Hasta La Gadget!

In 2008, when the Eee PC was revolutionizing the computing world and driving every manufacturer to make cheaper and smaller laptops, Sony washed its hands of the whole thing. The “race to the bottom,” the company said, would profoundly impact the industry, killing profit margins and flooding the market with cheap, terrible machines. Sony was wrong, its stance lasting about a year before joining the competition with its own VAIO W.

Four years on we’re buying better laptops than ever before and, with the netbook class now more or less dead, that downward competition seems to have shifted to the tablet front. A flood of cheap, truly awful slates preceded Amazon’s Kindle Fire, the $200 tablet from a major brand that looks to have been the proper catalyst in plunging prices. The latest challenger to enter the competition is ASUS, partnering with Google to create the first Nexus tablet, a device that not only will amaze with its MSRP, but with its quality. It’s called the Nexus 7, it too is $200, and it’s better than Amazon’s offering in every way but one.

Continue reading Nexus 7 review: the best $200 tablet you can buy

Filed under: Tablet PCs

Nexus 7 review: the best $200 tablet you can buy originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jun 2012 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Are you totally, utterly and irrevocably impatient? Then head past the break for some very early benchmarks we grabbed from a pre-production (hand-built) Nexus 7 in London. Our full review will have far more complete and reliable stats, but in the meantime we’ve seen just enough evidence to be sure of one thing: neither the tablet’s low $199 price point nor its slightly reduced (1.2GHz) clock speed throttle its Tegra 3 engine in any obvious way. Read on for more.

Continue reading Nexus 7 early benchmarks: full Tegra 3 performance on the cheap

Nexus 7 early benchmarks: full Tegra 3 performance on the cheap originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jun 2012 08:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google has opted to deliver Android 4.1 Jelly Bean as an OTA update to the ICS already on the Nexus phones and tablets it just handed everyone at I/O 2012, and there’s a manual download link available too. As Android Police notes, only GSM phones running the IMM330D firmware will take the update (which you probably don’t have, although a fresh phone from the initial Google Play run might work.) With this release already in the wild it’s surely only a matter of time before various third parties open it up to a wider variety of hardware. As always with early and somewhat untested software YMMV, keep an eye on those XDA Developers threads for the latest updates.

Update: Just that quickly, an SDK port has already popped up for the HTC One X. Of course, it’s described as unstable and the author has no plans to try to fix the numerous problems but if you’re desperate to see Jelly Bean you can, you just probably shouldn’t.

Update 2: And almost as quickly, a rooted version for ClockWorkMod Recovery and ROM Manager has appeared. Check the latest thread for all the details.

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean preview download is live, probably won’t work on your Galaxy Nexus — yet (Update) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 23:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In Gingerbread, those tapping repeatedly on the version number with Android’s “Settings” menu were greeted with a picture of “zombie art” by Jack Larson. In Honeycomb, a bee found its buzz. In Ice Cream Sandwich, we saw an image of the Android robot dressed up in an Ice Cream Sandwich, which grows in size when you long-press it until it transforms into a Nyan Cat-style animation. Today, we grabbed hold of a Galaxy Nexus equipped with Jelly Bean (Android 4.1), and sure enough, the tradition continues. This time, we’re graced with a cutesy bean, and when long-pressed, you’re presented with a game that encourages you to flick candy around a gravity-less location… for eternity. Care to see for yourself? There’s a video just past the break.

[Thanks, Jarrett]

Continue reading Google includes Jelly Bean easter egg in Android 4.1: yes, it’s cute (video)

Google includes Jelly Bean easter egg in Android 4.1: yes, it’s cute (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 21:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Too lazy to download and install the brand new Android SDK yourself and don’t feel like tweaking an AVD for optimal operation? Don’t know what an AVD is? We don’t blame you, and that’s why we’re here. We fired up Jelly Bean in the Android emulator and started poking around a bit. Sadly, most of the most exciting new features — offline speech recognition, Google Now — don’t work. And we couldn’t really delve deep into the new notifications system thanks to some limitations on the SDK. We could, however, play with the new version of Maps and demo the new widget placement tweaks. Most of the UI should look familiar. In fact, the only obvious changes we noticed were the new search widget and a few tweaked buttons, like notification clearing option. You’ll also notice a new layout for the clock and date in the notification pull down. Mostly, from a aesthetic point of view, the refinements are minor, but welcome. Everything feels a little more spacious, less cramped, without becoming overly simple. Want to see it for yourself? Check out the gallery below and the video after the break.

Continue reading Android 4.1 SDK hands-on

Android 4.1 SDK hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 19:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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