Hasta La Gadget!

Lack of Google’s official app store has been a thorn in the side of would-be Android tablet makers for a good long while, and it looks like the Tegra 2-powered Advent Vega will be no exception when it hits the high street tomorrow. Electricpig took the £249 device for a spin, chatting up Advent product manager Adam Lockyer the whole time, and discovered that while the 10-inch tablet will come with the 5,000-app-strong Archos AppsLib store, it won’t have Android Market at launch. “The plan is that when you get to January time, there’s a new release of Android and you’ll be able to get the marketplace on this product,” Lockyer said, suggesting that maybe — just maybe — the availability of Android Market itself might be one of the fragmentation issues Google intends to fix in Gingerbread. Wouldn’t that be nice? Video after the break.

[Thanks, Chak I.]

Continue reading Advent Vega tablet won’t come with Android Market, might get it as part of Gingerbread update (video)

Advent Vega tablet won’t come with Android Market, might get it as part of Gingerbread update (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 17 Oct 2010 13:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yeah, it’s almost time for the holidays, and smart busy-bodies are already checking items off their shopping lists. For that special someone, consider the most outrageously overpriced plastic toy we’ve ever seen. $65,000 buys you this “Emotive Robotic Avatar” from Hammacher Schlemmer, a little servo-actuated guy that can wave its arms around and go from looking happy (above) to evil (below). It’s all controlled by a tablet PC with a 30 foot range that receives a real-time video feed, as we saw when we checked this guy out at the Toy Fair earlier this year, back when he was called Quasai. As shown in the video after the break, the “operator” can even speak through the robot, which will pitch shift his or her voice, a trick sure to give your children nightmares. If that doesn’t work, just tell ’em you blew their college fund to buy the thing and they’ll have to get work study jobs. That ought to send the shivers up their spines.

[Thanks, Evan]

Continue reading Hammacher Schlemmer’s tablet-controlled ‘Emotive Robotic Avatar’ captures your heart, nest egg

Hammacher Schlemmer’s tablet-controlled ‘Emotive Robotic Avatar’ captures your heart, nest egg originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 08:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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An HP Slate it isn’t, but if you plop down $399.99 for the eStation C510, you’ll also bring home a detachable 7-inch Android 2.1 tablet that’s designed to act as a “wireless digital companion and control panel for remote printing.” We’ll point you to the source link if you’re actually interested in the printer specs, and you can head right over here for a hands-on preview of the (admittedly lackluster) tablet. But do us a favor — don’t buy this thing for the slate alone, okay? Okay.

HP Photosmart eStation C510 printer / Android tablet now on sale originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Oct 2010 14:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ah, so now we understand Verizon’s intentions to hastily roll out LTE service to NFL cities. The NFL, which has sided with Sprint over the years when it comes to cellular distribution of content, is apparently in even deeper talks with newfound partner Big Red in order to get its prized content into even more hands. As the idea of watching NFL games on-the-go because more and more sensible, the league is apparently mulling the decision to distribute games (and potentially more) on the next big thing. You know, tablets. Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s senior vice president of media strategy, recently said the following: “The NFL will be on a tablet. It’s a question of what shape or form. We are currently talking to Verizon about it.” VZW declined to comment on the rumblings, but it’s really not a shocker — the carrier’s doing everything it can to get a live LTE network here in the States, and inking a deal with America’s most popular sporting league would obviously bring in boatloads of revenue. The real question is this: what tablet is the NFL eying, and if it’s not the Samsung Galaxy Tab, what’s Verizon’s second tablet going to be? Inquiring minds would love to know.

NFL ‘currently talking’ with Verizon to distribute programming on tablets originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Sep 2010 20:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Before IDF 2010, you’d likely never heard of a South Korean electronics company called Ocosmos. Now, their crazy concepts are bursting out of the woodwork. This OCS-9 tablet above not only boasts an Oak Trail processor and 9-inch, 1024 x 768 capacitive touchscreen, but also a removable stylus that slots into a hole into the back to stand the tablet up in either portrait or landscape modes and — get this — a slide-out, removable touchscreen QWERTY keypad with two OMOS Keys on either side. There’s a 3 megapixel webcam on the front and Windows 7 will reportedly run inside, and the whole thing slots into a TV dock with a host of video ports to let you watch video when sitting down. No word on battery life or performance quite yet, as the tablet’s most definitely an early prototype, but the company’s shooting for a working version by CES and a release in Q2 2011, for a $500 estimated price. Here’s hoping these dreams come true, because as far as concepts go, we likey.

Update: Now with close-up pics of that removable keypad, stylus stand and more, plus a few shots of another potential look for the OCS-1. These folks never stop prototyping! By the by, we’re told the OCS-9 tablet has pretty much the same hardware inside, including GMA 600 graphics and 802.11 b/g WiFi.

Ocosmos unveils crazy OCS-9 tablet with Oak Trail CPU, stylus stand and removable keyboard (update: close up pics!) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Sep 2010 23:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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