Hasta La Gadget!

Motorola files dozens upon dozens of FCC certifications a year, so what makes us so sure this here IHD-P56LS1 is the might Atrix 4G for AT&T? Fair question: for one thing, it’s got 850 and 1900MHz 3G (or 4G, in AT&T parlance). Furthermore, it’s approved for 5GHz 802.11n WiFi, which is extraordinarily rare for a phone — and it was a feature Moto was sure to pimp during the Atrix’s CES unveiling. Oh, and finally, it’s identified in the filing as model number MB860, which would be the Atrix’s model number. So yeah, there’s one more checkmark to tick off prior to release… which hopefully won’t be too much longer, because we’re seriously jonesing to do some laptop docking.

Motorola Atrix 4G gets FCC approval originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 17:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like buttonless is in this season.

No, not on this spring’s selection of evening wear. We’re talking about renderings of HP’s rumored webOS-powered tablet published this week on Engadget. It’s a sleek, all-black rendition of what we may be seeing from HP soon, and like the soon to be debuted Motorola Xoom, the tablet has got a button-free face.

While the pictures, leaked by an anonymous Engadget source, aren’t the most detailed, there are a few new things we can glean from taking a look. The finish on the back of the all-black tablet is slick-looking, differentiated from the rubberized backing you might find on, say, the new Galaxy Tab 4G. There’s a mini USB port at the bottom of the tablet along with front-facing camera, both found in many of this year’s forthcoming tablets. Two speakers appear to be on the left side and one on the right, a configuration which adapts to stereo listening in both portrait and landscape orientations. And of course, Palm’s webOS is running on the mystery tablet’s screen.

While HP is rumored to have both a 7-inch and 9-inch tablet in the works — codenames “Opal” and “Topaz,” respectively — the pictures we saw were of Topaz. Engadget has posted additional details on the HP tablets, reporting that they will be bundled with a cloud-based storage service, HP’s “Beats” audio processing, and a “tap to share” feature for transferring URLs, documents and music between the tablet and a phone simply by tapping them together.

When are we going to see these bad boys? An exact date remains to be seen, although the leaked Palm marketing materials suggest both a Wi-Fi and AT&T 3G version of the 7-inch Opal to ship in North America, Europe and China in September of this year. The sheet also lists a 4G Verizon-carried Opal to ship in September, and a 4G AT&T-carried version to come in July of 2012.

HP did not comment on the rumors.

Separate reports have emerged suggesting we could see the 9-inch tablet even sooner. HP will begin shipping Topaz units as early as March, according to sources who told DigiTimes. HP expects to ship somewhere between 45 to 48 million notebooks in 2011, with the webOS-operated tablets being the lion’s share of those numbers.

Before HP acquired Palm last April for $1.2 billion, Palm had tried to reinvigorate its ailing mobile market with webOS-based smartphones like the Palm Pre and the Palm Pixi. Since Palm’s acquisition, HP has been trying to move the much-lauded webOS over to HP products like the ill-fated HP Slate.

A September release for HP’s Opal would put HP behind the forthcoming tablet debuts from Motorola, Lenovo and a potential iPad 2 release. But a staggered approach with Topaz’s March shipping date could keep HP up to speed with its competitors, and keep us puzzled with yet another tablet to choose from in the spring.

Photo: webOS interface/HP

See Also:

• HP Buys Palm for $1.2 Billion
• Palm webOS Headed to HP Tablet, Printer
• HP Slate Could Get a Makeover With Palm’s WebOS
• HP Slate Details Leaked: $550 Netbook, Minus Keyboard

After an exhausting and exhilarating week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, the Gadget Lab is back with a full report on what was hot at the show.

CES 2011 saw an explosion of tablets from manufacturers big and small, and a multitude of new smartphones that connect to the new 4G cellular network.

Motorola and Research In Motion hogged the media spotlight with their tablet offerings. Due for release in the middle of this year, Motorola’s Xoom will run Honeycomb, a version of Android tailored for tablet devices. The problem was we didn’t get to try it, because Motorola isn’t done making the Xoom yet.

RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook, on the other hand, was a real, working product. Dylan got his hands on the tablet and was very impressed.

I personally found the new Android smartphones to be the coolest part of the show, namely the Motorola Atrix 4G (even though I had some trouble dealing with Motorola). It features an Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor that makes it very powerful. Even more interesting, it plugs into a dock that turns it into a desktop-like computer that you can control with a mouse and computer.

We close the podcast with a quick peek at Apple’s next operating system upgrade for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch: iOS 4.3. We gained access to a developer beta, and the coolest new feature is multitouch gesturing to multitask on the iPad. (Don’t forget to read our close look at iOS 4.3 beta.)

Like the show? You can also get the Gadget Lab video podcast via iTunes, or if you don’t want to be distracted by our unholy on-camera talent, check out the Gadget Lab audio podcast. Prefer RSS? You can subscribe to the Gadget Lab video or audio podcast feeds

Gadget Lab audio podcast #99

http://downloads.wired.com/podcasts/assets/gadgetlabaudio/GadgetLabAudio0099.mp3

CES isn’t all about the gadgets and the deals. Sometimes, it’s about the booth babes — and the recycling.

At the show last week, Wired.com’s video team interviewed four people for their unusual perspectives on the enormous electronics tradeshow, which brought an estimated 140,000 people to Las Vegas for a weeklong download of gadget news and wheeling and dealing.

Above, iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens points out just how wasteful a tradeshow like CES is. Not once, he says, did he see a recycling bin, and tradeshow goons even made him give up the water bottle he was trying to keep for reuse.

Besides conspicuous consumption and waste, another aspect of CES is the booth babes: Attractive, scantily-clad women hired to hawk a company’s wares. The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal looked into the business and found that, yes, there are companies you can call up if you want, say, to hire a dozen Penthouse models who can talk about gadgets.

We interviewed Wired magazine publisher Howard Mittman on the rising importance of CES to the media industry. With the proliferation of tech-based media distribution platforms like the internet and the iPad, CES is turning into a must-attend show for people in publishing now too. And business is pretty good, according to Mittman.

Finally, one of the biggest stories of the show was the comeback of Motorola, a company that many left for dead a couple years ago. Wired’s Fred Vogelstein, who was at CES working on a magazine story, talks about the Android-powered return of Moto.

Videos: Annaliza Savage (producer), John Ross (camera), Michael Lennon and Fernando Cardoso (editing)

One day, you’ll have a little tablet or phone, and carry it everywhere. It’ll be your only computer. When you need to use a “real” PC, you’ll dock it. Motorola’s Atrix is a little glimpse at that day. More »