Hasta La Gadget!

MeeGo’s tablet version is slated to drop later this year, but unlike everyone else, it will not be running Android. Rumor has it Linspire, the Linux guys that were on the early Acer Aspire netbooks, wants to be on board.

MeeGo has released a netbook already, but is expected to release the Lite Tablet Edition version later this year, according to Linpus.

The Linspire-MeeGo tablet will likely support touch-based input methods and gestures. Linpus will be creating touchscreen-specific apps to run on MeeGo, such as an eReader, maps, mail, a browser, and a media player. Linpus will also include a contact manager.

Pricing and availability information (beyond fourth quarter 2010) was not available.

via Liliputing

The tablet wars are set to heat up. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion may announce its tablet next week at the company’s developer conference — which starts Monday in San Francisco — according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

RIM has already trademarked ‘BlackPad’ and ‘SurfBook,’ and it’s likely that the firm’s new tablet could carry one of these names.

Chinese paper Apple Daily reported last month that RIM has chosen Taiwanese notebook manufacturer Quanta to produce at least 2 million tablets this year. RIM and Quanta were said to be targeting a $500 price tag for the BlackPad to make it competitive against Apple’s iPad.

RIM’s tablet announcement, if it happens next week, will come just weeks after the debut of the Samsung’s 7-inch tablet, the Galaxy Tab.

Since Apple introduced the iPad in April, tablets have made a big comeback and become the hottest consumer gadgets of the year. Apple has sold more than 3 million iPads. Dell launched the Streak, a tablet with a 5-inch screen, in June. Samsung has already said its tablet will be available on all four major U.S. carriers — AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile — but hasn’t announced exact pricing or availability.

BlackBerry’s new tablet will differ from its peers. It will support Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G connectivity but through tethering the device to a BlackBerry smartphone. (Other tablets have these connectivity features built in.) Essentially, the BlackBerry tablet has been designed as a “companion” to the phone, according to earlier reports.

The BlackBerry tablet will likely have a 7-inch screen and run a new operating system designed by QNX Software, a company that RIM acquired earlier this year, says the Journal.

RIM has been trying to go beyond its core audience of business users and attract more consumers, especially with the launch of such devices as the recent touchscreen phone Torch. A BlackBerry tablet seems like yet another step in that direction.

See Also:

• BlackBerry Tablet ‘BlackPad’ Readies to Take On the iPad
• Research In Motion Is Testing a Tablet
• Cisco Announces the Cius, the BlackBerry of Tablets
• Samsung Introduces 7-Inch Tablet to Rival iPad
• Samsung Tablet to Debut on Big Four U.S. Carriers

Photo: (Sean Hobson/Flickr)

Last night I received an e-mail from Virtualization firm Citrix stating that the company, “confirmed today that [it] will support the upcoming Blackberry Black Pad when it ships.” Odd, I thought to myself. I’m pretty sure RIM hasn’t actually announced the thing.

There has been a rumor floating around for several months now, that Research in Motion is set to reveal a BlackBerry OS-based business tablet to break into the consumer tablet space currently dominated by Apple’s iPad. The product has yet to come out of the rumor stage, however. I wondered if it was possible that I had missed a major news cycle somewhere along the way–or perhaps I was simply losing my mind.

I contacted a Citrix spokesperson, who told me,

The product has not yet been announced. However, I wanted to give you a head’s up that Citrix is committed to support the device when it is released (Citrix already supports the iPad, iPhone and other mobile devices). Let me know if you’re interested in learning more or speaking with Citrix on this topic.

The question, then, was whether Citrix was simply trying to drum up some press based around a product that, for all intents and purposes, might as well be vaporware (the spokesperson did, after all, manage to get that little plug for the company’s other products)–or whether the company knew something the rest of us didn’t. After all, it’s not unusual for a company to give a third-party the head’s up on a product before it’s official announced. What’s a bit more unusual, however is when that third-party lets that information slip first.

HP’s been saying it’ll use webOS on a tablet since the first moment it bought Palm, but it looks like things are starting to pick up ahead of that “early 2011” due date — in an email to the Palm Developer Community, HP’s Peter Helm says webOS will be used on “tablet-style devices similar to the iPad.” Check it:

Now that we are officially part of HP, we are going full speed ahead with our applications initiative. Our proprietary operating system, webOS, is now the OS that will be used in HP’s mobile devices. This includes mobile handsets as well as tablet-style devices similar to the iPad. We will accordingly leverage Palm’s ability to innovate and the scale of HP’s vast install base and distribution network previously unavailable to us.

Yeah, that’s pretty much the Rorschach test of seemingly-innocuous quotes; you can read it as anything from a meaningless passing reference to the market leader to an overt hint that we’ll be looking at an ARM-based device with a 9-inch display and a lengthy battery life. The possibilities are endless — let’s just hope whatever Palm and HP are actually working on delivers on the enormous promise of the platform.

[Thanks, Pierre-Marc]

HP says webOS tablets to be ‘similar to the iPad’ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So here it is, after months of details coming to light an inkdrop at a time, the HP eStation all-in-one printing solution. But we’re not gonna dwell but on half of that: the 7-inch tablet skinned out by Yahoo and powered by Android 2.1. As we expected, though, the Google experience is decidedly less that you’re accustomed to: search is Yahoo only, and our attempt to find an alternate method was met with a barebones settings menu. Additionally, there is no access to Android Market, relegating your customization instead to HP’s print-heavy app store — sorry, no games, as that’s not what the company wants to focus on here, according to the rep. That also means no Gmail, much to our dismay. What Yahoo has provided is a suite of apps and widgets that actually work well in their simplicity, from weather to stocks and search.

We were reminded at numerous points that this is a prototype build, and for good reason — the responsiveness was questionably slow, especially in the browser. That said, the Nook store and e-reading app was as fluid as you’d ever need. WiFi is equipped on both the tablet and the printer for cloud-based connectivity on the go. Battery life is measured at four to six hours, and Android 2.2 is expected by holiday still sans Market, but beyond Flash (and at this point we question its performance on this hardware), there’s probably not a lot of value-add in the update. Expect this AIO to be shipping the in the next few weeks.

Continue reading HP’s Photosmart eStation Android tablet hands-on (update: video!)

Filed under: Tablet PCs

HP’s Photosmart eStation Android tablet hands-on (update: video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Sep 2010 11:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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