Freescale’s 7-inch tablet runs Android, Chromium OS or Linux, costs $200 (video)

Remember the $200 smartbook reference design that we saw at CES this year? Well, it’s back, it’s holding on to that same price and 7-inch enclosure, but this time it’s also showing off an expanded OS compatibility. Adapting the open source Chromium OS and another Linux variant to the ARM architecture of the prototype device was apparently not much of a hurdle for Freescale, who has an Android option in the works as well and claims to be just optimizing and enhancing the user experience at this point. Presumably one of the enhancements will be the installation of a capacitive touchscreen as the present demonstration requires either a mouse and keyboard or a resistive torture test to operate, but we’ll accept the company’s explanation that this is just a proof of concept and not the final product. Slide past the break to see some HTML5 video running on this bargain bin tablet, and hope that your friendly neighborhood OEM picks these designs up for some retail action.

Continue reading Freescale’s 7-inch tablet runs Android, Chromium OS or Linux, costs $200 (video)

Freescale’s 7-inch tablet runs Android, Chromium OS or Linux, costs $200 (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPad trainspotters divine e-book prices, My Documents and more from Oscar night commercial

Trainspotters, eagle-eyed bloggers, and tech detectives of all stripes have had a field day with last night’s iPad commercial. At the very least, we got a pretty good look at some e-book prices, ranging from Ted Kennedy’s True Compass: A Memoir ($14.99) to Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Journey to Change the World… One Child at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin ($7.99). All gripping reads, for sure, and all more expensive than Amazon. In addition to all that, TUAW has made note of a New York Times button, possibly to bring up NYT bestsellers in the iBookstore. Delving deeper into the UI, a look at the Pages iWork app has revealed a button labeled My Documents (where have we heard that one before?). But Oscar night is not the only place for iPad leaks: according to a tipster named James Barcellano, close viewing of the iPad keynote video has revealed an “Open In…” button during the viewing of a PDF attachment in mail. Perhaps this is an indication that the device’s file system will be a tad more open than we were expecting. Or maybe not! You know how these things go. One more pic after the break.

Continue reading iPad trainspotters divine e-book prices, My Documents and more from Oscar night commercial

iPad trainspotters divine e-book prices, My Documents and more from Oscar night commercial originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP’s Windows 7 Slate Strikes at the iPad

hp-slate

The Apple iPad’s Oscar debut on millions of TVs may have been the talk of the town Monday morning, but not for long. Rival PC maker HP has launched a sneak attack on the iPad.

HP released a video introducing its tablet called the Slate that will run Windows 7 operating system and support Flash — a jab at the iPad, which will not display Flash-based sites or videos.

“With this slate product, you’re getting a full web browsing experience in the palm of your hand,” posted Phil McKinney, vice president and chief technology officer for HP’s personal system group on the company’s blog. “No watered-down internet, no sacrifices.”

HP did not reveal pricing or availability for the device, though it has indicated the Slate will be available this year.

Since the announcement of Apple’s iPad in January, PC makers are rushing to offer tablet devices that can position themselves between the 4-inch touchscreen smartphone and the 12-inch netbook or laptop. They say tablets could be ideal for web surfing, checking e-mail, reading e-books and viewing personal media while sitting on a couch.

Dell has said that it will launch a family of tablets, the first of which will be a PlayStation Portable-sized device with a 5-inch screen codenamed Dell Mini 5. Dell hasn’t disclosed pricing or availability for its product yet. Apple’s iPad starting at $500 will go on sale April 3.

Though HP has not released the specs yet, the company’s video shows a device that’s closer to the 9.7-inch display iPad in its design and size.

HP’s slate seems to offer a full capacitive touchscreen and the familiar pinch-to-zoom gesture. Overall, the design resemblance to the iPad is startling, so the Slate could clearly be a tablet for those who want an iPad-like device on the Windows ecosystem.

The Slate has icons that lets users quickly access the browser and apps such as Pandora and the music player. And like the iPad, it will also display digitized versions of magazines and newspapers.

HP’s video also shows the Slate running a video from MTV, a web-based game designed in Flash, photo-editing tools and a digital version of The New York Times.

As for pricing, McKinney says HP could have released a slate two years ago, but it would have cost around $1,500.

“Since then, chip and screen advancements have given us the ability to create a product that can hit a size, weight, battery life and price point that will make this product a mainstream offering,” he wrote.

Photo/Video: HP Slate (HP)


Apple Debuts iPad Ad During Oscars

Unlike the Superbowl, no one watches the Academy Awards show just for the commercials. That said, in spite of Cablevision’s best attempts, plenty of people watch the Oscars last night, commercials and all. And the awards show was the venue Apple chose to show off the first commercial for its shiny new gadget.

The iPad, which finally got an official release date (April 3rd, pre-orders starting March 12th), was the subject of a typically snazzy 30-second spot that ran down a litany of the device’s features, all from the safety of an anonymous user’s lap.

The big man himself, Steve Jobs, also reportedly made an appearance at the Oscars, taking a moment to appear in the Twitpic of a mohawked fellow showgoer (taken with a Palm Pre, we assume).

Fujitsu’s LifeBook UH900 gets reviewed, notable flaws found

There’s no question that Fujitsu’s LifeBook UH900 is a niche device; much like Sony’s VAIO P, there’s just not a lot of demand for an expensive clamshell with an extremely high resolution and an exceptionally cramped keyboard. That said, there’s a curious seduction surrounding this thing, and critics over at Pocketables seemed to agree. After spending some long days (and nights, don’tcha know?) with the Japanese version of this here device, they came away with a huge mixed bag of emotions. On one hand, the snappy performance and excellent portability made it difficult to put down, but the downright dreadful 2 – 2.5 hours of battery life more or less forced them to. There’s also more gentle gripes about the screen color, the “toy-like” build quality and “useless multitouch.” For us, that’s probably one flaw too many to accept, but the forgiving among us should definitely check out the full skinny before making a final call.

Fujitsu’s LifeBook UH900 gets reviewed, notable flaws found originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Viliv S10 Blade tablet unboxed and multitouched (video)

Viliv S10 Blade tablet unboxed and multitouched

Viliv’s latest touchable objet d’gadget is the S10 Blade convertible tablet, a slim and sophisticated little thing that looks like it will elevate the company out of the ultraportable business and into the realm of things that take up a little bit more room in your messenger bag. Chippy over at UMPCPortal was granted access to a pre-production unit and has delivered this exhaustive unboxing and hands-on video, featuring no less than two minutes of multitouch scribbling. The device looks like it’s a very good size, the form factor looks simple and solid and, with an MSRP starting at just $699, we’re quite eager to see how it holds up in a full review. All in good time, readers. All in good time.

Continue reading Viliv S10 Blade tablet unboxed and multitouched (video)

Viliv S10 Blade tablet unboxed and multitouched (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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More Microsoft Courier Tablet Images, Videos, Surface

This time around, Engadget is the site that said it received a leak of more Microsoft Courier images and videos, with some intriguing use cases.

There’s still nothing more to suggest that the images and videos aren’t anything more tha some artfully created mockups and concept videos. But, if true, the Microsoft device would offer quite a bit more functionality than the iPad, in our opinion. If it’s real, of course.

We’ve embedded the video above.

Microsoft Courier’s Devolution [Microsoft]

These fresh images and details of Microsoft’s Courier paint a slightly different device than the one uncovered a few months ago—tinier seeming, perhaps less genre-busting, and a more direct iPad fighter.

This take is built on the same mobile OS core as Windows Phone 7 and Zune HD, powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 2 hardware. It’s supposedly thinner than an inch, under a pound, and about the size of a 5×7 photo when closed.

As you can see, the device seems even smaller (Update: maybe not), the interface, though still pen-based, seems less whizzy based on these stills than the wildly complex and sophisticated (or maybe just complex) interface shown earlier:

Is Courier progressing or regressing? It’s hard to tell—we’re not sure where in Courier’s development these concepts are from vs. our initial reportage. But if they are newer, a few things stand out.

• Courier’s grown to be more realstic and less different, which is not uncommon for mind-bogglingly radical-seeming products. (Our mind was blown by the original interface, anyway, for better or worse.)

• Shifting from using Windows 7 as its core as Mary Jo Foley first reported to Windows CE6 and mobile guts puts it more squarely against the iPad, using a similar philosophical approach of scaling up to a tablet, vs. scaling down as Microsoft’s always done before. (Which makes sense, given that this is supposedly J. Allard’s project—he’d want to use E&D’s own goods to power his tablet.) Also, mobile guts are cheaper than low-power laptop guts.

• This could be one of the several prototype tablets J. Allard’s got—which would explain why there’s versions that seem more like full Windows 7 vs. Windows Phone 7.

• Engadget pegs the launch date later this year, though we’ve heard separately that Courier won’t show up anytime in 2010.

• We’re still pretty excited.

[Engadget]

Archos announces new line of internet tablets for summer 2010

You thought that the Archos gang were goin’ wild with the svelte 7 Home Tablet (and its self-conscious digiframe-esque sibling), but believe us — the Android funfest is far from over. According to the company, this summer will see the range expand significantly, with new models featuring ARM Cortex processors (up to 1GHz) and “a richer set of features with screen sizes from 3- to 10-inches.” One thing that we probably won’t be seeing “any time soon,” at least according to the kind man we cornered at the Archos booth at CeBIT? An Archos phone. But that’s OK — we don’t even know how we’d find time to talk on the phone with all those tomatoes we have to slice.

[Thanks, Michael]

Archos announces new line of internet tablets for summer 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mio’s Tegra-powered Moov V780 puts maps, 720p video, and the interwebs on dashboards

We’re not suggesting playing a 720p vid while at the wheel, but Mio’s Moov V780 — or “premium PND,” as they call it — sure is a jack of all trades. We spent sometime playing around with the 7-inch tablet at the company’s CeBIT press conference and came away surprisingly impressed with the entire experience. It’s tapered edges and smooth plastic back remind us a lot of the Dell Mini 5, though Mio’s gone with a NVIDIA Tegra chip (we were told Tegra 2, but our friends at jkkmobile sneaked a peak at the device’s console and discovered it was apparnetly rocking the progenitor Tegra chip, at least on the show floor) and created a nice 3D user interface on top of Windows CE. Though it doesn’t support multitouch, the capacitive screen made flicking through the coverflow-like interface a breeze and the virtual keyboard was a pleasure — those who wish to use the device to fire off e-mails can always pick up the carrying case pictured above. So yes, overall we definitely like the Moov V780 and its Internet tablet/PND capabilities… but not enough to pay the 599 euros the company expects to sell it for. Perhaps the video below will convince you, but for now we’ll be waiting for this one to drop in price when it starts shipping this summer.

Continue reading Mio’s Tegra-powered Moov V780 puts maps, 720p video, and the interwebs on dashboards

Mio’s Tegra-powered Moov V780 puts maps, 720p video, and the interwebs on dashboards originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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