Hasta La Gadget!

Ladies and gentlemen, the days of spending $600 for an Android Honeycomb tablet are nearly done — on April 24th, the Acer Iconia Tab A500 will wash that price away with waves of brushed aluminum. That’s when the WiFi-only version of Acer’s Android 3.0 tablet will hit Best Buy and online retail for $450 sans contract, but with the same basic raft of specs as the WiFi-only Motorola Xoom: a dual-core 1GHz Tegra 250 SOC, a 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 LCD screen, 1GB of RAM, a 5 megapixel camera around back and a 2 megapixel imager up front, HDMI-out, not to mention a pair of 3260mAh batteries that Acer claims are capable of eight full hours of life while playing HD video. Sure, it’s a wee bit thicker and heavier and only sports half the flash storage (16GB), too, but if you’re attracted to shiny things, look for our review in the coming weeks — or wait until this summer to get one with AT&T. PR after the break.

Update: As Acer mentioned in its press release, pre-orders for the device are beginning exclusively at Best Buy today, and you can now get your order in online.

Continue reading Acer’s Iconia Tab A500 soaks up the WiFi rays, hits shelves April 24th for $450

Acer’s Iconia Tab A500 soaks up the WiFi rays, hits shelves April 24th for $450 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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An early prank this isn’t. Based on our sources (and the pictorial evidence above), Sprint’s fixing to whack a full Benjamin from the current $299.99 asking price on its Samsung Galaxy Tab starting on Sunday, making it one of the more affordable ways to get your hands on a 3G-enabled tablet of any kind — let alone a Froyo-based slate that’s received its fair share of compliments. Granted, the original Tab is aging at this point, and we still aren’t sure we’d be down for selling our cellular soul for two years just to get a spiffy up-front discount, but hey — at least you know the option awaits you. Oh, and if spending $429.99 sounds a lot better than $199.99 in addition to 24 months of obligation, that’ll apparently also be possible.

[Thanks, Anonymous]

Continue reading Sprint dropping Galaxy Tab to $200 on contract starting April 3rd

Sprint dropping Galaxy Tab to $200 on contract starting April 3rd originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 15:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In business, there’s a right way to take on a rival, and apparently, the Dell way. If you’re up for taking a lesson in the latter, look no further than the CIO article down in our source link. There, Dell’s global head of marketing for large enterprises and public organizations, Andy Lark, attempted to prove why the iPad didn’t stand a chance in the enterprise market — a market where two-thirds of the Fortune 100 are already adopting or piloting the device. The interview meanders on in a few different directions, but the highlight of the whole thing is right here:

“An iPad with a keyboard, a mouse and a case [means] you’ll be at $1500 or $1600; that’s double of what you’re paying,” he claimed. “That’s not feasible…. Apple is great if you’ve got a lot of money and live on an island. It’s not so great if you have to exist in a diverse, open, connected enterprise; simple things become quite complex.”

Even in Australia, the most expensive iPad 2 (a 64GB model with 3G) runs A$949, and unless Lark plans on bundling an Optimus Maximus and Hela Glider Mouse into the package, we’re struggling to see where his estimates came from. In fact, the one thing that major tablet makers have struggled to match the iPad on is price, making the comparison even more galling. ‘Tis a shame — all he would’ve had to do in order to be taken seriously was point out the lackluster screen resolution, omission of a USB port, the missing SD card slot and disgusting reliance on iTunes. Lesson learned, we guess.

Update: Andy himself pinged us to reveal that pricing in the article was actually referring to New Zealand dollars, but confessed that it never cited as such. NZ$1600 rolls down to around $1219, so it starts to make a lot more sense there. This also included basic adapters and such that’d be necessary to make an iPad do fairly basic tasks, like output video and interface with a limited selection of USB peripherals.

Dell’s Andy Lark bashes the iPad, points out far-fetched figures instead of actual flaws originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 10:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

When Apple introduced the iPad, it had but a smattering of third-party applications, but the company stressed its own. As Apple iPhone software SVP Scott Forstall stated in the iPad introduction video, “We looked at the device and we decided: let’s redesign it all. Let’s redesign, reimagine and rebuild every single app from the ground up specifically for the iPad.”

Compare this to the strategy employed by RIM, makers of the upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. One year after the iPad’s debut, Apple’s head start in apps has proven a formidable advantage against the onslaught of slates announced by its competitors in the smartphone world. Some have chosen to latch onto Android and attain backwards compatibility with over 200,000 existing smartphone apps. HP, with its TouchPad as flagship, will circle its wagons of PCs, printers and phones around the webOS platform. However, the announcement this week that RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook will support Android apps says much about how the company sees its position in the tablet wars.

Continue reading Switched On: The PlayBook polyglot

Switched On: The PlayBook polyglot originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Mar 2011 20:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For over a month, we’ve held onto a document — allegedly a Staples tablet guide — that’s been looking increasingly wrong as the days fly by. Tablet release dates were too soon, and prices were far too high, which made us think it was either a forgery or sorely out of date. (Curious? See our copy after the break.) This week, however, Droid-Life published a far more likely looking copy of the very same thing, which appears to be both quite recent and fairly interesting. You’ll see that Samsung’s 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab makes a cameo, as does the 7-inch HP Opal we told you about early this year, and both the BlackBerry PlayBook and Dell Streak 7’s appearances align with recent rumors we’ve seen. The only outlier is an April release date for the Motorola Xoom WiFi, which ads peg for March 27th. The rest is practically a who’s who of upcoming tablets, so we’ll spare you the full churn of the rumor mill. If you want to know what we know about the lot, simply refer to our coverage below.

Update: Oh, and that HTC tablet is listed as a 10-inch one — could it be the EVO View we’ve been waiting for? [Thanks, Morgan]

Read – Dell Streak 10
Read – Acer Iconia Tab
Read – Toshiba’s unnamed Tegra 2 / Honeycomb tablet
Read – HP TouchPad

[Thanks, Billy F.]

Continue reading Staples’ slate of slates leaks out, corroborates Samsung 8.9-incher and the HP Opal?

Staples’ slate of slates leaks out, corroborates Samsung 8.9-incher and the HP Opal? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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