Hasta La Gadget!

For over a month, we’ve held onto a document — allegedly a Staples tablet guide — that’s been looking increasingly wrong as the days fly by. Tablet release dates were too soon, and prices were far too high, which made us think it was either a forgery or sorely out of date. (Curious? See our copy after the break.) This week, however, Droid-Life published a far more likely looking copy of the very same thing, which appears to be both quite recent and fairly interesting. You’ll see that Samsung’s 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab makes a cameo, as does the 7-inch HP Opal we told you about early this year, and both the BlackBerry PlayBook and Dell Streak 7’s appearances align with recent rumors we’ve seen. The only outlier is an April release date for the Motorola Xoom WiFi, which ads peg for March 27th. The rest is practically a who’s who of upcoming tablets, so we’ll spare you the full churn of the rumor mill. If you want to know what we know about the lot, simply refer to our coverage below.

Update: Oh, and that HTC tablet is listed as a 10-inch one — could it be the EVO View we’ve been waiting for? [Thanks, Morgan]

Read – Dell Streak 10
Read – Acer Iconia Tab
Read – Toshiba’s unnamed Tegra 2 / Honeycomb tablet
Read – HP TouchPad

[Thanks, Billy F.]

Continue reading Staples’ slate of slates leaks out, corroborates Samsung 8.9-incher and the HP Opal?

Staples’ slate of slates leaks out, corroborates Samsung 8.9-incher and the HP Opal? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hey, Pre 2 owners: want the webOS 2.1 action that Germans have been enjoying on their Pre Pluses for a couple weeks now? Of course you do — and HP’s got your back. The new update’s been posted with support for the Touchstone’s Exhibition mode, Voice Dial, and a plethora of updates to existing apps throughout the system (interestingly, the unlocked Pre 2 seems to have the Rogers model’s update information, but we’re pretty sure it makes no difference).

On a related note, remember Classic? The old-school Palm OS emulator for webOS was so neat back during the Pre’s introduction that Palm worked closely with the developer to get it supported and available — but when webOS 2.0 happened, Palm dropped the emulator like a hot potato by removing critical stuff from the platform’s updated libraries. Well, with some sweat, blood, and a whole lot of elbow grease, it appears that PreCentral forum members have somehow managed to get Classic working on webOS 2.1 once again — and you can, too, with a ten-step procedure. It feels like Palm OS is becoming more of a vintage novelty than a mission-critical platform by the day, but hey, we can understand the sentimental value.

Palm Pre 2 gets official webOS 2.1 update, Classic emulator hacked to work on it originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Mar 2011 15:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s not rare to hear talk of other operating systems employing webOS-like elements — we’ve been asking to see its elegant notification system in iOS for years — but RIM’s BlackBerry Playbook borrows so heavily from the UI concepts of the software built by Palm and now owned by HP that it could easily be confused for a webOS tablet. It handles multiple concurrent applications using a card view and allows you to shut down unwanted apps by swiping them off the screen, a multitasking implementation that exhibits “uncanny similarities” in HP’s eyes to its own TouchPad tablet. Still, the Hewlett Packard team insist that they’re focused on their own products and will “keep innovating, we’ll keep honing and those guys hopefully will continue to see the value in it and keep following us by about a year.” Ouch.

RIM’s response, as espoused by Jeff McDowell, has been to say that “when you’re trying to optimize user experience that juggles multitasking, multiple apps open at once and on a small screen, you’re going to get people landing on similar kinds of designs.” This essentially sidesteps the issue by throwing a subtle compliment HP’s way, but it brings up an interesting question — shouldn’t companies aim to make the best software possible, in spite of it potentially looking like a ripoff of someone else’s work?

HP derides BlackBerry PlayBook OS as a ‘fast imitation’ of webOS, RIM says it’s just good UI design originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola and HP proved that companies can make tablets with UI as usable, if not more so, than the iPad. Now, with the iPad 2 being announced next week, Apple is the one that needs to play catch-up to others. But is it possible without drastically retooling iOS? More »

The official TouchPad launch date isn’t even a date per se, but a season: summer. So we’re surprised to see DigiTimes reporting that HP will take delivery of shipments in March with the TouchPad going on sale in April with plans to ship 4 – 5 million units from the TouchPad “series” in 2011. Based on what we know, both from using the software-incomplete pre-production tablet and from our detailed discussions with Jon Rubinstein, an April retail date would be extremely aggressive to say the least. And DigiTimes‘ accuracy with regard to rumors for companies located outside of its home country of Taiwan is spotty at best. Nevertheless, HP’s new CEO Leo Apotheker did say originally, that products announced at the February 9th event would be on sale just a few weeks later. Unfortunately, only the wee Veer handset got an early spring promise with the Pre 3 joining the TouchPad for a summer launch. Perhaps this will be a case of HP under promising and over delivering? We can’t say for sure. But with any luck, HP could bring some clarity to the matter on March 14th — a day Apotheker had promised a big reveal regarding a “secret answer” and “vision of what HP is capable of in the future… the starting point.” Why so mysterious, Leo?

HP TouchPad on sale in April? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Feb 2011 01:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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