Posts Tagged ‘
tablet ’
Friday, September 2nd, 2011
With the torrent of carbon-copy Android tablets showing no sign of abating, Sony’s Tablet P is a welcome breath of fresh air. With a lightweight clamshell design, two 5.5in touchscreens and a 1GHz Tegra 2 processor, Sony’s put together something rather extraordinary.
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Thursday, September 1st, 2011
With Samsung revealing its original 7in Galaxy tab in IFA 2010, it’s only fitting that IFA 2011 sees the arrival of the all-new Galaxy Tab 7.7.
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Wednesday, August 31st, 2011
The tablet: Samsung 700T1A
With everyone’s gaze fixed upon Android and iOS, the humble Windows tablet has shrunk from the limelight. Samsung wants to drag it back to centre-stage, however, and its sub-1kg 11.6in 700T1A looks just like the ticket.
Windows 7 remains
We can understand if the mere thought of a Windows 7 tablet is enough to set alarm bells ringing, but Samsung’s Series 7 700T marks the company’s first attempt to revitalise the genre.
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Thursday, July 28th, 2011
Binatone’s a name usually associated with landline phones but, with that market dwindling, the firm has decided that Android is the way forward. Google’s Open Source OS is present in three of its new products.
The most intriguing is its iHomePhone 2 – an Android device that, as the name suggests, replaces your landline handset. It’s an unusual idea, but one Binatone seems confident can work, with the £99 inc VAT gadget allegedly aimed at both techies and novices.
The glossy handset sits in a circular cradle and certainly looks the part but, when we got our hands on the device, we found problems. The 2.8in resistive screen is grainy, pallid and comes with its own stylus, and the inclusion of Android 2.1 means it’s already behind the curve.
It’s clear the hardware underpinning the iHomePhone 2 isn’t up to task, either. Even an empty notification bar took far too long to judder towards the bottom of the screen and, when we pressed the “Home” button, the desktop took several seconds to load – a lifetime on a phone.
Still, Binatone is clearly excited about the product, enthusing that it’s more of a “living room ” device than a mere phone. To that end, the firm’s PR demonstrated Android’s stock eBook-reader app and its FM Radio software – although both of these came with obvious caveats: we don’t know anyone who’ll want to squint at a 2.8in screen and, with no WiFi syncing to the dock, it’ll have to be attached to the device to play audio through the speakers.
There’s no access to Android’s Market either – instead, the iHomePhone uses Giga Store. Binatone claims thousands of apps are available but, the ubiquitous Angry Birds aside, we couldn’t see anything we recognised.
The firm also used its recent event to announce its latest tablet device. The HomeSurf 705 is, as the name suggests, a 7in Android tablet – and, like the iHomePhone, it comes with an eye-catching price of just £99 inc VAT.
It also shares many of the same faults: no access to the Android Market, with the Giga Store making another appearance, and a reliance on Android 2.1, with no plans for the device to be upgraded in its lifetime.
Binatone wasn’t able to confirm what hardware underpins the HomeSurf but, during our time with the product, it proved sluggish and unresponsive. It’s not as slow as the iHomePhone but, of course, it’s no iPad.
Still, at least the basics are present and correct: an 800 x 480 native resolution across the screen, 2GB of internal memory, and a microSD card slot. We’re not hopeful but, at £99 inc VAT, it could prove to be a tempting bargain – look out for our full review soon.
Binatone’s third new product is its new eBook reader, the ReadMe Mobile. Again, it’s running Android 2.1 and, again, it comes with several quirks: its 7in, 800 x 480 is a TFT panel that’s not touch-enabled and, unlike other eBook readers, it’s horizontally orientated – although, once is weak processor has stirred into life, it’s possible to switch to portrait mode.
Doing this, though, renders its qwerty keyboard somewhat obsolete – a feature Binatone claims many of its customers have wanted for a long time. Beside the keyboard sits a touchpoint, similar to the BlackBerry Bold, and four cursor keys. They’re used for navigating the interface, but working our way through the interface proved tortuous and the buttons themselves felt weak.
There’s the issue of battery life, too: Binatone’s spokesperson answered the question “will it let you read Lord of the Rings” with an enthusiastic “absolutely not!”, and confirmed an estimated lifespan of two and a half hours.
Combine this with the £129 inc VAT price and, well, we’re not sure why you’d buy this over the firm’s HomeSurf tablet, which includes the same Android eBook app. Still, will reserve final judgement until our review – watch this space.
In the mean time, do you want an Android home phone, a £99 inc VAT tablet, or an eBook reader running Google’s Open Source OS? Let us know in the comments.
Binatone is a name usually associated with landline phones but, with that market dwindling, the firm has decided Android is the way forward.
Of three new Android products shown off at a launch event, the most intriguing is its iHomePhone 2 – an Android device that, as the name suggests, replaces your landline handset. It’s an unusual idea, but one Binatone is confident can work, with the £99 inc VAT gadget ambitiously aimed at both techies and novices.
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Wednesday, June 29th, 2011
Every company has spent millions since the launch of the iPad trying to leap onto the bandwagon that Apple built, but Archos released its first Android tablet way back in 2009 – and is now unveiling its latest 8in and 10.1 models, dubbed the G9 series.
The most important and, potentially, the most confusing aspect of the two new machines? Price. The base figures are impressive, with the 8in 80 G9 starting at £199 inc VAT and the 10in 101 G9 weighing in at £249 inc VAT, but CEO Henri Crohas confirmed that a multitude of models – all running Honeycomb – will be available from the Autumn launch.
Crohas explained that SKUs will vary on storage: both the 8in and 10.1in models will be sold with “at least 8GB of Flash” on-board, with more expensive models offering 16GB and 32GB.
In a departure from other tablets, Archos is also offering both of its new models with a 250GB hard disk; Crohas explained that Archos has “redesigned the file system [and] the guts of Android”, as well as installing a “four gigabyte flash memory cache” to ensure the platter-based models won’t suffer from slowdown.
Further details were confirmed by Archos COO Loic Poirier, who explained that “higher models” will be available with 1GB of RAM, too – and cheaper tablets will be furnished with just 512MB. He wasn’t giving away all of the prices, only revealing that upgrading the 10.1in model to 16GB of flash storage will up the price to £279 inc VAT, and you’ll have to fork out £399 inc VAT for the 10.1in model with a 250GB hard disk. Prices for the various 8in tablets, or 32GB models, weren’t available.
Both models are powered by a dual core 1.5GHz Texas Instruments processor built around the Cortex A9 instruction set, with graphical duties handled by the Neon GPU on the same chip. That’s an impressive-sounding part, and Crohas said the processor “can go up to 50% faster” than most of its rivals – although that statistic was borne out of the aging Drhystone benchmark, which features old code that isn’t necessarily representative of real-life applications.
That’s quite a boast, but Android still felt slightly sluggish as we navigated the OS. Still, media handling – an Archos speciality – proved better, with 720p versions of The King’s Speech and The Dark Knight, and a 1080p version of Toy Story 3, playing flawlessly. Even so, the screen resolutions mean you won’t be able to watch true 1080p content without using the mini HDMI output.
The budget can be felt elsewhere, too. The plastic exterior can’t match the built quality of sheer style of metallic rivals, and you’ll have to shell out extra cash for 3G, with a recessed area in the rear of both tablets able to house an Archos-branded dongle that’ll cost £49 and accept your own SIM card.
Seperate 3G dongles, a range of cheap prices and traditional hard disks, then – Archos is certainly taking risks with its two new tablets. It’s just a shame that you’ll have to wait until nearer the September launch to get our verdict on these two new models.
Several companies have spent millions since the launch of the iPad trying to leap onto the bandwagon that Apple built, but Archos released its first Android device way back in 2009 – and it’s now unveiling its latest 8in and 10.1in models, dubbed the G9 series.
The most important and, potentially, the most confusing aspect of the two new machines? Price. The base figures are impressive, with the 8in 80 G9 starting at £199 inc VAT and the 10in 101 G9 costing £249 inc VAT, but CEO Henri Crohas confirmed that a multitude of models – all running Honeycomb – will be available from the Autumn.
Crohas explained that SKUs will vary on storage: both the 8in and 10.1in models will be sold with “at least 8GB of Flash” on-board, with more expensive models offering 16GB and 32GB. (more…)
Friday, May 13th, 2011
The news that Samsung is readying production of a 10.1in display for tablets, running at a resolution of 2560×1600 pixels, is a game changer. This is 300dpi on a near A4-sized display device.
Without question, this changes the rules for display of information.
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Thursday, March 31st, 2011
Not wanting to let Android have all the fun with its new Transformer tablet, Asus has also introduced a Windows-powered model – the EP121.
It’s a hefty piece of kit, with a 12.1in touchscreen about as big as we’d like to see on a tablet and its 17mm-thick chassis weighing 1.15kg – almost twice as heavy as the iPad 2. Still, the chassis houses some impressive hardware, with an Intel Core i5-470um running at 1.33GHz and bringing two cores, Intel’s latest integrated graphics chipset and Turbo Boost technology into a chip with a TDP of just 18W.
The rest of the specification impresses for a tablet, with 4GB of RAM and a 64GB SSD but, despite the lower-power parts included, battery life inevitably takes a hit – Asus claims that the EP121 will last for 2.5 hours when playing 1080p video.
The screen itself is bright and, while you’ll need to use a stylus, our time with the machine revealed that the 1,280 x 800 resolution panel is both responsive and accurate, and there was little lag to speak of thanks to the Core i5 chip underneath – a huge step up from the sluggish tablets that try to combine Windows 7 with low-power chips like Intel’s Atom.
While we’ve never been keen on tablet machines sporting Windows 7, Asus will hopefully introduce some neat features to try and make the experience easier. For instance, an iPad- style home button at the bottom of the screen uses the Windows Aero theme’s 3D scrolling effect to switch between apps.
Asus ended our meeting by dropping a rather large bombshell, though – the £999 inc VAT price. That’s twice as much as you’ll pay for an iPad but, with an Intel Core i5 processor, Windows 7 Home Premium and a larger screen, the EP121 could still prove tempting.
We’ll have a full review next week, so keep checking the site for our verdict.
Not wanting to let Android have all the fun with its new Transformer, Asus has also introduced a Windows-powered tablet: the Eee Slate EP121.
It’s a hefty piece of kit, with a massive 12.1in screen and a 17mm-thick chassis weighing 1.15kg – almost twice as heavy as the iPad 2. Still, that makes room for some impressive hardware, with an Intel Core i5-470UM running at 1.33GHz and bringing two cores, Turbo Boost technology and Intel’s latest integrated graphics within a TDP of just 18W.
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Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011
So we now know what the iPad 2 will look like, what the specifications are and what it can do. You know when it will be here and even what the price will be like (click here for our live blog of the announcement and the news story). But what is it really like in the metal, what is it like to hold and use?
iPad 2: read our full and comprehensive review here
At the launch event we had the opportunity to hold one of these babies, use it and experience it. And our first impressions are positive. That’s not suprising, given that its predecessor was a pretty polished product, but the iPad 2 takes things to the next level.
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Wednesday, February 16th, 2011
There’s more than enough glitz and smartphone glamour at Mobile World Congress to keep me writing previews well into next week, but when I dropped in at the ARM stand, it was something a little unusual that drew my attention.
On the edge of a narrow bench sat a rattly-looking development unit – the kind of device phone and chip makers use to test hardware before squeezing it into the shiny, sleek chassis I’ve seen so many times over the past three days. But that’s not the interesting part: ARM was using it to demonstrate the benefits of multicore mobile processors, the sort so many of the new devices this year are set to employ.
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Tuesday, February 15th, 2011
HTC’s splurge of product announcements has taken in a massive five smartphones at MWC – the Desire S, Wildfire S, and the flagship Incredible S, plus a pair of “Facebook” phones in the Salsa and Chacha (more on these later). Yet the most exciting announcement by far has to be the firm’s first Android tablet: the Flyer.
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Printed from www.pcpro.co.uk
With Samsung revealing its original 7in Galaxy tab in IFA 2010, it’s only fitting that IFA 2011 sees the arrival of the all-new Galaxy Tab 7.7.
We can understand if the mere thought of a Windows 7 tablet is enough to set alarm bells ringing, but Samsung’s Series 7 700T marks the company’s first attempt to revitalise the genre.
Not wanting to let Android have all the fun with its new Transformer, Asus has also introduced a Windows-powered tablet: the Eee Slate EP121.
