Hasta La Gadget!

Poor Samsung can’t catch a break. First executive Lee Young-hee was misunderstood, saying that sales of the Galaxy Tab were “quite smooth” but the transcript of that conversation saying that they were instead “quite small.” Now the company is refuting another claim, that return rates for the Tab are near 16 percent. The company did so in a statement so tersely worded we can feature its entirety right here:

The return rate of the Galaxy Tab in the US as claimed by an North American market research firm is incorrect. According to Samsung Electronics Mobile Communications Business the return rate is below 2 percent.

So, there you have it. Below two percent, and right on par with what we’ve heard for the iPad.

Samsung refutes high Galaxy Tab returns, says rate is ‘below 2 percent’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Feb 2011 11:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP and Palm aren’t being shy about hyping up next week’s big webOS event, and they’re following up on that nod to our leak and CEO Leo Apotheker’s comments with this “Think Beyond” teaser video. As is undoubtedly intended, we can’t make much of the product from these brief glimpses of tapered curves, elegant switchgear, and what appears to be a charging connector — but we’d like to think it’s a tablet, because we are fundamentally very hopeful people. In any case, we’ll see what Palm has in store for us next week — and whether it can live up to all this buildup.

Update: We were just sent a longer version of the video, which we’ve swapped in above — it shows a rear-facing camera and what’s either a microphone or speaker grille. And is it just us, or is this thing looking pretty chubtastic or what? Original Palm video after the break. [Thanks, Raphael]

Continue reading Palm ‘Think Beyond’ teaser shows off glimpses of… something (updated with longer video)

Palm ‘Think Beyond’ teaser shows off glimpses of… something (updated with longer video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re unabashed spec junkies here at Engadget, and can you blame us? There are mountains of new devices every year, and it helps to have bullet points and numerical differentiators to cut through the fluff. That’s why we’re happy to say we got the chance to run the Quadrant benchmark on Motorola’s Tegra 2-powered Xoom, and have a number with which to compare it against the many competitors sure to breech Android’s bow soon. 1823 is the magic number — which doesn’t quite compare to the LG Optimus 2X — but that’s with a non-optimized smartphone version of Quadrant running the app on the tablet’s sizable 1280 x 800 display, no less. What’s more, Quadrant cleared up some of the codename confusion we’ve seen out of Moto as of late, as it turns out the Xoom also identifies itself as both Trygon and Stingray. Good to know!

Motorola Xoom first benchmark: 1823 in Quadrant originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 15:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here’s the Android 3.0 Honeycomb homescreen for tablets. It’s slightly different from Android’s phone-interface to take advantage of the larger tablet-sized screen, which means there’s even better multitasking and widgets. Updating. More »

Just because the first few tablet textbooks have shipped doesn’t mean that members of Kno’s development team are resting on their laurels. Product testing on the Kno tablet continues — and it looks like Lego is doing the heavy lifting. They’ve put our favorite plastic building blocks to work by constructing a Kno stress tester out of Lego Technic parts. The robot checks both the Kno’s ambient light sensor and the ability of its touchscreen to accurately track the system’s pen swipes and flicks. Though not as intricate as a Lego replica of a 2000+ year old mechanical computer, the robot — with its hypnotic pendulum-like motion — is still a sight to behold. Check the video after the break.

Continue reading Lego bot built to test Kno’s tablet textbook, human overlords watch gleefully (video)

Lego bot built to test Kno’s tablet textbook, human overlords watch gleefully (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 02:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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