Hasta La Gadget!

The Nook Color (center), flanked by Amazon’s Kindle (left) and the iPad. Photo: Tim Carmody/Wired.com

Barnes and Noble has touted its Nook Color as “the reader’s tablet” since the product’s inception. But after the company announced the launch of an Android OS update and extended features on the device this week, we’re not sure what to call it anymore.

E-reader? Tablet? E-Tablet?

Version 1.2 of the Nook Color’s firmware launched Monday morning, bringing Android OS 2.2 (Froyo) to existing users of the e-reader tablet. The software includes expansions to web surfing on the device, including Adobe Flash and Air support, as well as the ability to receive e-mail.

The company also announced the launch of the Nook App store. Customers are now able to download and use apps on their Nook Color devices, while still being able to purchase books from the Barnes and Noble reading catalog.

The Nook Color app marketplace will launch with a relatively scant 125-plus apps — less than the amount launched with RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, which debuted with 3,000-plus apps, though more than Motorola’s 50-ish Honeycomb tablet apps available for the Xoom upon its launch. Barnes and Noble says its app market will grow, as over 5,000 developers have already registered for the Nook Color developer program, and hundreds of already-submitted apps are in line for vetting by Barnes and Noble before being released for purchase.

One big drawback: users of the Froyo-based Nook Color won’t be able to download Android apps directly from the Android Market. They’ll have to wait for developers to port versions of apps over to the Nook Color. That’s a gigantic ecosystem — approximately 200,000 apps — that’s completely out of reach for Nook users.

But Barnes and Noble says it’s easy to port Android apps to the Nook Color. “Our SDK [software development kit] is an extension of the standard Android SDK,” said Claudia Romanini, director of developer relations for the Nook Color. “Developers don’t have to do much other than remove features not supported by our hardware (GPS, camera, telephony), and then rescale the app in terms of font sizes and graphics, to make sure it works on our display.”

The Nook Color’s transition into an e-reader-tablet hybrid may be a smart move for Barnes and Noble. Gartner research forecasts sales of 11 million e-readers in 2011, but it’s a much smaller market than tablets, where IDC predicts 44.6 million units to ship in 2011 (IDC defines media tablets as iPads or Android tablets that don’t rely exclusively on E Ink displays).

The Nook Color also edges itself into a smaller market, both figuratively and literally. It’s a seven-inch device, on par with that of the Samsung Galaxy Tab (which also runs Android 2.2 Froyo) and RIM’s PlayBook, and significantly smaller than the 10.1-inch Xoom (Android’s flagship tablet product) and the 9.7-inch iPad 2. The smaller form factor could appeal to audiences that don’t want the unwieldiness that comes with extra screen real estate.

Barnes and Noble’s tablet falls short of other tablets in other respects. The Nook Color is running on an 800-MHz processor with 512 MB of RAM, inferior to the slew of dual-core, 1-GHz-plus processors featured in most 2011 tablet debuts. Also, the Nook Color is currently available in a Wi-Fi only version, but not 3G or 4G. And it’s not running the most recent versions of Android, Android 2.3 “Gingerbread” or the tablet-optimized Android 3.0 “Honeycomb.”

The price, however, is hard to beat. At a paltry $250, the Nook Color’s bottom line bests the priciest of the new tablet debuts, many of which start at upwards of $500.

“The Nook Color with its new Froyo upgrade is not an iPad,” Gartner analyst Allen Weiner wrote in a blog post, “not even close. But those who are looking for a great cross-media reading device with some nice new multimedia bells and whistles, it remains a go-to device.”

To install the new firmware, you can download it from Barnes and Noble’s site and then sideload it onto their device. Or you can wait for an over-the-air update that will be pushed to all Nook Color customers next week.

Samsung seems to be killing time until it finally ships the Galaxy S II by making promo videos for its dual-core superphone. The latest in a series of ads for the S II spends a few precious seconds reminding us just how excellently thin it is, and gives us a particular usage scenario where that slim profile truly becomes practical. We won’t spoil that for you, though we should play spoiler in noting the barely readable small print above — “Thickness of the device may differ by country or carrier.” So remember, just because you and your pen pal from across the world are both buying a product with an excruciatingly specific title like Samsung Galaxy S II doesn’t mean you’ll both get the same thing. All that said, the 8.49mm-thick version of the device is ready to wow you on video just past the break. We’ve thrown a couple of Samsung’s earlier commercials in there as well, just to complete the set.

Continue reading Samsung makes sure you know the Galaxy S II is really, really thin with silly new ad (video)

Samsung makes sure you know the Galaxy S II is really, really thin with silly new ad (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Apr 2011 10:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tell us how you feel. Weddar makes weather reporting a social thing.

Weddar is a socially powered weather app for the iPhone that gives you more personalized, localized reports than you get from the official services. That might sound dumb, but I have been trying it since last week and it makes a surprising amount of sense.

Think of Weddar, which launches today, as something like FourSquare or Instagram, only for weather. The app automatically geolocates you, and you report the current weather with a simple, easy interface. This not only gives extremely localized weather reports: It also gives you a more subjective view than you get from the numbers.

“In Weddar, someone, somewhere in Montjuïc [a hill in Barcelona] will tell you that the weather ‘Feels perfect’”, says Weddar co-founder Ricardo Fonseca, “Another one near the beach will tell you that ‘Feels good but windy,’ because weather conditions really are different in the same city.”

You can also request a report from somewhere far away. Tap and hold on the map somewhere other than your current location and the app will submit a weather request. Another reporter in that place will see it and give a report. So you could check if the beach up the coast is too windy before you head off for the day. Reports fade in opacity as they get older, before disappearing completely.

But why would you bother? Because Weddar turns reporting into a competition. You earn points for “checking in” and then you are charted on a leader board. This currently appears to show only the top 50 reporters worldwide (I’m currently number 26!), so some finer-grained groups may be necessary.

You can also share your reports on Twitter and Facebook. Next time you want to Tweet about all the snow that’s dropping on your part of town, you can do something constructive instead of just whining.

Right now the Weddar universe is sparsely populated, but will obviously get more useful as more people join. Best of all, it’s free, and you can go grab it from the App store right now. An Android version is on its way.

Weddar product page [Thanks, Ricardo!]

Weddar app on iTunes.

See Also:

• Augmented Reality: Magic Vision Lab AR Weather System
• Video: iPad Weather App Gets Hardcore
• Weather Pro: Full-On Meteorology App for iPhone
• Hot Crystal Weather Station from Oregon Scientific
• Review: WeatherNow Delivers You The Weather Report Whether You …

Yearning for some diversity in your hunt for a Honeycomb tablet? Acer’s new Iconia Tab A500 doesn’t really stray from the Tegra 2 norm when it comes to internal specs, but it does have that brushed aluminum back, a full-sized USB 2.0 port, and a sane $450 price point going for it. You’ll get 16GB of storage and 802.11b/g/n WiFi connectivity for your money, though ASUS’ similarly outfitted Eee Pad Transformer should also be prominent on your radar as it’ll ask for an even humbler $399 when it makes its slightly delayed US launch tomorrow. Let’s hope the arrival of these Taiwanese cousins nudges other Android tablets makers into engaging in a bit of price competition, eh?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Acer Iconia Tab A500 now on sale, $450 for aluminum-clad WiFi-only model originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Apr 2011 02:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The G2X may be getting all the attention as the current flagship for T-Mobile, but HTC is bound and determined to make sure it doesn’t stay that way for long. Curious souls may be happy to learn that a sign-up page has been set up for the HTC Sensation to update fans on news and announcements. This is a good sign that nary a precious moment of time is being wasted; after all, we’ve got a full six weeks before the heavily-rumored June 8 launch, and there’s an abundance of opportunities for the two companies to get the word out like crazy between now and then. Who can blame them for taking advantage of one of the summer’s hottest devices? Interested folks should head to the source link below to sign up.

Filed under: Cellphones

HTC Sensation procures online real estate, launches sign-up page originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 Apr 2011 10:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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