Author Archive: Gareth

Mobile Tech Addicts Podcast 171: Don’t hold your breath!

Gareth and James are joined by Vince, a review writer from Tracyandmatt to get his opinions on the Samsung Galaxy SIII and the HTC One X.  The Nokia Lumia 710 and Motorola Motoluxe are both looked at with differing attitudes and James awaits a new service from Blackberry.

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Email us: [email protected]  Tel: 0208 123 3757

Mock images of an Asus Google Nexus tablet appear

PhoneArena found something exciting for you guys this morning. The pics included are supposedly first draft (practice) press shots of Google’s new Asus-made Nexus Tablet. The "tipster" who shared these images claims that the tablet will still be a 7-inch Tegra 3 based device, and that it will be coming with Android 4.1, which will not be Jelly Bean, (which he claims will be Android 5.0). This is in contrast to earlier rumours that Jelly Bean would be just an updated & improved ICS version 4.1. Still, we aren’t even sure these pics are legit. The front pic certainly looks like a phone, because it has an earpiece slit. They do look pretty convincing other than that.

Posted by: Gareth

New Acer budget tabs look swish

Acer has just unveiled a couple of new entries into the tablet market during Computex. One of them could be a real breakthrough for Android tablets. First, we will share the less revolutionary product. This is one we have heard hyped in the past: the Iconia Tab A210. This one is designed to be a mid-range product, although details on pricing are scarce. Here are the specs on this one:

• Front camera
• Quad-core Tegra 3 processor
• 10.1" 1280×800 display
• USB 2.0 port
• microSD slot
• 3620mAh battery
• 8GB and 16GB versions

This next one is the more interesting of the two. It is the Iconia A110, and what makes it unique is its pricing. This one is definitely geared toward the budget-friendly crowd, but you wouldn’t think so by looking at the processor in it. This little 7-inch tablet also has the Tegra 3 quad-core chip in it, yet rumors suggest they are pricing this tablet at just $199.99. Could this be one of the first of the NVIDIA Kai Tegra 3 configurations? It seems likely, and it seems like this tablet is a no brainer when you compare it to the other tablets in this price range. Here is its spec breakdown:

• The 7" display with 1024×600 resolution
• 1GB RAM
• Tegra 3 processor
• 8GB on-board storage (expandable via microSD)
• microUSB and micro-HDMI ports

Could this be one of the first of an onslaught of inexpensive tablet devices? Android quickly rose to the top of the heap with smartphones, but it has been a bit slower for them to get competitive with Apple in the tablet market. It seems the "little android that could" just keeps on trucking forward, and eventually just might topple the mighty fruit, even in its tablet-dominating fortress.

Posted by: 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