tablet - 48/56 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Jan

Asus's Android Tablets May Ship With Honeycomb After All, Says Asus

Posted by David Ruddock in ASUS, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News

Last Updated: January 14th, 2011

In what is the most carefully-worded way of saying "we don't know" I've seen in a while, Asus's UK marketing manager John Swatton has told Pocket-lint that the company's new Android tablets will be shipping with Honeycomb "if Honeycomb is available." The reason for the uncertainty? Swanson seems to be suggesting that Motorola's XOOM has been given special treatment by Google, while Honeycomb remains unavailable to most, if not all, other tablet manufacturers. Swatton says, "When our tablets launch, they will launch with the latest version of Android whatever that is."

Asus's Android tablets, the Eee Pad Transformer and the Eee Pad Slider, will be launching in April and May, respectively.

Jan

SwiftKey Teases A Tablet-Specific Version Of Its Keyboard Software, Promises So Much More

Posted by Nate Kimmey in Applications, News

By now, you've probably heard of SwiftKey, an alternative keyboard that predicts what you are typing based on statistics and personal history. The company is planning on making an ever bigger splash in the world of Android by going the same route as Opera: creating an app specifically for Android tablets.

Still in prototype form, the keyboard includes the same text prediction that has made SwiftKey so popular, but takes advantage of the tablet's larger screen size (in this case, a Galaxy Tab; we'll have to wait and see how it works on upcoming 10" tablets) by splitting the keyboard into two sections, with a keypad, including arrow keys, in between.

Jan

Verizon Gives Walkthrough Of Honeycomb With New Notifications And Task Switching

Posted by Anuj Ahooja in Android OS, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, Motorola, Tablets, Verizon Wireless, Videos

We've been getting a lot of information about Honeycomb over the past two days. Earlier today we got some more previews from T-Mobile and just now, at Verizon's CES keynote, they introduced us to an updated notifications system and a brand new sleek task switcher. Here's a video of the full walkthrough which gives us other new visuals like how to mess around with homescreens, a look at the new YouTube app, Maps 5.0 (which got quite a bit of oohs-and-aahs), Dungeon Defenders, Gtalk video chat, and much more!

via Phandroid

Jan

Velocity Micro Announces 3 New Cruz Tablets Running On Android

Posted by Abhiroop Basu in Cruz Tablet, News, Velocity Micro

There really are a lot of tablets being announced at CES 2011, and Velocity Micro just launched their new lineup of Android tablets as well: the 7" Cruz Tablet L37, the 8" Cruz Tablet P38, and the 10.1" Cruz Tablet L510.

The 7" L37 has a 1024x600 capacitive touch screen, while the 8" P38 has a 1024x768 screen, and both come with 802.11n WiFi and 4GB of internal memory. The 10.1" P38 has a 1366x768 capacitive touch screen and runs on the NVIDIA Tegra 250 Chipset with a 1GHz dual-core CPU.

The tablets all feature front and rear facing cameras, 3G data options, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS and eCompass functionality, HDMI out and, sticking to its eReader roots, Velocity Micro will be pre-installing the Amazon Kindle app on the tablets.

Jan

Panasonic Reveals Viera Tablet, Comes In Three Convenient Sizes

Posted by Nate Kimmey in News, Panasonic, Tablets

The latest manufacturer to show off an Android tablet at CES is Panasonic, whose Viera tablet will be released in three sizes: 4", 7" and 10". The three versions of the tablet, all physically identical except for the size, are all designed for use with a television, much akin to the recently announced Vizio phone and tablet.

Through Viera Connect, users will be able to stream movies on-demand and even use the screens on your TV and tablet together to watch sports at two different angles; naturally, the Viera tablet can also be used as a remote. No word on pricing, release date, or specs yet, but details on a Japan launch are expected to be revealed soon.

Jan

Motorola Announces The Xoom Honeycomb Tablet

Posted by Anuj Ahooja in Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, Motorola, News, Tablets

After a surprise from Andy Rubin at D:Dive Into Mobile, a tease from Motorola themselves, and many rumors surrounding it, the Honeycomb powered Motorola Xoom is finally official. Announced today at CES, the Xoom will pack a dual-core 1GHz Tegra II processor, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, and vanilla Android 3.0. The Xoom eschews the recent trend of 7-inch displays on tablets, and instead opts for a 10.1-inch 1280x800 (16:10) (gorilla glass) display, which should complement the 720P video playback capabilities nicely.

Along with an amazing screen, the Xoom has both a rear 5MP camera with LED flash, HD video-recording, and digital zoom; and a front-facing camera for video conferencing on Google Talk for tablets.

Jan

T-Mobile G-Slate, Made By LG, Launching "In The Coming Months," Bringing HPSA+ And Honeycomb With It

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, LG, News, Optimus Pad / G-Slate, T-Mobile

Come on, you thought LG was just going to sit there and watch Motorola rip up the Android 3.0 tablet scene?

Quite the contrary - the company has just announced the G-Slate, a HPSA+ Honeycomb tablet headed T-Mobile's way. It's also going to feature the new Google Maps (version 5.0) as well as Google Books and Google Talk.

The closest you'll get to a release date is "in the coming months," and the processor, RAM, display, and other specs have yet to be announced, but we'll be sure to update the post if we happen to come across any additional information.

Jan

Notion Ink Adam Gets Handled And Praised By Engadget

Posted by Jose R. Ortiz in Adam, News, Notion Ink

Engadget has scored some hands-on time with the much anticipated Notion Ink Adam and have captured it on video for all to see.

The video shows off the Adam's Eden UI switching between panels with ease, even in the cover-flow view. The smooth performance shows off how powerful the Tegra 2 CPU is.

The browser also looks promising - scrolling through the browser seems smooth though there appears to be a slight lag in reacting to the swipe gesture. Pinch-to-zoom is in full effect but the text flow adjustment doesn't make it appear as smooth as we might like.

The standout feature is definitely the PixelQi display, which delivers amazing readability in direct sunlight.

Jan

Honeycomb Confirmed To Be Android 3.0, Demoed In Official Google Video

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News

Last Updated: November 2nd, 2011

We've seen quite a few tablets running Honeycomb as of late (and I'm sure there are still a lot more to come - after all, CES is only just beginning), but up until now, we haven't had a chance to get a good look at the OS itself. The wait is now over, however - a teaser video for the OS was recently uploaded to YouTube via androiddevelopers, Google's official Android developer account. Google has since made the video private (thus not allowing the general public to view it), but luckily, we managed to grab a backup of it before they did so:

As you can see, Google has completely rethought the Android interface in an effort to make it more tablet-friendly - clearly, Google didn't purchase BumpTop for nothing.

Jan

Ultra Low Power Qualcomm Mirasol Color eInk-like Screen Technology Teased Ahead Of CES Demos

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in News, Videos

Qualcomm's Mirasol technology has been in prototype form for a while, but at this year's CES, it seems like we'll finally see a working product - an Android e-reader by PocketBook that is called simply Mirasol.

For those who haven't been following Mirasol, it is a functional equivalent of a traditional black-and-white eInk display that has become so popular in e-readers over the last few years, except it is capable of displaying color and playing videos (refresh rates are rumored to be anywhere from 12 to 30 fps). At its core, Mirasol screens use a reflective display technology which "can create various colors through the interference of reflected light." Mirasol displays consume very little power and have superb visibility in direct sunlight.