Author Archive: Gareth

Finally. A 22” tablet!

We all feel that the 7″ and 10″ have been covered over and over again. Well,  Viewsonic is planning on introducing a 22" Android ICS tablet at the upcoming Computex conference in June. These tablets will be a new breed of “smart business tablet monitors” and they are expected to be running both Android and Windows 8 when introduced. We think a more apt name is Moblet (Monitor Tablet) since these dimensions are reaching monitor size and Viewsonic is well known in that market. No other specs or details are available at this time but from the looks of the picture it appears that the models will have some sort of kick-stand or base to allow them to be propped up when in use.

Posted by: Gareth

Nvidia Kai – Cheap Quad Core!

NVIDIA is working hard to make good on their promise to make $199.99 Tegra 3 quad-core tablets possible. NVIDIA’s VP of Investor Relations, Rob Csongor recently revealed during a recent stockholder meeting that the company is working on what it calls the "Kai" platform. He didn’t go into detail about it, but indicated that it will be a low-cost architecture that will allow for budget priced quad-core tablets. The stockholder meeting is pretty long at about 33 minutes, but we have included it in the source links below. Here’s a quote from the audio:

Quote:

Our strategy on Android is simply to enable quad-core tablets running Android Ice Cream Sandwich to be developed and brought out to market at the $199 price point, and the way we do that is a platform we’ve developed called Kai. So this uses a lot of the secret sauce that’s inside Tegra 3 to allow you to develop a tablet at a much lower cost, by using a lot of innovation that we’ve developed to reduce the power that’s used by the display and use lower cost components within the tablet.

Source: Nvidia

Posted by: Gareth

Sony updates all their tablets to ICS

For owners of any of the Sony Android Tablets, you may be thrilled to learn that a new update will be rolling out OTA to you by the end of May, and that update is called Ice Cream Sandwich! Just today, Sony confirmed that ALL of their Android tablets in ALL regions will be receiving an OTA rollout of Android 4.0 by the end of May. Also, along with the tastiness of Ice Cream Sandwich, this update also brings a panoramic camera mode, an updated gallery viewer with SD card access, and some new enhancements to the web browser.

Posted by: Gareth

Asus Padfone Delayed?

Seems like the anticipated Asus Padfone could end up being delayed. According to reports, the problem stems from a shortage of the Krait Snapdragon S4 chip from Qualcomm. The hybrid tablet/smartphone that is turning heads  was originally scheduled to launch sometime in April, although that time-frame is now debatable. There is no word on why Qualcomm is experiencing shortages, although there is speculation. One theory is that due to the new architecture for the S4 they are having trouble ramping up to high-volume production. The other is the on-going an rumour that Samsung will be running the S4 in the U.S. version of the new Samsung Galaxy S3, and they have bought out the majority of Qualcomm’s supply.

We will have to see how this one pans out.

Posted by: Gareth

Huawei MediaPad goes ICS

Just as they previously promised, Huawei, makers of one of the first Honeycomb tablets, the MediaPad, have just made the Android 4.0/Ice Cream Sandwich update available to end users. The update will not go out OTA, but instead you will need to download it manually. It comes in at a hefty 329MB, but it does appear to be a stock version of ICS, which is greatly appreciated. Supposedly, installation instructions are inside the Zip download file.

Posted by: Gareth