Hasta La Gadget!

Shortly after announcing a blockbuster deal to acquire Palm, HP confessed that it would be “doubling down on webOS,” with near-term plans to “scale it across multiple connected devices.” We took the liberty at that point to assume this meant that a larger webOS-based device was at least sitting around in the rear of someone’s mind, and now it sounds as if Palm loyalists may actually have something tangible to look forward to. According to an unsubstantiated report over at the Examiner, an “insider at HP” has informed the site that “a webOS tablet under the code name HP Hurricane could be released the third quarter of this year.” This all lines up well with what we’ve heard over the past few weeks: HP pledged to take webOS to places it has never been, strong whispers emerged that the HP Slate was being shelved, and now, people close to the HP camp have given a name to a purported webOS tablet slated for Q3. There’s obviously no telling if this is simply hot air being blown, but we wouldn’t be shocked to see HP nail down a webOS slate in time for the sure-to-be-rockin’ 2010 holiday buying season. Or maybe we’re just crossing our fingers, humming aloud and praying to our lucky stars that this all pans out.

[Thanks, Mike and Trever]

webOS-based HP Hurricane tablet rumored for Q3 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 May 2010 19:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Pre Central  |  Examiner  | Email this | Comments

To say that Apple’s iPad has driven the tablet market straight into an era of revival would be understating things greatly, and one million units later, we’re here to ask the earliest of adopters how they’d tweak things if they were ever lucky enough to take over where Jonathan Ive left off. We already know that select changes are coming in iPhone OS 4.0, and the recent Spirit jailbreak has also opened up a whole new world of possibilities, but there’s always work to be done, right? Would you have included a USB port and SD card slot along the edges? Designed it for use on other carriers? Made the screen a bit bigger / smaller? Thrown in a front-facing camera? Go on, spill your deepest, darkest wishes for Apple’s first tablet in comments below. Someone will listen, we promise.

How would you change Apple’s iPad? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 May 2010 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

The Apple iPad is about to go international. The company today announced that its popular tablet will go on sale in nine additional countries on Friday May 28th: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and the U.K. Customers in those countries will be able to pre-order the device next Monday, May 10th.

Apple will add more countries to the list, including Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Singapore, in July of this year. The company has yet to release pricing information for those countries.

Apple pushed back the international sales of iPad by a month, after demand in the U.S. exceeded expectation.

There’s still no official word on whether HP’s Slate has been canned, but the more we hear about ExoPC’s slate, the more we think it could be a pretty stellar Win 7 tablet option. The company’s founder just told us that the tablet is slated (pun intended, good sirs) for a September 7 launch date in the US, Canada and France, and that the 32GB version will retail for $599. As for the specs, the capacitive 11.6-inch tablet will still be using an Atom N450 processor, but will be paired with Broadcom’s Crystal HD card to enable 1080p playback. And that’s not all, they also sent us some more shots of the ExoPC UI Layer, and the interface appears to be incredibly sleek — it looks like you can even save web shortcuts to a Connect Four type layout. There will also be an app store, and the dev kit will be available at the end of June. That’s all beautiful, but hear us out, ExoPC: we’re counting on you to put an end to the Win 7 tablet vaporware trend, okay?

ExoPC Windows 7-based slate not coming until September, will play 1080p vids originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 May 2010 17:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  ExoPC  | Email this | Comments

So you go and pre-order the Archos 7 Home Tablet, thinking it would ship by the end of April. Our deepest apologizes, but according to the official press release below, the 7-inch, Android 1.6 tablet won’t be shipping in the US until early June — though an Archos spokesperson told us that those who pre-ordered may get units before the end of May if they count their lucky stars. The rest of the release doesn’t reveal much, but does confirms that the resistive touchscreen device won’t have access to the Android Marketplace. Instead — and as you can see in the unboxing pictures below — it comes with Archos’ AppsLib store and is preloaded with a few apps, including eBuddy and Aldiko’s e-reader software. Still, we know the $199.99 tablet sounds tempting, but our review should be up in the next few days. In other words, you should probably hold off on sliding that credit card out — after all, she ain’t shipping ’til June.

Continue reading Archos 7 Home Tablet ships to Android lovers in June

Archos 7 Home Tablet ships to Android lovers in June originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 May 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments