Hasta La Gadget!

When he first showed off the original iPad, Steve Jobs talked up the “fourth screen.” But is four really enough? We mean, really? Could the fifth screen really have been on our wrists all along? Sure, we’ve seen plenty fall flat with smartwatches, including big names like Microsoft and Sony Ericsson, but that hasn’t stopped companies from trying. The Meta Watch certainly isn’t Fossil’s first connected wristwatch — nor is it the first watch SDK — but it does have a lot going for it, including a thumbs up from HP. The two models are built on Texas Instruments’ CC2560 Bluetooth platform, which allow them to receive push notifications from smartphones and tablets, so you can read e-mail, tweets, or Facebook updates — assuming the right developers get onboard. And since none of the apps actually live on the watches, they get solid battery life — seven full days on a charge, according to the company. You can pre-order the watches now, or wait until they officially go on sale in July for $200 a pop — make sure to set a reminder on your nano. Press release after the break.

Continue reading Fossil Meta Watch shows you where you can put your fifth screen

Fossil Meta Watch shows you where you can put your fifth screen originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 May 2011 18:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia is joining the ever-growing in-demand tablet market, according to Stephen Elop, the CEO of Nokia Corp. He said that the company is planning to design a unique tablet. Here are Mr. Elop’s full comments.

We have a number of options in the tablet computing space given the changing strategy that we have. For example, we could take advantage of Microsoft technology and software and build a Windows-oriented tablet, or we could do things with some of the other software assets that we have. Our team right now is assessing what’s the right tablet strategy for Nokia how does that fit in

There are now over 200 different tablets on the marketplace, only one of them is doing really well. My challenge to the team is I don’t want to be the 201st tablet on the market that you cannot tell from all of the others. We have to take an uniquely Nokia prospective and so the teams are working very hard on something that would be differentiating relative to everything else that is going on in the market

While Nokia has yet to set a target date or even develop one, we can all take a look at what we can expect from it. Since Nokia has dropped Symbian, that leaves us just two natural choices Windows or MeeGo. However, Nokia seems confident that its tablet will be state of the art, which means that Android or Linux could be used.

Like we stated above, all of this news is just the start of it for Nokia. But it should be exciting to see how Nokia takes on Apple, along with Android in this tough market.

Via Xbit Labs

The saga of the Notion Ink Adam is a tale like many we could name — it’s the story of a tiny company struggling to bring a vision to market, facing friction from investors, factories and the march of time itself. The difference is that the Adam captured the imaginations of gadget fiends like ourselves with ideas that were fantastic from day one and are still novel now that it’s finally been released, including a paneled UI, full USB host functionality, and of course that Pixel Qi screen. But does the Adam deliver on the promises of unifying form and function with such technology? In two words: Not really.

Continue reading Notion Ink Adam review

Notion Ink Adam review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last month, the Motorola Xoom was the only officially sanctioned Android 3.0 tablet available in the United States. Now there are four — the T-Mobile G-Slate arrived last week, the Acer Iconia Tab A500 this week, and the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer is on sale today, assuming you can find one. All have the same basic silicon inside, but oh-so-slightly different approaches to shape, such that price might honestly be the deciding factor these days. That’s where we thought this WiFi-only Acer Iconia Tab had an edge, launching at $450, but now that ASUS has shaken the money tree with a $400 figure for the Eee Pad Transformer, we doubt other price tags will stick. It could be the tiniest of differentiators that shifts your opinion in favor of a particular slate. What’s a prospective tablet buyer to do? Join us on a tour of the Acer Iconia Tab A500’s particular perks and quibbles after the break, and we’ll tell you.

Continue reading Acer Iconia Tab A500 review

Acer Iconia Tab A500 review originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Focusing on the things that matter most to Sony—style, and media—their first two tablets are running Android 3.0 (yes, Honeycomb) and come in two very different form factors. You’ll recognize the familiar shape of the S1, which measures 9.4 inches, whereas the S2 is a sort-of DS-type clamshell that we saw sketches of back in February, with dual-screens that both measure 5.5 inches. More »