Hasta La Gadget!

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This week we’ve gotten the opportunity to take an up close and personal peek at the Acer Iconia Tab A700, an Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich tablet with a high definition display and the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor under the hood. This Acer device looks and feels rather similar to its predecessor, the Iconia Tab A500, but its components set it in a class all its own. This tablet has a 10.1-inch display with 1920 x 1200 pixels across it, this making it a 224ppi dense display-toting beast of a machine.

Hardware

While the display’s high definition resolution is obviously the real hero here, you’ll be glad to know that we’re now officially in an age where making a tablet that’s as thin and nice looking as the iPad isn’t so much of a hassle as it used to be. This version of the Iconia Tab is right around the same weight and shape as the A500, but here it’s got a bit more style.

The speckled back panel and the lovely detail in the glass panel up front as well as it’s surrounding plastic are all very well tuned. This tablet feels really nice to hold, as it were.

This tablet has several ports, each of them just about as far away from the others as they possibly could be. There’s a microHDMI, a microUSB, headphone jack, and a microSD card slot as well as a volume up/down button and a screen lock. The screen lock is a switch that holds your tablet in either landscape or portrait mode, and should you feel like heading down the road of the hacker, we’re sure you could find more than a few useful things to do with it in addition to its basic intent.

The power button sits at the top of the left of the device in the same place it did on the A500, and if one were to compare this tablet only to that older generation, one would applaud the efforts of Acer in pushing themselves to the next level. Compared to the iPad, you’ve got a surprisingly similar feeling machine, with just about the same weight and, at a distance at least, a really similar look.

Of course the power of any tablet doesn’t rest on its single specifications alone, and Apple’s iPad certainly relies on its software to beat the crowd. So how does Acer do with their new look at Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich?

Software

Inside this machine is Acer’s selection of applications including several pre-installed games, cloud-access apps, and music apps. Google’s collection of apps are here as well, this including Google Music (not often included right out of the box) as well as the common ICS additions like Google+.

The real heroes here are the additions made to Android 4.0 ICS by Acer. There’s a brand new lovely customizable lock-screen as well as a “Ring” that will allow you several new abilities including the screenshot, the ability to flip through web browser favorites in cards, and changing the volume on-screen. This Ring could very well be the reason you purchase this device – Acer has done a great job of pushing the limits of such a collection of functionalities for the discerning Android user.

You’ve also got the built-in ability to work with a printer to print whatever you’ve got on-screen to hard copy. We suggest to take a look at which devices will function with this connectivity, but from what we’ve seen, most modern wireless printers will indeed work. Acer has connected this device to the rest of its device suite with a simple registration app – this being a good example of why you’ll certainly want to be thinking about picking one Acer machine up if you’ve picked up the other as their device family continues to become more interconnected.

The NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor inside this beast will allow you connectivity with the NVIDIA TegraZone, a place where exclusive Tegra-only applications live, and you’ll find that they look quite fabulous. Have a peek at some benchmarks taken by this device to see how well you’ll be rolling:

Camera

This device’s camera is not all that different from the camera on the original A500, that also being a 5-megapixel shooter. You’ve got a 2-megapixel camera on the front as well, this as good as it was on the A500 as well for video chat. The back-facing camera does not have a flash and is able to auto-focus, but only after you’ve tapped the shutter button. Have a peek at a few pieces of media resulting from this setup:

Battery

This device is part of a new wave of battery-conscious devices that, with the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor with 4-PLUS-1 technology, is able to sleep so deeply that you’ve rarely got a situation where the device runs out of battery after having been left alone for an extended period. Instead where you’ll find battery drain is in the other normal places like mapping and streaming video. Even then you’ll have a fabulously long amount of play-time on your hands.

The Acer Iconia Tab A700′s battery will last you though several days at least if you use it intermittently, or it can last you as few as 8 hours if you’re rocking streaming video non-stop. Either way, it’s impressive.

Portfolio Case

We were also sent the new Acer Iconia Tab Series Portfolio Case – one of the strangest cases we’ve seen on the market thus far. It’s strange in that it relies on a high-powered adhesive to stick to the tablet rather than clamping on with plastic claws as any of a million other cases would. You put your tablet down on one side, pull back the adhesive covering on the other, and push that second side closed onto the back of your tablet.

The adhesive sticks as hard as you could possibly want it to, but is also somehow removable when you want as well. It’s certainly not something you’re going to be able to use multiple times, as the adhesive will certainly get weak after a couple of stickings, but this solution certainly is unique, that’s for sure. The case then also is made of some high-quality rubbery plastics with magnets inside to hold it closed and in stand mode. Interesting stuff!

Wrap-Up

This tablet will cost you $449.99 at any of a variety of outlets, this ringing in just at or below the rest of the market offering similar solutions. You’ve got the most advanced options in an Android tablet included here, and Acer’s unique vision for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will not leave you wanting for multi-tasking and for standing out in the software crowd. We recommend picking up the Iconia Tab A700 especially if you’ve already got Acer notebooks or towers in your home – their software connects quite fluidly and makes your whole personal cloud experience all the richer.

Acer Iconia Tab A700 Review is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

When Microsoft announced their intentions to jump into the hardware space with the unveiling of their new Surface tablet, the next logical question seemed to be whether or not the folks at Redmond would do the same for smartphones.

After all, the model seemed to be doing well enough for Apple — was Microsoft considering adopting a similar approach to help give their Windows Phones a new leg up?

The answer, it would seem, is no. Information Week spoke with Windows Phone senior marketing manager Greg Sullivan, and when he was posed the question, he was quick to confirm that the company had no such plans.

“We have a strong ecosystem of partners that we are very satisfied with,” Sullivan went on to say.

It goes without saying that Microsoft has quite an ecosystem of hardware partners churning out Windows-powered PCs too, but it seems as though their focus on cracking the smartphone space has put their relationships with companies like Nokia, HTC, Samsung, and Huawei on another level entirely.

After all, PC players like Dell, HP, Toshiba, and the like don’t have much of a choice — if they value their stake in the traditional computing business, they’re going to continue to push out laptops and towers that run on Windows. What else are they going to do, switch to shipping Ubuntu on their products?

Things are much hairier in the mobile realm, with multiple platforms continually duking it out for dominance (though some clearly have an edge over others), and Microsoft knows they have plenty of lost ground to make up when compared to rivals Apple and Google. As such, Microsoft can’t really afford to alienate their mobile hardware partners, and revealing that they would create their own Windows Phone device to compete alongside those of their partners would certainly ruffle some feathers.

That’s not to say that Microsoft will never do it. They managed to keep the Surface wrapped up very tightly prior to its launch, so it’s clear that they still have the ability to pull off some surprising stunts. If they do venture into creating their own branded mobile hardware though, it’s going to be way, way down the line, after they and their hardware partners have established Windows Phone as a viable player in the smartphone space. Though some analysts see that as a matter of when and not if, Windows Phone isn’t quite there yet.

And that’s assuming they get to that point — for now, one of Microsoft’s big jobs going forward is to help build market momentum around their platform, and ensuring that their buddies push out timely, solid hardware is going to be a crucial part of that.

Apple today released a second beta for iOS 6 to developers. Not much is known about the update except that it’s identified as build 10A5338d and that it brings some “bug fixes and improvements.” iOS 6 was first introduced earlier this month at WWDC 2012.

This latest beta update for iOS 6 is a 322MB download that’s available now over the air. It is compatible with the third-gen iPad, iPad 2, iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and the fourth-gen iPod touch. Also included in this second beta are Apple TV Software beat 2 and Xcode 4.5 Developer Preview 2.

iOS 6 will bring several new improvements, such as Apple’s own Maps app in lieu of Google Maps, Passbook, and deeper Facebook integration among many other enhancements. For more details on iOS 6 and other announcements from WWDC 2012, make sure to check out our round-up.

[via MacRumors]

Apple releases iOS 6 beta 2 to developers is written by Rue Liu & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week it appears that T-Mobile USA will be heading to the dollar store for some fabulous feature phone sales on a Samsung tip. The device you see below is the Samsung t139, a device that T-Mobile will be offering at more than 6,400 Dollar General stores across the nation starting in July. T-Mobile’s prepaid and Monthly4G No Annual Contract services will be offered up on and in addition to this device soon.

This new action will bring on a Monthly4G No Annual Contract for $50 with unlimited talk, text, and Web – with 100 MB of data inside that “unlimited” plan being up to 4G speeds. Dollar General will also be offering Pay As You Go plans as well as Monthly 4G No Annual Contract plans. T-Mobile’s senior vice president of national accounts Amy McCune noted the following on the situation:

“Dollar General is the nation’s largest small-box retailer and a well-respected company that customers go to when looking to get the most for their money. This is a natural partnership to help bring Dollar General customers to America’s Largest 4G Network at an incredible value.” – McCune

You’ll be able to find several T-Mobile products and services at the end caps in front of the store starting in July. Stay tuned as T-Mobile continues to expand their reach.

T-Mobile teams with Dollar General stores for Monthly4G and prepaid services is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.