Hasta La Gadget!

Surface is a huge deal for Microsoft, and it’s no over-exaggeration to say that the fate of next-gen Windows rests in no small part on the shoulders of the new own-brand tablet. Up for preorder from today, priced from an iPad-matching $499, the new tablet represents everything Microsoft believes is important about the tablet-focused version of Windows 8, even though it runs the risk of frustrating long-standing OEM partnerships by taking the delivery of that into its own hands. SlashGear caught up with Microsoft at Studio B, the company’s hardware hub in Redmond, Washington, for a tour of what are normally clandestine facilities, to find out the back story to Surface and why Microsoft’s team felt it was best positioned to deliver it.

You don’t just walk into Studio B, not ordinarily. Microsoft managed to keep Surface a secret – even from OEMs – up until it unveiled it back in June, and that’s down to serious levels of secrecy at its hardware development studios. We were given access to Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live Division, and Surface general manager Panos Panay, as well as being taken around the workshops, labs, and other facilities at Studio B. Unsurprisingly, there’s plenty we can’t talk about publicly – at times our phones and cameras were taken off us, just in case – but we came away with a new level of respect for what Microsoft challenged itself to do, and what it has achieved.

The Making of Microsoft Surface

Phones, tablets, and compromises

The tablet segment is an increasingly crowded one, but according to Sinofsky Microsoft’s approach is considerably different from that of its key rivals. The big name in the room – and one liberally cited by both Sinofsky and Panay – is Apple’s iPad, and with its majority share of the tablet market it’s no surprise that Microsoft has been keeping an eye on the iOS pad. Still, Android hasn’t been slow to take on tablets, whether in the flavor Google would prefer or a modified version made to suit OEM ambitions.

The starting points are pretty clear, Sinofsky points out. “Google, starting from either search or from open-source, and building up from a phone. So, they built a great phone and they said “oh, we’ve got to do a tablet” and we’re all familiar with what it’s like to build the experience after you build the experience” the president says. “They went through the whole efforts to redraft the UI, to turn it into a tablet, when they had started really from a phone. And when you buy into a tablet, you buy into… it’s there for the search ecosystem, the Google software, and it’s all good but it’s their perspective”

As for Apple, “they clearly started with the success of the iPhone, did an amazing job on that, and when the iPad came out it was easy for everybody to grasp because many people had been using the iPhone for two years: they picked up the iPad and said look, it’s the iPhone with a bigger screen” Sinofsky explained to us. “And in fact if you go look at your own, and everybody’s first evaluations of this, you focused on the fact that it’s an iPhone and now the screen is bigger, and so many other things are easier and more useful than on the small screen. And over time, [Apple] started to talk about stretching into other dimensions, but we all know it’s rooted in that phone, and even today they’re exactly the same trajectory, the phone and the pad they run the same software. And so that brings with it a huge number of advantages, but it’s very clear in terms of the perspective, and the capabilities of what the device will do.”

Surface – Steven Sinofsky + Panos Panay

Amazon perhaps epitomizes the fragmentation story going on within Android today, heavily customizing the OS to tailor it to its own needs. “Amazon did this incredible job on bringing the Kindle Fire to market, and everybody understands what you get when you buy the Fire,” Sinofsky argues, “you buy the device, you buy into the Amazon ecosystem. They look at themselves as a retailer, they look at tablets as a way to buy stuff, whether it’s digital goods or physical goods, and so they want to have a complete experience.”

In contrast, Microsoft comes to tablets – not new, as versions of Windows have supported touchscreen hardware and digital pens since the days of Windows XP Tablet Edition – with a history in more ubiquitous PCs: desktops and notebooks. “And all of those are perfectly rational, good views of why to build hardware and what to do” Sinofsky concedes. “And we of course looked at this challenge, and said, well, we think of PCs as this generic kind of device that can work across a broad range of scenarios, that have a broad range of form-factors, that have extensible platform, that have peripherals and are part of ecosystems.”

Boiling that premise down to a portable device users would keep with them all day, every day, was what led to Surface. “We want to bring all of that goodness to a kind of device that you carry around with you all the time, that has all-day battery life, with its roots in this ecosystem, and its roots in the notion of productivity. And in many ways, that’s where we start with Surface” the Windows president explained. “It’s about really bringing that extra perspective to market – we started with thinking about all of the things that are in those elements, whether it’s things like a USB port, or the design of the case, or the aspect ratio. And all of these things become important decisions in how we build Surface.”

“It’s not about feeds and speeds”

Trade-offs and compromises aren’t something most execs prefer to discuss when talking about their shiny new product, but the balance of decision making was a theme Sinofsky and Panay – as well as others on the Surface team – keep coming back to. That’s because a trade-off need not be a negative thing, Sinofsky argues. “It’s not about what we call ‘feeds and speeds’, all the aptitudes you can line up in a table and compare [across] all the tablets” he says, “those are interesting but what’s really interesting is the full picture of what it does.”

Surface – ID Studio

“We started with a meeting – those happen a lot at Microsoft – and it was a good meeting, where we sat down and Steven put it out there and said “we really want to bring out the best hardware experience for Windows … we want this hardware to be an extension of Windows” Panay explained. “We knew the aspect ratio, we knew you’d be using it with two hands … we knew the basics, we had to have all-day battery life, we had to have a great screen, we had to have it feel light, it had to do all these things.”

That then triggered experiments with “hundreds and hundreds of models” produced on-site, using 3D printers to create tactile mock-ups from which the different teams could make decisions about design, hardware, ergonomics and more. Being able to so quickly handle the results of a design whim was, Panay says, hugely valuable to Surface’s creation. “You know when you have something great” he told us. “And then there’s those times when you think you have something … when you look at it, you go, ‘okay, I think we have something good here.’”

What a difference an inch makes

Some of Surface’s specifications look pretty standard: the processor is an NVIDIA Tegra 3, paired with 2GB of RAM and either 32GB or 64GB of storage. There’s WiFi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0, along with a couple of cameras and of course a touchscreen, in this case with a 16:9 aspect ratio – like we’ve seen on many Android tablets – and running at 1,366 x 768 resolution. However, for every standard tick on the spec sheet, there’s a custom tweak from Microsoft itself.

Surface – Applied Sciences Lab

“When we started, it was 10.1-inches” Panay explains. “We needed a great tablet experience, but we needed it to be light, and your battery is a huge factor here: the bigger your battery is, the heavier your device is. But we also knew that the most dominant screen size in the world out there, or available – as a hardware guy, just a supply-change sense – is a 10.1-inch screen, 16:10. It didn’t necessarily suit our needs, as it turns out. But we looked, and we said okay, let’s just take what we have and build from it. And when you look at something like that, you just stop, and where we ended up was 10.6-inches. You see the different from 10.1 to 10.6. Now, let me explain to what gets you there from a trade-off perspective.”

“Starting at 10.1, we looked at it, there were a couple of problems here. We want to bring the software to life; we’re bringing Windows to life with this device. One of the great things with Windows is multi-tasking. So, if you were to go into multitasking on a 10.1-inch screen, your 4:3 screen becomes your web browsing area. You watch the text render really small. And then you’re trying to use the web and multitask, and then you start to look back and go “wait a minute, what’s the best experience for Windows 8, what’s the best experience to look at a 4:3 screen … how about 16:9?” But one of the things we pushed was, okay, we know 10.1 is too small, but understand the parameters that come with it.”

Opting for a 10.6-inch panel took Microsoft into the realms of custom display manufacturer, but it also opened up challenges with packaging the screen in a way that saw it tick all of the essentials tablet buyers have been told to expect. “As you get larger, you get heavier – that’s just by design, it’s gonna happen, because your battery would get larger. Why make a larger device and not fill it with battery when that all-day battery life was a critical part of it?” Panay asks. “As the screen gets bigger, you’re pulling more power; you actually need to get more battery in the device so you can pull the right amount of power and still keep all-day for the way the software was being designed.”

Surface – Model Shop

Having to lead the development of customized components would probably be too much for many companies, but Microsoft has the scale to take it on. Still, Panay’s team did look at whether a slightly larger, standard panel would do the job. “We considered an 11.1-inch device, but wow it really missed in the great tablet experience. So what we knew we had to solve for was, okay, 10.1 was too small, and 11.1 was too big, there’s no real screen size out there from a supply chain standpoint that exists” he told us. “We had to go invent our own screen, we invented our own touch stack, we designed the thinnest touch stack in the world … we were able to push to 10.6-inches because we were able to pick the right size. We checked every single possible size needed, we looked for the best size that fit, to make sure that in multitasking mode you were still able to get stuff done, if you’re doing stuff. The size became almost a no-brainer.”

“It’s not a gadget, it’s not a gizmo, it’s a solid part of the device”

The decision about screen size had a knock-on effect on the keyboard, something many Windows users would expect to see with a Windows-based device (even if it does have a touchscreen). “At 10.1-inches, with a keyboard, your hands will overlap” Panay points out; Microsoft watched how 150 people used its Touch Case prototypes and developed different test layouts to accommodate trends in where fingers naturally landed, for instance. “An 11.1-inch screen is actually a pretty good solution for a typing surface. But at 10.6-inches – along with a great resolution for 4:3 – you now have the perfect keyboard size. When you set your hands down in the home position, you can have the perfect typing experience.”

The keys themselves – laser etched – are pressure sensitive, so as to tell the difference between when you’re resting your hand on the ‘board or are actually pressing down to activate a key. The watermark moment is around 40g, the Surface team discovered. The result is a keyboard that, although just 3mm thick – Microsoft initially aimed for 4.5mm, so that it wasn’t as chunky as some aftermarket iPad keyboards, but the engineers trimmed it down even further – allows for surprisingly fast typing speeds. It takes 4-5 days to get up to full speed, Panay admits, but once you’re familiar you can get to roughly twice the speed most people can manage on the glass touchscreen of a rival tablet (or, indeed, on Windows RT/8′s native on-screen keyboard).

Surface – Reliability Lab

It only takes roughly three seconds to get familiar with the pressure sensing technology, Panay claims; we only had limited time with the Touch Cover in a lab setting, so will have to withhold judgement until we can spend longer with the system in the real-world. Still, there’s plenty of thought that’s gone into it and, for those who can’t divorce themselves from more traditional ‘boards, Microsoft offers the $129.99 Type Cover which is thicker but includes keys with actual travel to them.

Typing isn’t the only place Microsoft has given serious thought to Surface’s design: the kickstand, for instance, has been an exercise in iterative development. We’ve seen kickstands show up on phones and tablets before – HTC had something of a reputation for them for a while – but the stand on Surface is undoubtedly the winner.

According to Sinofsky, the kickstand not only had to be stable, but it had to feel good and sound good. Owners had to have confidence that it could open and close consistently through the lifetime of the device, something not all moving parts on mobile gadgets can deliver. The end result is a trio of hinges, each built to a custom design, and which can open and close a million times seamlessly. Each time you open them, Sinofsky highlights, they sound the same; when you close the kickstand, the hinges are invisible.

In fact, two of the hinges control the feel of the stand, and the third actually delivers the distinctive “click” sound. It’s modeled on the sort of reassuring clunk that you’d get from a high-end car, Sinofsky says. “It’s not going to break off, it’s not going to snap … it’s not a gadget, it’s not a gizmo, it’s a solid part of the device.” Usually, he points out, when the tension in a piece of metal is released and it connects with another piece, there’s a rattle at they settle; for Surface, hidden magnets along the edge make sure that the kickstand closes crisply. More 3D printing of test components helped the team make sure the closure happened just right.

Surface with Windows RT Breakdown

“People aren’t reacting to resolution, they’re reacting to contrast”

Making sure Surface shines where it really needs to has been as much about making decisions to leave elements out as it has to include them. Microsoft has been knocked for opting for a 1,366 x 768 display when the iPad 3 packs Retina resolution, but according to Sinofsky and the team, that’s a compromise worth making. A higher resolution screen needs more graphics power, for a start, and brighter backlighting to push light through the extra wires in a panel with more pixels. If you actually want to watch higher-resolution content, Microsoft argues, you need to have more bandwidth to deliver it, or more onboard storage (Surface does have a microSDXC slot to add to its 32GB/64GB of internal memory).

In short, Sinofsky told us, Surface was developed with a screen suited for today, rather than what might be needed in five years time. And that jaw-dropping moment when people first see a high-res panel and get instant gadget-lust? That, the company argues, is a reaction to contrast, not resolution, most of the time.

Microsoft Surface Overview

While it may not lead on number of pixels, how they’re presented is still something special. Microsoft not only pushed for the 10.6-inch custom size, but optical lamination too, bonding the top glass – Corning’s toughened Gorilla Glass, naturally – to the rest of the display sandwich. The result is 0.7mm thick, as well as being lighter and tougher than rival panels, though Microsoft also had to stomach the risk of poor yields making the custom screen an expensive proposition.

Optimized for Work

Functionality as a theme came in early in the Surface design journey: the early concepts were based on the flexibility of opening and twisting a Moleskine notebook, for instance, and spawned a demo prototype for Panay’s team to demonstrate to Sinofsky and others made from cardboard boxes and scotch tape. 3D printers soon took that role over, however, spitting out a new prototype in an hour. Roughly 300 were made over the course of the design process, something which took months longer than expected.

That process forced members of the team to go beyond their core disciplines. Designers had to think about engineering, and vice-versa: the positioning of a USB port on the outside had consequences for the slimmed-down components on the inside, for instance, while the twin-antennas for the Marvell radio chipset had to be retuned every time parts near them inside were tweaked along the way. The end result, though, is something which is entirely orientation-agnostic, crafted to leave at least one antenna untouched no matter how you’re holding Surface, and with greater range than other slates on the market.

Microsoft Surface TV Ad 1

Even the power adapter brought its own trade-offs, made slightly larger than it could’ve been in the name of better usability. “It turns out, the trade-off that we wanted to make, was to optimize for work, and getting working as soon as you can. So, by just using a very slightly larger power adapter, you all of a sudden open up this whole world of productivity” Sinofsky told us. “So, you’re sitting at the airport at 0-percent, your flight takes off in an hour, and I would like to charge the device. And so I plug the device in, I’m working/charging/working/charging, and I get to 50-percent, and that’s enough for the whole flight, and then some. And so by just making that one trade-off, it’s not as cool or sexy as this tiny little thing, but all of a sudden the whole device gets to full power in just over two hours.”

Refinement by the minute

Obsessional doesn’t really start to describe the Surface team’s approach to the tablet. The project was an “endless loop of iterations,” with the group taking liberal advantage of the fact that changes which previously would have taken 2-3 months to enact could now be pushed through in two hours. The huge 3D printers at Studio B – actually more complex than those at the Chinese production facilities, which are custom made to pump out the specific components – could be used to trial and tinker, and then decisions could be made at Microsoft HQ and be up and running in China by the next morning.

No detail has proved too small to address. The demo devices for the June launch, though hardly touched by press and analysts in attendance, were deemed to have edges too sharp for comfort, and so the Surface team experimented with chamfering them. A 0.3mm chamfer was eventually decided upon, with huge impact behind-the-scenes for what can only really be felt by your fingers in its absence.

The hinge of the Touch Cover, which clings magnetically to the base of Surface, was another labor of love. Described as “fairly indestructible” it took over a year to figure out a mechanism which would not only snap on cleanly but be so simple to detach that a three-year-old could tug it apart. The final design consists of both alignment magnets and contact pins, and works with clever positioning sensors so as to activate or deactivate its touch-sensitivity depending on whether you’re using Surface in a position likely to involve typing or not.

Microsoft Surface TV Ad 2

“Invention plus impact is really what an innovation is”

Microsoft is betting big on Windows 8 and Windows RT, and Surface is a key salvo as the company takes on not only rival tablets, but the whole concept of “Post-PC.” In the end, Sinofsky’s team has come up with something that is neither a pure tablet nor a laptop.

“Is it a tablet or a laptop?” Sinofsky has been asked, he told us, on multiple occasions. “I’ve been using this now for a long time. I’ve used a lot of tablets; [Surface] isn’t a tablet, but it’s the best tablet I’ve ever used. And I’ve used a lot of notebooks and laptops, and this is not a laptop, but it’s also the best laptop I’ve ever used. It’s a new kind of device.”

We’ll know just how accurate that is when we put Surface through its paces ourselves. The tablet went up for preorder today, and will show up in stores on October 26.

The Tao of Surface: Inside Microsoft’s First Tablet is written by Vincent Nguyen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

With the Huawei Ascend D1 quad XL, the team brings us what at first appears to be a powerhouse of a smartphone with a giant battery to boot. As it turns out, the processor doesn’t take down its competitors in Samsung, Qualcomm, or NVIDIA, but certainly does nice enough to keep up with them in many ways. You’re certainly able to play high-powered games, videos play smoothly even at their highest of definitions, and the whole smartphone is easily Huawei‘s most powerful to date. The lack of uniqueness in the build of the device, on the other hand, should remind you of Huawei’s competitors’ devices from this past year – it’s put us on guard right out of the box, but ends up proving to be far less important than the end product, which is great.

Hardware

This machine is the largest of the several slightly different iterations of the Huawei Ascend D – here with a quad-core processor running at 1.2GHz, an extended battery, and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. We got to experience the Huawei Ascend D Quad at MWC 2012 right after it was first introduced, as well. The biggest differences in the hardware are in the weight and the thickness of the device, of course, with this XL version bringing in the slightly fatter of the two beasts. It being rather light and tall either way makes this a comfortable one-hand smartphone.

You’ve got a 129 x 64 x 10.9 mm device at 150 grams, it utilizing a 4.5-inch IPS+ LCD display with 720 x 1280 pixels across it – that’s 326 PPI, matching the iPhone 5. Of course with this device you also get the extra half an inch of screen real-estate as well, to it’s not absolutely perfect for one-handed use if you’re a petite person, but for most large-handed users, it’s perfect. You’ve got a couple of options for connecting to a larger display with this smartphone as well, including both DLNA and MHL – the latter being HDMI with the proper adapter via the microUSB port at the side of the phone.

This device and its release partner, the Huawei MediaPad 10 FHD both have DOLBY enhanced sound, here with Dolby Mobile 3.0 Plus sound enhancement. This means that the device sounds good even when it’s blasting – and it does live up to that claim. You can certainly trust this smartphone to be your good MP3-playing partner through your standard headphones, without a doubt.

You’ve also got 8GB internal storage, 1GB of RAM, and a microSD card slot that’ll allow you an additional 32GB of storage if you pop your own card in. You’ve also got an 8 megapixel camera on the back as well as a 1.3 megapixel shooter on the front made for video chat. The back-facing camera is quite impressive, making us think twice about how Huawei is handling their image processing with this new quad-core architecture. They appear to have done something quite right.

This device’s overall feel is that of a refined smartphone made by a company that knows what they’re doing in the top-tier business. While we’ve not seen this impressive an offering from Huawei yet on a USA-based carrier, we’re quite encouraged by what’s been delivered here with the Ascend D quad XL.

Software

The basic navigation between home screens and switching back and forth between apps can get a little bit laggy at times – but if you’re switching from a single-core phone, you’ll never notice it. Compared to the Samsung Galaxy S III, this device is lacking quite a bit in the refined user interface department – the same being true of the HTC One X. On the other hand, Huawei does offer up a couple different views for you right out of the box, one of them being standard, the other being their own “3D Home” view.

With the 3D version of Huawei’s look at Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, you’ll see a lovely widget with your clock and weather information, some interesting switching between home screens, and a slightly odd feeling to it all. It reminds one of homescreens from SPB Shell 3D – also appearing on some ViewSonic devices we saw earlier this year at MWC 2012 (in a different iteration, of course). Sadly it would appear that this view doesn’t run as swiftly as standard Android does, so we ended up opting out more than in on the whole.

Otherwise we’ve got a fairly basic view of Android here from Huawei, and for that we’re thankful. They’ve offered up a security app that’ll protect anything you need on the device, bringing with it a lock for the homescreen (in addition to your standard Android lock), one for apps, and another one on top of all that as well. This device’s drivers support DOLBY sound and it does sound rather nice blasting out of its single main speaker on the back – of course as always, we’re looking to get that big beast set up on the front, where all speakers should be, in the end.

Have a peek at some benchmarks below and make your own judgements on how lovely the device functions based on real-world flipping around. Also note that we do have a test device, this meaning that we might not have absolutely final software when it comes down to it. This is a final bit of hardware, on the other hand, so trust it!

Camera

Now that the camera has finally been placed front and center in the quality of smartphones all around the world, Huawei had to make a big jump in effort here in this machine’s main shooter. They’ve done a rather nice job, as it were, with 8 megapixels working to a rather high potential and 1080p video not looking half bad either. This is Huawei’s nicest camera execution, for certain.

Battery and Connectivity

Because we’re not inside the main arena where carriers will be working with this device, we’re not going to be doing any speed tests as such. We can certainly say that it’s connected to wi-fi networks like a champ, running just as fast as any other smartphone or tablet we’ve ever seen come through from anywhere on the planet. Connecting to data using an AT&T SIM card had similar results, reaching OK data speeds never getting quicker than our fastest 3G speeds.

As for the battery – we were certainly expecting a lot from the processor since the increase in battery size is not that giant an issue anymore here in the “future” 2012. WIth processors like the Snapdragon S4 and the NVIDIA Tegra 3 making it clear that battery life can and will be dictated by how well the device’s SoC is managing power needs, Huawei had to step up their game here with their own quad-core chip. As it turns out, they’ve done pretty well. Notice that we still get hammered when the display is on full brightness, but that standby is fairly good and regular daily action doesn’t smash the life out of it as is often the case with lesser phones.

Wrap-up

This device is Huawei’s finest execution of a smartphone yet, and it paves the way for the company to continue delivering lovely Android-toting amalgamations in the future. With Huawei being able to successfully create a beast such as this, we’re encouraged at the company aiming at the USA for releases on US-based carriers for the near future with heroes of their own. If Huawei is able to deliver hero smartphones and tablets up to the quality we’re seeing here with their own brand attached – rather than hidden as it has been for their last several USA-based releases – they’ll have a real shot at expanding in North America.

Be sure to let us know if you’ve got any additional questions about the Huawei Ascend D1 quad XL in a comment below and stay tuned as we continue to check Huawei’s offerings in the future! Also have a peek at the timeline below to see our history with this device family specifically.

Huawei Ascend D1 quad XL Review is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s time to have a peek at Lenovo’s next big crack at the tablet game with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and a massive set of built-in apps on a quad-core processor-toting 9-inch tablet by the name of IdeaTab A2109. This device’s NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor with 4-plus-1 technology allows it a massive amount of battery life as well a lovely collection of games that are unique to the NVIDIA Tegra architecture. Meanwhile the tablet is one of Lenovo’s best – but is it worth the less than perfect display and device weight?

Hardware

This device is 259.8mm x 178mm x 11.65mm (9.3″ x 6.5″ x 0.46″) in size and 570g, that is, just under 1.3lbs. The device is certainly not the lightest 9-inch tablet on the market, nor is it the thinnest – but it sounds great. It’s got 2 stereo speakers with SRS Surround Sound, both of them with ever-so-slightly raised bits of plastic near their grilles to assure sound delivery even if the device is flat.

You’ve got a 1.3 megapixel camera on the front for video chat and a 3.0 megapixel camera on the back that takes OK photos and video – don’t expect to get too many masterpieces from either unit. See a few examples of the quality of this device’s main camera lower in this review. The sound collection quality is surprisingly decent, on the other hand, with one mic hole on the left and the other on the right of the device, this aiding in sound cancellation.

The ports you get around this device are relatively abundant for how expensive the device is, starting with a microUSB port on the right side near a micro-HDMI port for HD video output. The quality of the video you get here to an HDTV (provided you’ve got the right cable) is generally good – not spectacular, but certainly good enough for basic Google Play video and YouTube viewing. You’ve also got a basic combo jack for your headphones and microphone if you’d like, too.

You can get this device in 8GB and 16GB internal storage iterations and right under the top-back panel you’ve got a microSD card slot where you can expand your memory by another 32GB if you wish. The overall build quality of the tablet is rather high, with Lenovo letting us know that they’re not skimping on the construction just because it’s not a laptop or a desktop unit.

The display, on the other hand, is of a surprisingly lower-quality build than the rest of the device. The viewing angles are OK for the most part save – believe it or not – the top angle which does a color-flip once you’re at about 45 degrees. It’s a bummer, but if you’re the kind of person that keeps your tablet flat on the table most of the time, you’ll have a fine time. You’ll want to check this out in the store before you pick it up for this reason alone.

Software

This unit works with Lenovo’s own flavor of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich – this means there are a few modifications in the way you move back and forth between homescreens and you’ve got a vast collection of apps right out of the box. You also have some lovely widgets that are essentially giant folders where you can store your apps, get weather information, access music you’ve got stored on the device, and write notes.

You’ll want to check out our hands-on with the device in the video in this post to see how the software functions – there are a few hiccups here and there due to what we must assume is a firmware build that’ll be updated by Lenovo in the future. Lag here and there and some tiny one-pixel-row skips. Nothing to get too bent out of shape over.

The list of apps that you get in this device, if I’ve not said it enough already, certainly appears large compared to its competition. GO Keyboard, AccuWeather, Amazon Kindle, Lenovo App Shop, Cut the Rope HD, Docs to Go, ES File Explorer, Evernote, GameTanium, Lenovo Registration, LoPokeTALK for low-priced calls (for real, really), News Republic, Norton Security, ooVoo, PrinterShare for Lenovo, Skype, SugarSync, Wi-fi Direct, and Zinio – and these are only the apps added by Lenovo, there’s also the full set of Google apps you get with basically every Android device on the regular – the list also changes based on which region you pick this device up in.

This device is designed for the first-time Android user – one who wants to see what a variety of apps can do without looking for them first on the Google Play app store. If that’s you, you’ll feel perfectly comfortable in this environment. There’s also a lovely app simply called “UI Intro” that shows a video for your benefit – a lovely presentation of the user interface on your device – and it looks nice!

Camera

The camera on the back – all 3 megapixels of it – is in place for basic shooting only. Don’t expect it to perform any miracles. That said, if you’re into the Instagram scene, you’ll have some great success. Have a peek at some examples of highest-definition-possible photos and video.

Battery Life and Benchmarks

With the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor under the hood here with 1.2Ghz clock speed, you’ve got what’s basically the best piece of architecture in the whole device. NVIDIA’s constructed a processor that makes this device run smoothly – for the most part – with its only limits appearing to be the user interface in certain areas which seem to lag upon opening. Having seen the processor in action on several tablets in the past, I’d say these oddities have more to do with the software build than they have to do with the hardware – but in the end it’s always a combination of the two.

Have a peek at the basic benchmarks we’ve run on this device above and check the battery time below as well. This device benefits from the “ninja” 5th core in the processor (the Tegra 3 actually has 5 cores, the 5th only running when the device doesn’t need to be running high-demand tasks) – here the A2109 Lenovo tablet uses this architecture well, with battery life that does great on a regular basis.

Wrap-up

This device is a good effort from Lenovo, but put up in a competition against the rest of the Tegra 3 tablets we’ve seen, it’s just a bit lacking. If you’re looking for a 9-inch tablet with NVIDIA processing power inside it, this is your best bet, that’s for certain – especially if you just want it to be your radio all on its own: the speakers are really worth a listen. The A2109 really does have the power to run next-generation apps too, and you’ll have full access to the NVIDIA TegraZone app collection as well.

This device will run you $299, and for that price you’ll not be finding another tablet like the A2109. You can of course pick up a Nexus 7 for $199 – but that’s smaller than this. You could get an iPad mini (if it does indeed exist in a few weeks), but that won’t have Android, of course, and it certainly wont have a 9-inch display. Basically the final verdict is this: with a unique build, you won’t find Lenovo’s offering here lacking if you want it for a media-delivery system – unless the display will trip you up: check it out in the store, you simply must.

Lenovo IdeaTab A2109 Review is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Samsung’s new Galaxy Note II arrives with some heritage to explain it, though a 5.5-inch smartphone can still take some explaining. After its first-gen predecessor blustered its way into a new segment – known by some and loathed by others as “phablets” – the new model tweaks the formulae some, boosting performance, smoothing the design, and polishing the digital pen elements that help set it apart from the smartphone crowd. So, if the original Galaxy Note eventually answered the question “will it sell?” can the Samsung Galaxy Note II convince us that it’s a worthwhile upgrade? Read on for the full SlashGear review.

Hardware

Though twelve months old, the first Galaxy Note still doesn’t look too shabby in terms of specifications, and so the Note II generally tightens up the package and polishes off any glaringly rough edges. Design-wise, it’s now more akin to the Galaxy S III – all curves and fake chrome edges – than the model it replaces, and side-by-side the pair are obviously from the same family. At 80.5 x 151.1 x 9.4 mm and 182.5g, it’s slightly longer and heavier than the first Note, though also narrower and thinner; slimmer bezels have meant Samsung can fit a bigger display despite the only moderate size changes, now at 5.5-inches rather than 5.3-inches.

The panel itself continues to use HD Super AMOLED technology, though the resolution has changed: the Note II drops an 80-pixel column and trims things down to 1280 x 720 (rather than 1280 x 800). That means the Note II is actually showing less on-screen than before, despite the larger display, but it also makes it more directly compatible with apps for 720p smartphones, not to mention likely making Samsung’s own software engineers’ lives easier.

There’s more to the screen change than the size and resolution, however. Samsung has thrown out the contentious PenTile panel of before, maligned for its surfeit of green pixels, and replaced it with a brand new pixel layout that gets a step closer to true RGB. The end result is a far more balanced display that looks incredibly good: bright and color-rich, with the syrupy blacks we’re used to, and a crispness to text that’s distinctly better than what the first Note could manage. Samsung’s default color temperature remains more saturated than we’d like, but you can easily tweak that between four presets – dynamic, standard, natural, and movie – in the settings.

Inside there have been some advances too, with the Exynos processor now packing four cores and running at 1.6GHz. It’s paired with a healthy 2GB of RAM – something some, but not all, of the original Note versions offered – and either 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of storage, with a microSDHC card slot to bolster that. Samsung’s default battery is also considerably improved, at 3,100 mAh up almost a quarter over the handset it replaces, and that gives plenty of juice for the surfeit of radios.

HSPA+ 21Mbps and LTE 100Mbps will be offered, though the 4G versions will be country-dependent; all models get Bluetooth 4.0 with aptX high-quality audio support, WiFi a/b/g/n (2.4GHz/5GHz) with WiFi Direct, NFC, and USB 2.0 Host for hooking up accessories like external storage. There’s also A-GPS and Glonass positioning, an accelerometer, digital compass, proximity sensor, gyroscope, and a barometer, while a multicolor LED light hides up near the earpiece.

Two cameras are included, an 8-megapixel main shooter on the back with an LED flash, backside-illuminated sensor, and Full HD video recording, and a 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera, also with a backside-illuminated sensor, itself also capable of 1080p video. A 3.5mm headphone jack is on the top edge; the microUSB port is on the bottom, as is the bay for the stylus (more on which in a moment). Samsung persists in putting the volume rocket and the power/lock key on the sides of the Note II – left and right edges respectively – but they’ve been shuffled further down the body than before, and are easier to press when holding the phone around the middle.

Still, this is undoubtedly a large phone, and our recommendation with the original Note to try before you buy still holds true second time around. The slightly narrower form-factor does make a mild difference in hand-feel, as do the curvier corners, though it can be a stretch reaching down to the menu and back soft-keys – flanking a squashed home/task-switcher button – if you’re trying for single-handed use. Those with a fondness for skinny jeans may find the Note II altogether too much for comfort, though the slick, gloss-finish plastic, while not as premium in its feel as the brushed metal of the iPhone 5, does mean the Samsung can slip friction-free into the tighter of crevices.

Stylus

Ever since the iPhone launched, we’ve seen attempts to pair capacitive touchscreens with styli, but Samsung looked beyond dreary finger-mimicry with the Note’s digital pen. Instead, it turned to digitizer expert Wacom – known for its high-quality graphics tablets – for the active digitizer that accompanies the Note II’s capacitive screen. It means you can use the Note II with your finger, as you’d expect, but also whip out its pen and get far more precise input as well as pressure sensitivity, useful if you’re sketching or using handwriting recognition.

For the new Note II, the stylus itself has had an overhaul. It’s now thicker and longer than the previous version (though still fits snugly inside the body of the phone) and the tip has a new coating that’s kinder to the screen and feels more like a ballpoint pen when you’re writing. The difference in barrel width does make a difference to comfort, now less like pinching a pen refill between your fingertips, though the button on the side – which can be used to call up sub-menus of commands, app depending – still takes a little getting used to.

Samsung now supports hover with the pen, the display recognizing that the nib is floating a half-centimeter or so above the display. It gives the Note II a second degree of input: like positioning your computer cursor over an icon or control, but not actually clicking it. In Samsung’s case, the actual functionality varies depending on the app, though it means you can see things like calendar event details without having to actually tap into the appointment, preview the content of a message from the inbox list, or look inside a gallery album. You can also use hover to scroll through lists, holding the nib near the end to automatically slide through the options.

Software and Performance

Launching a new Android phone running anything other than the latest version of the OS, particularly when it’s a flagship, is grounds for a severe scolding, so thankfully the Note II runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean out of the box. For a long time we’ve been critical of companies who redress Android in their own custom interfaces, but TouchWiz on the Galaxy Note II does at least bring functionality beyond what Jelly Bean alone delivers.

The most obvious of those changes are aesthetic, but as you spend more time with the Note II – particularly with the pen – you see the tweaks and touches that go beyond design. Many of those are familiar from the original Note, of course: you still get the S Planner calendar app, which allows you to circle dates with the stylus and generally scrawl across your agenda, and S Note with its notebooks of memos, diary entries, meeting notes, and more. S Note content can be synchronized with Google Docs or Evernote, too, which makes it far more useful than traditional notes trapped in physical notebook.

Samsung Galaxy Note II software review:

Samsung’s stylus can also be used to grab sections of the display as screenshots. There’s support for the hand-side-swipe to grab a full screenshot, just as on the Galaxy S III, but you can also hold down the barrel button of the pen and snip out a shape – as basic as a circle or square, or something more finicky – and then annotate it or add it to a notebook. S Note has various preset shapes and clipart, too, and you can add voice recordings, sections of maps, photos, video, and other attachments to each note.

New is Quick Command, summoned by holding down the barrel button and swiping up the display; it works no matter what app you’re currently in, and brings up a floating dialog for pen-triggered shortcuts. Write a question mark, for instance, followed by “weather” and you’ll get a browser search for the current weather; write “@” and a name, and a new email will open up with suggestions as to the recipient from your contacts (if you’ve only one contact with that name, they’ll automatically be selected). Somewhat annoyingly, given the excellent Gmail app is one of the boons of Android, Quick Command’s email composer only works with the customized regular email application. Samsung preconfigures a number of shortcuts, but you can also train it to recognize your own.

If you’d rather not use handwriting recognition – which requires reasonable penmanship – there’s a spacious onscreen keyboard which becomes practically obscene in its size when the Note II is in landscape orientation. New for this second-gen model, though, is the ability to offset the keyboard for one-handed use: you can choose to shrink it down and nudge it over to the left or the right of the phone, making it easier to tap with your thumb while holding the Note II with the same hand. It’s an interesting approach, and worked fairly well, though the sheer size of the handset does mean it requires some balancing to keep it from toppling out of your hand.

S Voice, Samsung’s answer to Siri, is present, and triggered by default by a double-press of the home button. It’s still patchy in its usefulness, however, and we had mixed results day to day; since the processing is all done server-side, it’s possible for Samsung to upgrade and add new features just as Apple did with Siri in iOS 6, though the functionality appears to be unchanged versus what we saw on the Galaxy S III.

New with Jelly Bean, though, is Google Now, Android’s attempt to bring some context and prediction to the platform. It’s triggered from an icon in the task-switcher menu – hold down the home button and you’ll see it, flanked by a shortcut to the task killer and a button to axe all the currently running apps. As on the Galaxy Nexus, where we first saw it, Google Now is of mixed use, and you need to have invested your digital life in Google’s service if you want to get the best out of it. If you’ve set up your calendar, for instance, Google Now will remind you of an upcoming appointment and help you with directions to get there, as well as telling you the weather. It’s still early days for mobile context engines, but we’re glad to see it show up on the Note II.

Jelly Bean’s other improvements are included too. There’s Project Butter behind the scenes, keeping the interface moving slickly, and the Note II did indeed keep up with every swipe. If we ever had any hiccups it was usually down to the sheer size of the display; swiping an unwanted notification from the drop-down menu, for instance (now with a handy preview of the content of new messages) required just a little bit more of a flick than we would do by default, meaning it would sometimes take a couple of tries before it disappeared. Given time, though, we’d expect to get used to that.

In addition to Google’s own Android backup, Samsung has added in support for its Cloud service. Register for a free Samsung account, and you can sync your calendar, contacts, internet history, and S Note data; you can also do device backups, of logs, SMS and MMS messaging, and wallpapers, either on-demand or according to a regular schedule. If you’d rather not use Samsung’s cloud, there’s baked-in support for Dropbox instead.

Multi Window borrows from the Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet, pitting two apps side-by-side on the display. Unlike on the Note 10.1, there’s no noticeable performance hit, and it’s useful being able to quickly review a webpage while jotting reminders in S Note, or keep an eye on an IM conversation.

We had high hopes for the Note II’s performance, and the reality didn’t disappoint. Day-to-day it’s smooth and lag-free, capable of handling any app we could throw at it. In terms of raw numbers, we saw a score of 5908 in Quadrant and 1829 in Vellamo 2′s HTML5 tests and 635 in its Metal tests, while SunSpider came in at 1044.7ms. In short, this is one of the fastest, slickest Android devices around.

Camera

The Note II shares the same camera with the Galaxy S III, an 8-megapixel backside-illuminated sensor with autofocus and an LED flash on the back, and a 1.9-megapixel webcam on the front. As with the smaller phone, it’s capable of some great shots, though it can sometimes tend toward over-exposure and we saw some interesting lens flare when trying to shoot brighter scenes. Close-up shots do particularly well, though, and while sometimes blue skies looked over-saturated on the Note II’s display, they were more realistic when we viewed them off the phone.

Samsung provides an HDR mode, which combines shots of various exposures to make one with artificially broader dynamic range, together with a burst shot mode for grabbing multiple frames in rapid succession. Panoramic capture is supported, again, just as on the Galaxy S III. There’s control over exposure, brightness, and other basics, together with the usual array of filters.

Video, meanwhile, is captured at up to 1080p Full HD resolution whether with the front or back cameras, and marks another solid showing by the Note II. There’s little in the way of motion blur, even with faster moving scenes, and the Note II can handle reasonably low-light scenes without descending into too much noise and grain. Stereo audio is also captured.

1080p Full HD video sample:

With support for MHL-HDMI output, with the right adapter you’ll be able to hook up the Note II to a display or projector and review whatever footage you’ve recorded. Alternatively, there’s Samsung’s AllShare technology for wireless streaming, either to the company’s own HDTV dongle, or to any DLNA-compliant device.

Phone and Battery

Holding a device of this size to your head and making voice calls is still a good way to feel self-conscious in public, though the growing popularity of the original Note means there’s less of that “talking into a tablet” conspicuousness than before. We experienced no dropped calls on the Vodafone network. The extra length of the Note II does mean the microphone and earpiece are well spaced, and voice calls in general were of high quality. The speakerphone, too, proved loud and resilient to crackle. If you really do feel too ridiculous holding the Note II to the side of your head, there’s Bluetooth for wireless headsets, and the aptX support meant, when tested with an aptX-compatible stereo headset, music playback quality was noticeably improved.

Samsung has outfitted the Note II with a vast battery – 3,100 mAh, and since it’s user-replaceable you could feasibly swap it out for another – though the big display and quadcore processor means it’s not shy about drinking power. Nonetheless, even with a day of heavy use – including push email turned on, using the camera and then automatically uploading photos and video to the cloud, Google Maps, the browser, some sketching with the pen, and a couple of YouTube videos, not to mention a couple of short calls and some SMS messaging – we reached the end of the day with juice to spare.

There are new power management tools on the Note II, too, with the existing Power Saving mode (which dims the screen and throttles back the processor, among other things) joined by a new Blocking Mode. That allows you to shut off incoming calls and notifications, alerts from the alarm or timer, and even whether the LED notification light blinks, either permanently or within certain hours. It’s ideal if you leave your phone on your nightstand when you’re sleeping and don’t want to be perpetually disturbed by bleeps and flashing, particularly because you can also set a list of priority contacts who will be allowed through the lockdown.

With some sensible use of the settings, then, you could feasibly have two days of use on a charge, though that will depend on how much you use 3G (on this European-spec model; US versions will have LTE, which is even more power-hungry) and other features.

Wrap-Up

For some, the original Galaxy Note was a monstrosity: not quite a phone, not quite a tablet, and not standing any chance at all of ending up in their pocket or bag. They’re unlikely to be any more convinced by this refined, faster successor, since the main criticisms are the same: it’s big, it’s heavier than many phones, and it often requires two hands to use it properly.

Those not immediately turned off by the Note II’s size have a more tempting prospect ahead of them. The new phone offers a bigger display and better pen functionality, not to mention a jump in core performance and – until Samsung can push out OS updates – a newer and more user-friendly version of Android and TouchWiz than its predecessor. It’s nicer to look at and hold, faster in use, and lasts longer; most importantly, it takes greater advantage of the digital pen, something which continues to set the Note II apart from most of the competition.

First time around, Samsung had to convince us there was still a place for the stylus with today’s smartphones. That ice has already been broken for the Galaxy Note II, and while its audience is undoubtedly smaller than for the Galaxy S III, perhaps, or the iPhone 5, those opting for Samsung’s biggest smartphone will find themselves with a handset whose capabilities are even bigger than its display.

Samsung Galaxy Note II Review is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Backup. It’s more often than not the guilty omission in homes and small offices, and the hassle of setup – finding a place to plug in for both power and network – is often cited as a key hurdle. Synology wants to change all that with the DiskStation DS213air, the company’s first WiFi-equipped NAS: up to 8TB of storage, all the media streaming a modern home might demand, and in a small and affordable footprint. Does wireless overcome that big barrier to backup? Read on for our full review.

Hardware

Synology hardware is generally subtle and solid, and the DS213air is no different. 165 x 100 x 225.5 mm of glossy white plastic standing on four black rubber feet, it’s discrete if relatively uninspiring. Sticker price is $299.99, though Synology’s choice of plastics seems a little cheaper than some of its more expensive models. Not so bad as to leave us worried as to its durability, however.

The lower cost also likely explains the absence of slick drive caddies, with Synology instead requiring users open up the casing in order to access the two internal bays. The two halves of the NAS slide apart, leaving plenty of room to access the SATA II slots (which will accommodate either 2.5- or 3.5-inch drives, of up to 4TB apiece); you can optionally secure it together with included screws.

In addition to the internal bays, there are two USB 3.0 ports for hooking up external drives or printers for network sharing. There’s also a gigabit ethernet port, while inside there’s a WiFi b/g/n radio, though only with support for the 2.4GHz band, not the often-faster 5GHz band. It would’ve been nice to have seen WiFi ac support too, though that’s yet to be ratified and probably at odds with the DS213air’s budget tag; the first breed of WiFi ac routers generally cost two-thirds of the NAS alone, for instance.

At the back, there’s a 92mm fan which, even when the DS213air was under load, was generally quiet though spins with a noticeably higher-pitched tone when under load. You could have the NAS in your lounge and probably not notice it with the TV on. Up front there are LEDs to show status, WiFi activity, drive activity for each HDD, and a power light integrated into the power button. Unlike other models in Synology’s line-up, there’s no front USB port and quick-sync button, for quickly offloading photos from a digital camera.

Software

Synology’s well-esteemed DSM 4.1 OS makes its expected appearance, running on a 1.6GHz processor with 256MB of RAM. It’s one of the best platforms for network devices, resembling a blend of Windows and OS X, and organizing the DS213air’s dozens of features into an approachable layout.

First step is setting up your drives, which can be done in various levels of RAID. There’s the choice of creating one big volume spanning both – though without any data redundancy, so if one drive dies you lose the whole volume – as well as mirroring data, which gets you the storage of a single drive but the security of having a second copy should one unexpectedly expire. Synology’s Hybrid RAID is offered as the default, as well as more traditional Basic, JBOD, RAID 0, and RAID 1 options, though with only two bays there’s less room for some of the more creative arrays of the company’s larger models.

If you’ve a network cable to hand, then plugging in as a wired connection is straightforward. Alternatively, the DS213air can scan for WiFi networks and connect that way. Even if you don’t use the WiFi to get the NAS online, it can be turned on as a hotspot to open up wireless internet access, useful if you’ve a deadspot in your house or office. Alternatively, the DS213air can be used as a full wireless router, complete with a NAT firewall for security.

Beyond that, the NAS world is pretty much your oyster. The DS213air supports PC and Mac backup (including native Apple Time Machine support) with the option of different user accounts, multiple volumes, and per-account storage limits. You can drop your photos, videos, and music onto the drive, and have them shared out via DLNA/UPnP to your laptop, tablet, Xbox 360, PS3, or other device; Synology also offers iOS, Android, and Windows Phone apps for streaming media, as well as accessing files remotely. You can share two printers – using Apple AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, or regular old Windows printer sharing – and set up remote access for files or even host your email server or website.

Synology also allows for third-party functionality to be installed, including Logitech Media Server, hosting a WordPress blog, running a Plex Media Server, Asterix virtual PBX, and more. If you want cloud-based reassurance for your data, there’s support for HiDrive mirroring too, along with Symform cloud backup. You can even use the DS213air to monitor and record IP webcams as an impromptu security station.

That could get intimidating, if it wasn’t for the relative simplicity of DSM 4.1. If you can navigate through your PC or Mac, you can figure your way through Synology’s system; the more complex features stay out of your way unless you actively want to use them.

Performance

We slotted in a pair of 1TB Western Digital WD1002FAEX Caviar Black 7,200rpm 3.5-inch drives and ran through Synology’s default setup, which creates a single volume with one drive failure tolerance under the company’s own Hybrid RAID (SHR) system. The whole setup process took around 10 minutes to reach the DSM 4.1 desktop – at which point we could begin setting up user accounts and other settings – with the RAID taking a further 8 minutes to establish (and then running a background verification check, during which we were able to copy data to the drive, albeit at slightly reduced speeds). After formatting we had 912.12GB of space: roughly the equivalent of a single drive.

Synology suggests the DS213air is capable of 108.07 MB/sec read speeds with a RAID 1 array, and 58.66 MB/sec write speeds, based on transferring a single 5GB file over a wireless network. In a real-world environment, performance unsurprisingly takes a hit

Over a wired gigabit ethernet connection, we saw 83.08 MB/sec read rates and 32.4 MB/sec write rates. Switching to wireless, meanwhile, with a direct link between the DS213air and our test computer, those figures dropped to 9.82 MB/sec read and 8.34 MB/sec write.

More concerning, the DiskStation’s range proved a significant factor in speed drop-off. We achieved those wireless rates with DS213air and computer in the same room; with two walls between them, speeds fell to roughly a quarter of what we’d been seeing. Experiments with locking the NAS into 802.11n-only mode and switching channels had little effect, and there’s no 5GHz support.

Wrap-Up

Convenience comes at a cost. As a standalone NAS with a traditional wired connection to your home or small office network, the DS213air performs much as we’ve come to expect from the budget end of Synology’s range. Wired speeds are solid though not outstanding, certainly sufficient for small scale backup and media streaming purposes, and the twin-drive capacity offers a balance between performance, redundancy and price.

Wireless, however, is a more mixed bag. Placing the DS213air is made significantly easier – all you need is power, rather than an ethernet cable – but there’s a cost in performance. Accessing the odd file or streaming music is fine, but it’s a painful experience if you’re doing large backups over WiFi. Synology could’ve addressed this, in part at least, if it had opted for a dual-band 2.4GHz/5GHz radio, as the 5GHz band is generally less congested, but that would have presumably added to the price of the NAS.

Being able to repurpose a NAS as a wireless router is useful, though those looking for the greatest flexibility in where they store their backup system are likely to find better results with a Powerline adapter rather than WiFi. The Synology DiskStation DS213air is capable for an affordable NAS, but WiFi is still not the panacea to cable-phobia.

Synology DS213air Review: Your home cloud goes wireless is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.