the goods at CES 2010.
Jon Snyder/Wired.com

You know what they say about a trip to the FCC‘s database, right? Why, it’s much like the step just prior to achieving manhood — one more leap from here, and you’ll be ripe for the pickin’. Just a few months after Hannspree teased us with a formal introduction of its (then unnamed) 10.1-inch multitouch Froyo tablet, it looks as if that very device has now found a moniker. The 1.6-pound HSG1164 will eventually bring a fairly impressive build of materials to light, offering a 1GHz Tegra 2 chip, 16GB of internal storage, 512MB of NAND Flash, a microSD slot, Android 2.2, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, mini USB / HDMI connector, an inbuilt light sensor, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and a Li-ion battery of unspecified size. There’s obviously no direct mention of a ship date in the documentation here, but we’re putting our money on an early 2011 release. Care to wager, too?

Hannspree’s HSG1164 10.1-inch Froyo tablet drops by the FCC originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Dec 2010 10:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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No, we can’t say we’ve ever heard of Woow Digital before either, but we’ve just received some very legit-looking imagery of the company’s forthcoming tablet, modestly titled The One. Google’s impending Android Gingerbread release is promised as the OS, while the internal equipment includes an NVIDIA Tegra 2 core, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of flash storage. Up front you’ll find a 10-inch display spanning a 1024 x 600 resolution, while wireless connectivity is taken care of with Bluetooth, WiFi and WCDMA 3G radios built in. Woow tells us it plans to launch The One in Japan before Christmas at a price of ¥42,000 ($504), which will be followed up by availability in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Europe. Well, it had better hope that release schedule doesn’t shift, because come CES 2011, we should be up to our ears in Tegra 2 tablets and phones.

Continue reading Woow Digital’s The One tablet cooks up Tegra 2 with Gingerbread just in time for Christmas

Woow Digital’s The One tablet cooks up Tegra 2 with Gingerbread just in time for Christmas originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Nov 2010 08:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Promising “visually rich user experiences not previously seen in consumer electronics devices,” ARM has introduced its latest embedded GPU architecture, Mali-T604, at its Technology Conference 2010 in California today. Though we’re unlikely to see it in devices any time soon, the introduction means that the new design is available to ARM licensees — and notably, the company points out that partner Samsung will be the first to get hooked up. Considering Sammy competes in the high-end embedded system-on-chip space already with its ARM-based Hummingbird line of cores, adding in the Mali-T604 is probably the next logical step for them. ARM says that it’s designed “specifically” with the needs of general purpose GPU computing in mind and includes extensive support both for OpenCL and DirectX, so look for some insane number-crunching capabilities on your next-generation phone, tablet, and set-top box. Follow the break for ARM’s press release.

Update: We sat down with ARM’s Jem Davies to get some more details about the new Mali, and discovered it’s only the first of several potential next-gen GPUs to come as part of the Midgard platform — while this particular processor is available with up to four shader cores, successors might have more. The T604 itself is no slouch, though, as it can theoretically deliver two to five times the performance of the company’s existing Mali 400 GPUs core for core and clock for clock — which themselves run circles around the PowerVR SGX 540 competition if you take ARM at its word. Davies told us that not only does the Mali-T604 do DirectX, it supports the game-friendly DirectX11 as well as the always-popular OpenGL ES 2.0, and will appear in an system-on-a-chip together with an ARM Cortex-A15 “Eagle” CPU, when both are eventually baked into silicon several years down the road. Of course, in the eyes of marketers the future is always now, so get a look at conceptual uses (hint: augmented reality) for ARM’s new Mali right after the break.

Additional reporting by Sean Hollister

Continue reading ARM intros next-gen Mali-T604 embedded GPU, Samsung first to get it (update: video)

ARM intros next-gen Mali-T604 embedded GPU, Samsung first to get it (update: video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Nov 2010 20:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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