Feb 15

A closer look at the HTC Flyer’s screen, stylus, and Scribe

Posted in: 7-inch, froyo, hands-on, HTC, impressions, mwc, mwc 2011, Mwc2011, preview, tablet, tablets, Today's Chili, video
This morning HTC announced its 7-inch Flyer tablet, and unlike the hoards of Android tablets we’ve seen in the last couple of months, it’s got something that frankly reminds us a bit of Microsoft’s original tablet push… a stylus! The Flyer doesn’t come with just any old capacitive stylus, however — HTC has worked with N-Trig, the company that has made digitizers for convertible PCs like the Dell Latitude XT, to implement a much more accurate writing or doodling experience. And well, it basically makes it unlike any other Android tablet on the market right now. We spent some time with N-Trig and the Flyer today, focusing quite a bit on the new stylus and “Scribe” software, as HTC calls it — hit the break for some details on both the software and hardware and a short video of how that pen actually works when put to the screen.

Gallery: HTC screen, stylus, and Scribe hands-on

Continue reading A closer look at the HTC Flyer’s screen, stylus, and Scribe

A closer look at the HTC Flyer’s screen, stylus, and Scribe originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 17:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Feb 15

HTC launches 1.5GHz, 7-inch Android 2.4 Flyer into the tablet wars (update: hands-on video!)

Posted in: 7-inch, Android, breaking news, BreakingNews, hands-on, HTC, htc sense, HtcSense, impressions, launch, mwc, mwc 2011, Mwc2011, official, sense, slate, tablet, Today's Chili, video

Boy oh boy, HTC is entering the tablet arena with quite a bang. The company has just taken the wraps off its brand new 7-inch Flyer Android tablet, which touts a 1.5GHz single-core CPU, 1GB of RAM plus 32GB of flash storage, an aluminum unibody construction, 1024 x 600 resolution, a tablet-optimized version of Sense, and… what’s this, a pressure-sensitive stylus! The HTC Scribe trademark we saw floating around in legal waters turned out not to be the branding for a tablet, it’s actually the name HTC gives to the technology enabling what it calls a “groundbreaking pen experience.” Other details include a 5 megapixel camera on the back paired with a 1.3 megapixel imager up front, a 4000mAh battery rated to last for four hours of continuous video playback, and memory expandability via a microSD card.

The Flyer will ship in Q2 2011 with Android Gingerbread 2.4 on board. HTC says it’ll be indistinguishable from 2.3 as far the end user is concerned, though we all know it won’t be quite as good as the 3.0 stuff. We’re told not to worry, however, since the new version of Sense being introduced with the Flyer will be the focal point of the company’s software offering. As far as HTC is concerned, Sense matters more than the underlying platform, and the reason Honeycomb isn’t the shipping OS here was explicitly stated as HTC not having enough time with the latest Google code to customize it to the full requirements of Sense. Guess that settles that.

There are a couple more software enhancements, both marking the introduction of the fruits of HTC’s recent deals: OnLive cloud gaming will be coming with the Flyer in the form of an app you open up to access the web-connected bored-relieving service, while that Saffron Digital acquisition has turned into an HTC Watch app for movie streaming and downloading.

We spent a bit of quality time with a Flyer unit recently, although we weren’t allowed to turn it on, and our early impressions are rather mixed. On the one hand, we do appreciate the ruggedness and durability that’s afforded by the one-piece aluminum shell, but on the other, the Flyer is quite the chunky beast in your hands. We’d imagine strapping in such an extra-speedy processor is the main culprit for its extra girth, though the Flyer is, ironically enough, not terribly light either. We found it heavier and generally a lot less polished from a design perspective than Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. Anyhow, HTC should have functional units for us immediately following its MWC presser this morning, and we’ll be delving in deeper with this super-specced device. Hang tight!

Update: Pictures of the Flyer can now be explored below and we have video awaiting your audience just past the break.

Update 2: Even more video!

Gallery: HTC Flyer first hands-on

Continue reading HTC launches 1.5GHz, 7-inch Android 2.4 Flyer into the tablet wars (update: hands-on video!)

HTC launches 1.5GHz, 7-inch Android 2.4 Flyer into the tablet wars (update: hands-on video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 05:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 25

HTC Flyer spec sheet leaks with Android 2.3, stylus and 7-inch screen?

Posted in: 10-inch, 7-inch, Android, HTC, htc sense, HtcSense, lte, qualcomm, rumor, rumors, tablet, tablet pc, TabletPc, tablets, Today's Chili

Wondering what sort of goodies might be inside HTC’s upcoming tablets? Norwegian tech site Amobil isn’t — they claim to have a pair of inside sources spoon-feeding them all the pertinent details. For the rumored HTC Flyer — which may or may not be pictured at right — that includes the same 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 chip you’ll find in several high-end handsets, 1GB of RAM, as well as a 7-inch, 1024 x 600 capacitive touchscreen, a front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera and a rear 5 megapixel imager, and a piddling 4GB of flash storage to hold all your apps (which sounds a little fishy to us). There’s also allegedly 3G for data and Skype calls, an HDMI port, DLNA support and a bonafide stylus to write with, though it’s not clear whether we’re rumoring a fancy N-Trig display or simply a pack-in capacitive pen.

Though Amobil‘s sources say the tablet will be sadly limited to Android 2.3 out of the gate, it will allegedly have a brand-new tablet version of HTC’s Sense UI designed to provide a “desktop feel,” which might be a nice pairing for the “HTC Sensation” trademark presently floating about the internet. If so, don’t expect that UI to be limited to a single slate, though — the last part of this oh-so-juicy rumor is that HTC’s also supposedly got a 10-inch LTE tablet (perhaps the Scribe?) arriving in the second half of the year.

HTC Flyer spec sheet leaks with Android 2.3, stylus and 7-inch screen? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Jan 2011 14:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 18

Acer building Sandy Bridge tablets for Android, will use them to ‘phase out’ netbooks

Posted in: 10-inch, 7-inch, Android, intel, plans, roadmap, sandy bridge, SandyBridge, schedule, slate, tablet, tablets, Today's Chili

You’d be forgiven for expecting that the dual-core Tegra 2 that swept all before it at CES would be the king of tablet processors for a good while, but Acer is already plotting ways to overthrow it. Admittedly, Acer is kind of cheating by jumping into x86 land and snatching some unspecified Intel Sandy Bridge silicon, but are you really going to complain about getting multi-core grunt under the hood of your well-lubricated Android machine? An official from the company has promised two to three new tablets, sized at either 7 or 10 inches diagonally, for the first half of this year — a tasty morsel of information, which he garnishes with the forecast that netbooks will eventually be phased out in favor of such touchy-feely slate devices. If you can fit a full second-gen Core CPU inside a tablet, why the heck not?

Updated: Acer’s US team has clarified for us that the Android tablets it announced in November are still set to hit in April. Obviously, these Sandy Bridge versions would be farther off, but we’ve also heard from another source that Acer would likely wait for Intel’s ULV-based Sandy Bridge processors, which aren’t due until the spring / summer timeframe. We’ll let you know if we hear more…

Acer building Sandy Bridge tablets for Android, will use them to ‘phase out’ netbooks originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Jan 2011 06:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 13

Mysterious 7-inch Viewsonic Android tablet breaks cover, reveals little

Posted in: 7-inch, slate, tablet, tablet pc, TabletPc, Today's Chili, viewsonic

Let’s see, if there’s a ViewPad 10 and a ViewPad 4, logic would dictate that a ViewPad 7 couldn’t be far out, right? Unfortunately for those convinced, Viewsonic actually has a 7-inch ViewPad on the market already, and the device you’re peering at above most certainly isn’t it. This gem was spotted by CarryPad at Zinio’s CES booth, complete with Android 2.2, the outfit’s own content software and… well, who knows what else. Chippy noted that booth attendees weren’t exactly hip with him toying around with the device, though he did remark that performance seemed snappier than usual when compared to the other 7-inchers out there. So, will Viewsonic come clean with its LTE-enabled, 7-inch miracle-of-a-tablet? Highly doubtful, but who said dreaming was a crime?

Mysterious 7-inch Viewsonic Android tablet breaks cover, reveals little originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Jan 2011 08:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 11

Dell Streak 7 torn down on video, we still can’t find the reason it’s running Froyo

Posted in: 7-inch, Android, slate, tablet, teardown, Today's Chili, video

The Dell Streak 7 might, in many people’s eyes, be seen as what the original Streak should have been — a 4G-equipped tablet with a spicy dual-core filling and the dimensions of a legitimate handheld computer. Unfortunately, it’s launching quite a bit later than its precursor and few will be happy to hear it’s running Android version 2.2 (Froyo) when we’ve just been graced by the brilliant light of Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) on other machines launching within the same time frame. That said, it’s still a gadget, it’s got circuit boards and connectors and tiny, minuscule things, and it’s been tenderly disassembled for you on video right after the break. Why not try to figure out what makes the screen look so bland?

Continue reading Dell Streak 7 torn down on video, we still can’t find the reason it’s running Froyo

Dell Streak 7 torn down on video, we still can’t find the reason it’s running Froyo originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 07:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 07

PixelQi demos its 7-inch displays, working on a 9.7-inch version

Posted in: 7-inch, hands-on, Laptops, screen, tablets, Today's Chili

We had a hunch that PixelQi was going to bring its 7-inch displays to Vegas, and lo and behold we caught a glimpse of the unique transreflective displays today. (For those that have been living under a rock and aren’t familiar with PixelQi — the high contrast 3Qi screens allow for the backlight to be turned off; not only does it save energy, but it’s easy to read in natural light.) The smaller, 1024 x 600-resolution displays are, well, smaller than the previous 10.1-inch version. Most of them, however, were just hooked up to demonstration boards. There was one put into a Viliv X70, but again, this was just a PixelQi mod.

The bigger story at the PixelQi booth, however, came from its founder Mary Lou Jepsen, who not only promises that production is ramping quite well on both the 7- and 10.1-inch tablets, but that the company is working on a higher resolution 1280 x 800-resolution 10.1-inch display and a 9.7-inch display for a partner. We’re not going to read into that too much, but she maintains that they are continuing to work with major companies. She also explained what we have heard before — that much of the tight supply issues were attributed to the recession and that many companies changed their course after the iPad was introduced to make tablets. Obviously, the current 10.1-inch screen is starting to ship in the Notion Ink Adam, but we’re still waiting to finally see the game changing technology in a tablet or laptop from a major manufacturer. With that, we leave you with a bunch of pictures of tablets and netbooks with PixelQi displays that you really can’t buy right now but that will certainly make you drool.

Gallery: PixelQi tablet and screen hands-on

PixelQi demos its 7-inch displays, working on a 9.7-inch version originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 05:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 06

Dell Streak 7 official on T-Mobile’s 4G network, bringing dual-core Tegra 2 and Froyo

Posted in: 7-inch, Android, android tablet, AndroidTablet, breaking news, BreakingNews, froyo, slate, tablet, tegra 2, Tegra2, Today's Chili

Dell’s Looking Glass tablet has just received its official papers, being dubbed the Streak 7 and packed off to T-Mobile HSPA+ network. Alas, unlike its fellow CES debutants from the likes of Motorola and LG, this slate only has Android 2.2 on board, no Honeycomb, but you do get a front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera, a Gorilla Glass-protected screen, 16GB of internal memory, and of course the greatness and glory of that 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor. T-Mobile retail stores and Dell’s direct online outlet should have the Streak 7 “in the coming weeks.” Full PR and an introductory video follow after the break.

Gallery: Dell Streak 7 for T-Mobile

Continue reading Dell Streak 7 official on T-Mobile’s 4G network, bringing dual-core Tegra 2 and Froyo

Dell Streak 7 official on T-Mobile’s 4G network, bringing dual-core Tegra 2 and Froyo originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 14:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 03

Honeycomb to require dual-core processor, initially tablet-only?

Posted in: 10-inch, 7-inch, Android, Google, honeycomb, motorola, tablet, tegra 2, Tegra2, Today's Chili

Often when you hear minimum spec doom and gloom, it proves to be wildly inaccurate, or only part of the picture. This time, however, it’s worth a closer look. PC Magazine‘s Sascha Segan is confidently citing the director of Enspert, a Korean consumer electronics company (which recently announced its own Android tablet), who claims that Honeycomb will require a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor. He’s also confident that Motorola’s tablet will be the first device to market with the new version of Android, and his other minimum specs line up with the idea of Honeycomb being initially a tablet-only release. Apparently 1280 x 720 is going to be the minimum resolution, with screen sizes “as small as” 7-inches, though it sounds like 10-inches could be the default. These specs seem to clearly leave out Galaxy Tab, along with anything else on the market or soon to arrive that doesn’t have a Tegra 2 chip. It also makes sense that the Galaxy Tab 2 is going to be using Tegra 2 — Samsung clearly won’t be deterred.

And how about phones for Honeycomb? The picture is decidedly murkier, other than the fact that we could see a temporary splintering of the platform while tablets show off their new Honeycomb digs, with enough battery to back up that dual-core proc. Of course, dual-core handsets are right around the corner, so we doubt handsets will be without Honeycomb for long — Google should know which side its bread is buttered on. There’s also the possibility that this Enspert source is only talking tablets, and phones (which are required to push way fewer pixels, and have much stricter battery requirements) will get a pass on the dual-core requirement altogether. No matter what, you should settle in for a year of entertainment as Google continues to iterate its wildly successful operating system, and manufacturers strain to keep up.

[Thanks, Jason]

Honeycomb to require dual-core processor, initially tablet-only? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Jan 2011 20:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 01

Verizon cutting Galaxy Tab price to $500, will refund any purchases from last two weeks

Posted in: 7-inch, GalaxyTab, price, pricing, samsung, slate, tab, tablet, Today's Chili, verizon, vzw

New year means a new price for the Verizon-branded Galaxy Tab. Droid-Life has received word from a couple of VZW store employees that the big red network intends to chop a nice $100 chunk off its price for the 7-inch Android tablet. Though this move hasn’t yet been made official, the Galaxy Tab should soon be available to buy for $500, without any contractual obligations and plus a $60 movie rental voucher that can be redeemed in Samsung’s Media Hub or the preloaded Blockbuster Mobile app. You shouldn’t freak out if you’ve just bought a Tab either, as Verizon’s also said to be offering a benevolent refund for the difference in price to buyers of the Samsung slate who happen to have receipts dating from the last 14 days.

Verizon cutting Galaxy Tab price to $500, will refund any purchases from last two weeks originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 01 Jan 2011 21:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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