Hasta La Gadget!

Today at Research In Motion’s annual BlackBerry Developer Conference, CEO Mike Lazaridis announced the company’s new tablet — the PlayBook. The tablet will utilize an OS created by the recently acquired QNX (just as we’d heard previous to the announcement) called the BlackBerry Tablet OS which will offer full OpenGL and POSIX support alongside web standards such as HTML5 (which is all tied into RIM’s new WebWorks SDK). Lazaridis was joined on stage by the company’s founder, Dan Dodge, who said that “QNX is going to enable things that you have never seen before,” and added that the PlayBook would be “an incredible gaming platform for publishers and the players.” RIM also touted the PlayBook’s ability to handle Flash content via Flash 10.1, as well as Adobe AIR apps. The new slate — which Lazaridis described as “the first professional tablet” — will sport a 7-inch, 1024 x 600, capacitive multitouch display, a Cortex A9-based, dual-core 1GHz CPU (the company calls it the “fastest tablet ever”), 1GB of RAM, and a 3 megapixel front-facing camera along with a 5 megapixel rear lens (and yes, there will be video conferencing). There was no mention of onboard storage capacity during the keynote, though the devices we just spied in our eyes-on post are labeled 16GB and 32GB on their back panels. The PlayBook will be capable of 1080p HD video, and comes equipped with an HDMI port as well as a microUSB jack, 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi, and Bluetooth 2.1. The device clocks in at a svelte 5.1- by 7.6-inches, is only 0.4-inches thick, and weighs just 400g (or about 0.9 pounds).

In terms of interface, the OS looks like a mashup of webOS and the BlackBerry OS, even allowing for multitasking via what amounts to a “card” view. Interestingly, RIM and QNX boasted of the PlayBook’s multimedia and gaming functions, but Mike Lazaridis also described the tablet as “an amplified view of what’s already on your BlackBerry.” That’s due largely in part to a function of the tablet which allows you to siphon data off of your BlackBerry handset via Bluetooth tethering and display it on your PlayBook (a la the ill-fated Palm Foleo). While the PlayBook doesn’t seem to rely on phone content alone, the press release from the company says that users can “use their tablet and smartphone interchangeably without worrying about syncing or duplicating data.” RIM didn’t hand out any solid launch dates beyond “early 2011,” and of course, there was no mention of retail price. We’ve got a slew of content after the break, including the PlayBook spec rundown, the company’s press release, and a full video of the device (and UI) in action — so take a look!

Continue reading RIM introduces PlayBook — the BlackBerry tablet

RIM introduces PlayBook — the BlackBerry tablet originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 16:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you had any doubts about the most important date in your Windows Phone 7 calendar, you can now dismiss them. Microsoft has just gotten in touch to ask us very kindly to “save the date” October 11 for a 2PM London press conference (9AM ET for Americans) that will last all the way until 5.30PM. Unless Steve Ballmer’s planning on reading the Iliad all that time, that sounds like there’ll be hands-on opportunities with WP7 devices to us. Of course, there’s nary a mention of any phones in the brief invite, but given the multiple sources nailing that exact date as Microsoft’s European launch, we’d be shocked to see anything else. Either way, we’re bringing our trusty liveblogging equipment and will keep you informed whatever happens.

Microsoft hosting a press conference on October 11, we’ll be there live! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 06:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tucked away at the bottom of a news story about who’ll be carrying the 7-inch Galaxy Tab in Ireland this year is the promise of a 10-inch Tab (presumably for the whole world) next year. This comes straight from local General Manager Gary Twohig, who seems to have casually disclosed his company’s plans for a 10-inch Android slate in the first half of 2011. Beyond that, all we know is that it’ll include the V8 JavaScript Engine that first showed up as a touted feature in Froyo, though if we had to bet our Led Zep record collection, we’d probably say this 10-incher will be holding out for Android 3.x — either Gingerbread or Honeycomb — for an experience better optimized to run on larger screens. In fact, that may be the likeliest reason why this new tablet didn’t debut with its 7-inch sibling: waiting on a better OS.

[Thanks, Iain]

Update: The original story has undergone a bit of massaging since we first reported on it and the connection between Gary Twohig and the 10-inch Tab has now been removed. We’re still inclined to believe the content, however, as Samsung itself has not been shy about its plans to bring multiple Galaxy Tab sizes to the world.

10-inch Galaxy Tab promised for 2011 by Samsung Ireland General Manager (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Sep 2010 07:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh Michael, such a teaser you are. Word has it that the head honcho of Dell Inc. has just pulled out yet another Android tablet from his pocket, only this time it’s a 7-inch whopper. Sadly, Mr. Dell left us high and dry with dates and specs (and the lack of photos from the event doesn’t help, either), but we’ll bet you that this is the long-rumored Looking Glass. On a more solid note, Dell also announced that the smaller Streak is heading to Best Buy next month. That’s great, except some of us would rather see the tabletphone getting its share of Froyo sooner — here’s hoping that this bigger tablet won’t disappoint us with an outdated OS.

Update: As it just so happens, Reuters snapped a pic of Mr. Dell himself holding the tablet on stage, and sure enough, it resembles that leaked Looking Glass even from quite a distance away.

Michael Dell teases new 7-inch Android tablet, says Streak to land in Best Buy next month (update: pic) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference 2010 just kicked off in San Jose, and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has shared something interesting with us on stage — thanks to a partnership with The Portland Group, it’s bringing the CUDA parallel computing framework to x86. Previously limited to NVIDIA GPUs — and the lynchpin of NVIDIA’s argument for GPGPU computing — CUDA applications will now run on “any computer, or any server in the world.” Except those based on ARM, we suppose. Still no word on NVIDIA’s x86 CPU.

NVIDIA teams with PGI for CUDA-x86, gifts its brand of parallelism to the world originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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