Dell is playing things coy with the XPS 10 tablet, keeping things behind glass for the most part, but we managed to coax the 10-inch slate out for some hands-off photography. Actually playing with the Windows RT tablet isn’t an option here at its IFA launch, unfortunately, but we’ve at least seen how slick Dell’s industrial design is for the metal slate.
It’s obviously from the XPS family, bearing the same crisp edges as the ultrabooks already on sale, and at 10mm thick it’s akin to the iPad that it will inevitably be compared to most frequently. The LCD screen is bright, crisp and vivid – again, Dell isn’t saying specifics, but it’s HD resolution and most likely an IPS panel, just as has been used on XPS ultrabooks – but we obviously couldn’t test touchscreen responsiveness.
The keyboard dock is slim and will suffer shortened key travel too as a result; again, that’ll take more prolonged access to figure out for sure. It’s also yet to be seen whether the top section of the slate will overbalance the dock, something we noticed affecting Samsung’s ATIV Smart PC Pro.
So, plenty of questions, and the specter over them all is price. Can Dell bring the XPS 10 in under the cost of the new iPad, and will that include the keyboard dock? We’ll know more closer to Windows RT’s official release date.
HTC has a low profile at IFA this year, with only one new smartphone – the HTC Desire X – and a midrange one at that. More compact than the One X and One S (and likely to be cheaper, too), the Desire X resurrects a familiar name with an eye firmly on the mass market. We caught up with HTC to find out whether it strikes the all-important balance between affordability and performance.
It’s not hard to see that it’s an HTC phone. The company’s rather sober styling has stayed a constant in recent years, and the Desire X owes much of its two-tone curves to the One X. It’s a successful design, though whether it will stand out on store shelves amid more eye-catching phones remains to be seen. The white does better there than the black, with its matte silver around the bezel and the matte white backing.
In the hand, it’s solid if not entirely inspiring, though we can see the compact 4-inch screen being an advantage to those who aren’t persuaded by big-display handsets and phablets. Unfortunately that comes at a price – namely resolution – and at WVGA 800 x 480 the Desire X’s pixels are visible. It’s a shame, as the Super LCD itself has decent viewing angles and bright colors, and the laminated screen means there’s no gap between glass and display, so we wish HTC had opted for at least a qHD panel.
HTC Desire X hands-on video:
As for the camera, it’s a good example of why megapixels aren’t everything. HTC’s own research continues to suggest that photographic performance is one of the key factors buyers make when they pick a new phone, and so while the Desire X may only have a 5-megapixel sensor, it’s backside-illuminated for improved low light performance, and paired with an f/2.0, 28mm wide angle lens. We’ll have to wait until review units are available to see how well the Desire X actually uses all that, but based on the track record with the One series devices we’re quietly confident.
Also like the One series is HTC Connect, the company’s media streaming system. That hooks up to certified speakers or receivers over WiFi or WiFi Direct, and can currently squirt across audio from the phone’s music apps. However, HTC plans to expand that to support video streaming in the future, and while so far only Pioneer has signed up, the expectation is that more manufacturers will jump on board soon.
UI is the Sense 4.1 we’re familiar with from the One series, running on top of Ice Cream Sandwich with a 1GHz dualcore Snapdragon S4 keeping things churning with 768MB of RAM. That’s less than we usually like to see in an Android smartphone – 1GB has generally become the standard, with more devices showing up at 2GB in recent months – but we didn’t notice any immediate stuttering or lag. The Desire X is, of course, a phone built with a semi-budget price in mind, so HTC had to save somewhere; the same is visible in internal storage, of which around 2GB of the total 4GB is available to the user. A microSD card slot can be used to add more.
Unlocked, HTC expects the Desire X to come in at under €300 ($377), though contract pricing isn’t finalized. If HTC can work with carriers to significantly undercut other midrange models from Sony, LG, and Samsung when the Desire X hits shelves in Europe and Asia come mid-September 2012, then it could grab a slice of first-time smartphone buyers. So far Phones 4U has revealed one free-on-contract deal, in the UK, from £20.50 per month; that sounds a little high to us, though if you opt for a £26 tariff you get a free set of Beats Solo headphones. Nonetheless the risk, as always, is that bigger and more capable phones are often available for just a little more.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note II may have some slick new hardware, but it’s software where the company is making its most significant changes to everyday usability. Two of the biggest enhancements are Air View and Quick Command, using a combination of the S Pen digital stylus and gesture recognition, and taking advantage of Wacom’s active digitizer technology. Head on past the cut for a video demo.
Air View also works with contacts – showing phone number, email and other details when you hover over entries in your address book – and messages, along with calendar entries and content in other apps. When you’re playing back video, meanwhile, you can trace the nib across the timeline and see thumbnails of the coming scenes, which makes a big difference in finding a particular spot. Windows pen-enabled tablets have long used stylus hover to mimic hovering the mouse pointer over something without necessarily clicking, and it’s a welcome improvement to the Note II’s interface.
Galaxy Note II Air View and Quick Command hands-on:
Quick Command is a mashup of sketched shortcuts and quick launching: hold down the barrel button on the side of the S Pen, swipe up the screen, and the dialog loads. Samsung’s most proud of how it can be used to flick off a speedy email – handwrite “@ Simon” and a quick note, and a new mail opens up addressed to “Simon” and with the message pasted into the body; if you have more than one Simon in your contacts, you’re presented with a list of the options. Unfortunately it can’t be used with Google’s Gmail app, only Samsung’s customized Mail version, though other S Pen improvements will be opened up to third-party developers when v2.2 of the SDK is released on August 30.
Other features of Quick Command include settings toggling or loading other apps, such as drawing an equals sign to boot up the calculator, and you can create your own with your choice of shortcut sketches. What’s not clear is how much of the new S Pen functionality will be brought to the original Note, Samsung telling us that hardware differences will mean only select features will be ported back.
Samsung‘s cheapest new Windows tablet for IFA is arguably its most interesting: no removable keyboard, but Windows RT on an incredibly lightweight form factor. Strongly reminiscent of Samsung’s Android tablets – no great surprise there, really – it’s a well-made and impressively slim slate with a tactile brushed aluminum rear panel that feels great in the hands.
Inside there’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor speeding at 1.5GHz, paired with 2GB of RAM; no sign of a Windows RT slate running Samsung’s own Exynos chips yet. As with the ATIV Smart PC and Smart PC Pro there’s both rear and front-facing cameras, though the quality on the latter was very poor.
The biggest drawback we could see was the absence of a stylus. Samsung is including its S Pen with the Note II, Note 10.1, and the two Windows 8 tablets, with note sync across all of them, but the ATIV Tab makes do with 10-point multitouch. True, for many tableteers that won’t be an issue, but it’s a disappointing omission in what was shaping up to be an impressively cohesive range.
Still, as Windows slates shape up, the ATIV Tab is looking to be a solid contender. Screen quality is on a par with the rich, bright and color-saturated Android models in Samsung’s range, and we can’t argue with the speed at which the Snapdragon runs. We like Samsung’s array of ports, too: the micro-HDMI output is a useful addition, as is the USB for plugging in a keyboard and mouse.
Price will be the deciding factor, and that’s still to be announced. If Samsung can match – or preferably undercut – the new iPad then it stands a chance of swaying users who might have bypassed Android for its patchy tablet app support and unfamiliarity with the standard PC desktop.
Samsung‘s second ATIV Smart PC hybrid, the Smart PC Pro, is the more serious of the Windows 8 docking pair, packing a more powerful processor but giving up battery life along the way. Under the hoot is an Intel Core i5 CPU with 4GB of RAM and up to a 256GB SSD, while runtimes are up to 8hrs. Read on for our first-impressions.
At first glance it would be easy to mistake the Smart PC and Smart PC Pro, though the latter is slightly thicker and – when you snap the slate out of the keyboard dock – noticeably heavier in the hand. It still has an S Pen for digital handwriting and sketching (Samsung unfortunately didn’t leave a stylus to hand to actually test) but you now get a 1080p display, which is bright and colorful (though still falls short of the resolution on, say, the new iPad).
The power under the hood pays dividends, though. Apps loaded quickly and we were able to flick between them with no lag, though the software isn’t final; we couldn’t get screen rotation to work, and we couldn’t write S Note memos with our fingertip.
The keyboard is perhaps the weakest point. Key travel is unsurprisingly shallow, which isn’t a deal-breaker, but the light weight of the ‘board means the Smart PC Pro is prone to rocking back from the weight of the top section. Add to that the somewhat plasticky feel, which is less tactile than the slate part.
Of course, “more serious” also means “more expensive” and the ATIV Smart PC Pro carries a heavy premium over its more humble sibling. Samsung will be asking $1,119 for the tablet with a 128GB SSD when it hits shelves on October 26 in the US.
Samsung’s Windows 8 range was a surprise addition to the IFA 2012 line-up, kicking off with the ATIV smart PC. A hybrid tablet/notebook following in ASUS’ Transformer footsteps by pairing a slate “brains” section with a detachable keyboard dock, the ATIV Smart PC runs Windows 8 and impressively promises up to 13.5hrs of battery life. We grabbed some hands-on time.
The similarities with Samsung’s Android range is clear, though the ATIV Smart PC is a little heavier than the Android slate norm. The touchscreen – which recognizes up to 10-point multitouch – was swift and responsive, though, whipping through the Metro-style Windows 8 homescreen neatly, and revealing a section of new Samsung apps including S Note.
That works with the Samsung S Pen – just as with the Note II, Samsung has used an active digitizer and a special stylus, which docks into a silo on the side of the slate – for handwritten notes and annotations. Unfortunately that pen wasn’t present in Samsung’s demo unit, but the concept is the same as we’ve seen on the Android phablet, and notes will actually synchronize between the two despite the different platforms.
Detached – something of a struggle on these prototype units, but an aspect Samsung promises will be made easier in retail versions – the slate section supports portrait and landscape orientation use, flipping automatically between the two. There was some lag noticeable in actually using apps, though it’s unclear if that’s down to the Intel Atom processor or the pre-final software.
Still, that processor helps keep runtime so long, which is essential if the ATIV Smart PC is to compete with Apple’s iPad. Samsung is betting that enough users will want to do content creation with their tablet to make the extra bulk worthwhile (and ignore what’s a plasticky and fingerprint-prone casing). Whether that will hold true with a $649 starting price (or from $749 with the keyboard dock) when it lands in the US on October 26 remains to be seen.
Samsung’s Galaxy Camera might run Android, but in your hand it’s most definitely a point-and-shoot. Still, Samsung has taken advantage of that heft well: you get a huge 21x optical zoom, 16-megapixel camera and a vast 4.8-inch HD screen. We caught up with Samsung ahead of its IFA 2012 “Unpacked” launch event to see how the Galaxy Camera holds up. Read on for our hands-on first impressions.
If you’ve used a recent Samsung Android phone, then the Galaxy Camera’s interface should be familiar. It’s primarily intended for landscape orientation use, though an accelerometer will flip it into portrait mode if you rotate it. Three homescreens with the usual app and widget support, along with support for third-party software, email, browsing and more, are pulled directly from phones; the 35 tool editing suite is a new addition, but is equally straightforward thanks to the expansive touchscreen.
The face-combining tool we’ve seen on BlackBerry 10 – allowing you to pick out faces from multiple frames, and add them into one image to get the best shot of each person – works well, just as we’ve seen before. It’s not clear whether it’s powered by Scalado, as per RIM’s implementation, but we wouldn’t be surprised.
We were able to quickly snap off photos – and indeed you can shoot video and stills simultaneously, though the optical zoom proved more ponderous when clips were filming – and then have the Galaxy Camera automatically identify faces in the frames. Match each person to a contact, and the camera tags each frame with that person for easier recall later. You can search using multiple tags, and so can pull out images that were taken at the same time, with the same people showing, in the same location if you choose.
Sharing uses the normal Android share-to menu, though sized up to make the best use of the display, and so any app you have which supports sharing can be used with the camera. That should help longevity, such as if you find yourself addicted to a social network Samsung didn’t guess to include out of the box. Uploading can be either via WiFi or 3G/HSPA+, though you can’t use the latter connection to make calls. Given Android’s popularity with modded ROMs, though, we wouldn’t be surprised to see that change shortly after the Galaxy Camera’s Q4 2012 launch.
Cameras running Android are still rare, with Polaroid announcing one model at the top of the year but still yet to release it, and Nikon joining the rarified club in recent weeks with the Coolpix S800c. They’ll both need to be good to compete with the Samsung Galaxy Camera, however; its photographic abilities have Samsung’s lineage, and its camera tech significantly improves the usability experience overall. Pricing may end up being the deciding factor, however, so hopefully carriers won’t pull the rug from under the Galaxy Camera before it ever has a chance to shine.
Take the DNA of the original Galaxy Note, add the style of the Galaxy S III, and throw in a more comprehensive understanding of what digital pen-users want, and you’d come up with the Galaxy Note II. Samsung’s second-gen “phablet” manages to deliver a larger screen in a more pocketable form-factor than its trail-blazing predecessor, including making the digital S Pen itself easier to wield. We caught up with Samsung and the Note II ahead of its official launch at IFA 2012 to see if one of our favorite devices could really have been so improved.
Make no mistake, it’s still a big phone. Samsung has trimmed the top and bottom bezels and so managed to fit 5.5-inch screen into a space where previously a 5.3-inch one resided, without making significant changes to the overall bulk of the handset, but it still dominates the hand. Happily the blunt edges of the original Note are gone, replaced by the softer curves and glossy plastic we saw previewed in the Galaxy S III. It’s a visual trick, but it does make the Note II appear smaller.
The other big physical change is to the S Pen, which still gets a silo in the body of the phone itself, but is both longer and thicker than the first-gen version. It also has a new, rubber tip, which does make tapping and writing on the touchscreen feel less like you’re scratching away at your phone with a toothpick. The new stylus is compatible with the old Note, though of course it won’t stow away inside.
When it comes to the display, Samsung giveth and Samsung taketh away. The panel itself is bigger – and just as bright, color saturated and generally delicious as we’re used to from AMOLED technology – but you actually lose out on some pixels. The Note II runs at 1280 x 720, just like the Galaxy S III, whereas its predecessor ran at 1280 x 800. You don’t really notice the difference, but it does mean that some of the apps and changes Samsung has made for the Note II won’t be rolled back to the original Note, because of hardware differences that include the new resolution.
Samsung Galaxy Note II video demo:
Part of the reason you don’t notice the change is that Samsung has made more intelligent use of the real-estate on offer. The gallery UI, for instance, has been tweaked to accommodate both a folder list and the contents of the currently selected folder simultaneously, making navigating through a far swifter affair. It works particularly well with the new Air View previewing system, which finally takes advantage of the hover-support Wacom’s active digitizers provide.
Float the nib of the stylus above a gallery folder, for instance, and it will bloom up to show thumbnails of what’s in that folder (up to nine pictures at once, with the previews scrolling to show more for as long as you keep hovering). S Note gets its own homescreen pane appended onto the default list of seven, for browsing your folders of existing notes or starting a new one; alternatively, as soon as you pull the S Pen out, a blank note is brought up onscreen.
Officially, the Note II should run faster than before – indeed, we had no problems using Samsung’s Popup Play video picture-in-picture with an HD video clip, while simultaneously browsing full webpages – though we’ll need to get our hands on a review unit (and final software) to see how it holds up under true everyday stress. The 2GB of RAM is a welcome addition, though, and generally moving between apps proved lag-free.
Twelve months ago, the original Galaxy Note was met with both derision and delight. Some loved the idea of a tweener phone/tablet which made “proper” use of a stylus; others took great pleasure in reciting Steve Jobs’ famous comments about devices using pens being instant failures. In the intervening period, though, its built a strong following of users loving the expansive display and convenience of digital notetaking.
The Galaxy Note II promises to build on that. It’s an evolutionary change, not revolutionary, but it’s further evidence of how Samsung’s “a device for every sub-segment” strategy with phones and tablets can deliver some highly appealing products, especially when you take the Korean company’s very capable supply chain into account. You can’t really argue with the Note II’s display, or its processor, or indeed its 8-megapixel camera.
What you can argue over is whether the Note II is still too big. If you felt that about the original, then this new version is unlikely to change your mind. Still, we can see the new phablet finding a similarly enthusiastic audience as its predecessor, and in a marketplace filled with me-too phone slabs, its S Pen functionality remains a welcome diversion from the norm.
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