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The Asus Transformer Prime: the first Android device to ship with a quad-core chip, courtesy of NVIDIA's brand new Tegra 3 (Kal-El) CPU. But there's more of a hook here than power alone - Asus has gone back to the drawing board for the Prime (model number TF201) and revamped the device from nearly head to toe compared to its predecessor, the TF101. It's substantially thinner, lighter, and more attractive than the rather portly 101, while packing a much more powerful CPU, better display, and reportedly better battery life. But can they really improve upon all those aspects without cutting any corners? I've spent a few more days with the TP since posting my initial impressions on Wednesday - enough time to get a solid feel for the ups and downs of the new tablet.
Around midday yesterday, I received my review kit for the Transformer Prime, complete with dock, wireless gamepad, and HDMI cable - meaning I'm well equipped to take a deep dive into the hottest new tablet to hit stores. But to be completely honest, an in-depth review on a product this brand-spanking-new requires more hands-on time than can be had in two days. The full review will be up on Friday, but in the interim, enjoy the initial impressions and gadget porn below.
Remember the upcoming HTC Ville that we heard about earlier this month? Pocketnow has snagged what seems to be an official render, and the image reveals a device swathed in brushed aluminum - not to mention, as rumored, the Ville does look like it will check in at under 8mm thick.
In my review of the Galaxy Tab 8.9, I found that performance didn't seem to be quite up to snuff. A commenter noted that that was reportedly because the Tab 8.9 was designed to be used portrait mode, so the system has to rotate what's on the screen by 90°. And surprisingly enough, when I took another look at the tablet I noticed that it seemed to be true - things were smooth as can be when using it in portrait mode - it's simply that, unless an app requires it, I always use tablets in landscape.
In what is undoubtedly one of the coolest mods I've seen in months, developer picard666 has released an interactive Mario lockscreen for MIUI. So awesome, in fact, that words can't properly describe it. Take a look at the "diagram":
Kairosoft, maker of the many popular Story games (such as Game Dev Story and Grand Prix Story), has released a new game called World Cruise Story. As with the other games, the title really says it all: your objective is to manage a cruise liner from top to bottom in order to meet objectives and make money, much like old-school games such as Sim City or Roller Coaster Tycoon.
is back again with another new book, and to celebrate, we've teamed up for a giveaway. The book in question is Android 3.0 Animations: Beginners Guide, available now for $41 for a print copy or just $23 for the eBook (or $45 for both).
Last week, Cisco released their Cisco Connect Express app on the market to very little fanfare, though the app is quite impressive. It allows you to control your Cisco/Linksys router from your Android device via WiFi, with the key features listed as:
Ancestry.com subscribers now have another way to access their family tree, as the company has released the first beta version of their official Android app. At the moment, it's read only, meaning you can't modify information via the app, and the team has yet to implement many other necessary features such as searching for specific people in your tree.
Samsung was kind enough to send a Galaxy Tab 8.9 our way for review last week ("surprise!"), and I have to say: this thing is thin, light, sexy... and Samsung's custom user interface (UI), TouchWiz, is not fit for tablets.
Our friends over at informIT are back with another new book on programming for Android. This time around, though, the book places more emphasis on learning directly by creating apps - in other words, learning by doing. The book is Android for Programmers: An App-Driven Approach, and it packs 16 fully coded Android apps as examples.
A new beta version of Swype for Android, version 3.26, has been released, with the chief improvements being automatic updates, 11 new languages, a refined key layout, and enhanced settings in help. Now that they've nearly doubled the number of supported languages, the Swype package has been broken into four: one each for the Americas, Western and Eastern Europe, South-East Asia, and one for all regions.
Just six days after The CyanogenMod (CM) team released the first alpha build for the TouchPad, they're back with alpha 2. Despite being bumped up a version, it's still an alpha, meaning there are many things that can (and likely will) go wrong. Still, it looks like they've made quite a few improvements with the update:
Motorola's press conference is under way, but it turns out the Droid RAZR isn't the only thing that Motorola had up their sleeve - they also announced the MOTOACTV, what is essentially an iPod Nano on serious steroids.