Hardware maker Hannspree is best known–in the United States, at least–for idiosyncratic products such as TV sets shaped like fruit and zoo animals. But it makes some more straightforward stuff, too, including Android tablets. So far, its tablets, which aren’t sold in the US, have run Android 2.2–a fact that I instinctively want to squawk about, since that aging smartphone OS was never designed for large-screen devices. But I’m attending the IFA Global Press Conference in Spain, a preview event for September’s IFA consumer electronics megaevent in Berlin, and a Hannspree executive explained in an unusually straightforward and illuminating fashion why it’s using an old version of Android.
Tag Archives | Tablets
Cius Sees Light
When Cisco announced its business-oriented Cius tablet last June, it looked like one of the more interesting upcoming tablets. It’s had a low profile since, at least compared to RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook. But now Cisco says it’s beginning to ship Ciuses to customers.
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Blackberry Playbook Reviews and the Premature OS
Tech critics are saying plenty of nice things about Research in Motion’s Blackberry Playbook, but nearly all the reviews end the same way: Don’t buy it.
The conclusion was predictable. Out of the box, the Playbook lacks native e-mail and calendar apps unless you’ve got a Blackberry phone nearby. There are hardly any third-party apps, and Android app support isn’t coming until the summer. In addition to missing features, some critics had problems with Adobe Flash (big surprise there), and others ran out of memory after running more than a few tasks at once.
But most reviews also note that software updates came in at a rapid pace, and many of the Playbook’s missing features will arrive in a matter of months.
Therein lies a problem with the tablet reviews of today: they all describe a product that may be quite different tomorrow.
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BlackBerry PlayBook Reviews: This Could be a Cool Product. Eventually!
I haven’t laid hands on RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook myself yet–except at trade-show booths–but the first reviews are in for the long-awaited tablet, which goes on sale on April 19th. They all praise certain things about it–the interface, the multitasking muscle–but none of them are raves. A high percentage, in fact, advice against buying it right now, pointing out its dependence on a BlackBerry handset, the lack of true native e-mail and calendaring, and bugginess. (Although RIM says that 3000 apps will be available at launch–which isn’t iPad numbers, but does sounds respectable to me for a brand-new platform.)
After the break, my traditional look at the last paragraphs of the initial reviews.
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Report: Demand for iPad 2 Up 40% Over Original
If you’re still having trouble finding an iPad 2, there’s a reaso. ChangeWave says that its own research shows demand for the tablet is some 40% higher than the original iPad, lending credence to the increasing chorus of analysts who expectApple to announce some blockbuster sales numbers in its quarterly conference call April 20.
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The Future of Tablets: Also Unknowable
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about IDC’s projections for smartphone operating-system marketshare in 2015, and came to the conclusion that the whole exercise of predicting phone sales that far in the future is pointless–at least if you’re doing so in a form which suggests a scientific approach.
Now IDC rival Gartner is making some 2015 predictions of its own. These ones are for tablets, and they forecast that Apple’s share will fall under 50 percent, Android will surge to nearly 40 percent, and QNX, WebOS, MeeGo, and everything else will fight over the remainder of the market.
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Adobe Teaches Photoshop to Talk to Tablets
A couple of weeks ago, Adobe demoed an ambitious experimental version of Photoshop for the iPad. The company isn’t saying when it might turn into a shipping product. But it is rolling out an intriguing new technology that involves both Photoshop and the iPad. It’s the Photoshop Touch Software Development Kit, an interface that allows apps on the iPad, Android tablets, and the BlackBerry PlayBook to shuttle information back and forth with Photoshop running on a Windows PC or a Mac via Wi-Fi. The Touch SDK can turn a tablet into an extension of the Photoshop interface or let a tablet app move images into Photoshop with one tap–and it’s a neat idea with loads of promise.
Adobe is announcing the Touch SDK as part of an extravaganza of Creative Suite news tonight that includes the announcement of Creative Suite 5.5 (an interim upgrade due within the next month with a bunch of new features, many of them focused on creating Flash and HTML 5 content and apps) and the introduction of subscription plans that will let users opt to pay monthly fees for ongoing access to the latest versions of the Creative Suite apps rather than buying them the traditional way (prices range from $35 a month for one app, such as Photoshop, to $129 a month for the Master Collection, which includes everything). Creative Suite 5.5’s version of Photoshop will support the SDK, but you won’t need to upgrade to it to use Photoshop-enabled tablet apps: Adobe will make a free update available for Photoshop 5.5 on May 3rd, the company says.
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Acer Joins the Honeycomb Tablet Wars
No surprise: Acer has announced a tablet running Google’s Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system. The Iconia Tab A500’s specs are what is starting to become standard fare: a 10.1″ display, a dual-core 1-GHz Nvidia processor with integrated GeForce graphics and 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage. The Iconia weighs 1.69 pounds and is .52″ thick, specs which indicate that it’s a product of the pre-iPad 2 era. Battery life is quoted as “eight hours of playback for casual games, eight hours of HD video playback and 10 hours of WiFi Internet browsing,” which, I’m guessing, translates into “decent but not quite as good as the iPad 2.”
Unlike some preannounced Honeycomb tablets (coughSamsung), the Iconia will be available soon: it’s a Best Buy exclusive, and Acer says it’ll be available for preorder on April 14th and will go on sale on April 24th. It’s also got the sort of pricetag you’d expect from Acer–one that’s a tad cheaper than the competition, at $449.99.
Oh, and while Acer is saying that it will run Flash, it’s not going to come with it at first. Judging from my experience with Honeycomb Flash in its current form, that isn’t a tragedy.
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Report: 2 Million-Plus iPad 2s Shipped in March
All those “stock outs” at iPad retailers across the US (and worldwide) had to mean something right? Well, according to Taiwanese tech site DigiTimes, which cites unnamed Apple suppliers, it did. These sources claim that the company may have taken delivery of as much as 2.6 million iPads last month.
Seeing that the iPad 2 is sold out just about everywhere, it’s not out of the realm of possibly that the company sold just about all of its incoming stock. If that’s true then sales of the second generation device more than doubled sales of the first one in its initial month of availability.
DigiTimes goes on to say that its sources estimated that Apple will be able to take delivery of upwards of four million units every month as long as components remain available. Now, iSuppli had sad last month that the massive earthquake in Japan could affect supply, so we’ll have to wait and see.
I still wonder why Apple has been so silent regarding sales numbers. Typically, it is the first to toot its own horn when things are going well. Just seems a little strange, but then again all the anecdotal evidence we’re seeing indicates the iPad 2 is selling just fine.
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GameStop Mulls a Tablet, Will Soon Buy Yours
When a brick-and-mortar retailer decides to go digital, one possible strategy goes something like this: Buy a smaller digital company or two, and hope to make them big.
That’s what GameStop did last week when it acquired Stardock’s Impulse game download service and Spawn Labs, whose claim to fame is a device that acts like SlingBox for video games.
But in an interview with Gamasutra’s Chris Morris, Gamestop revealed a more fascinating wrinkle in its digital strategy. Later this year, it’ll start accepting tablets for trade-in, and it eventually wants Impulse’s download service and Spawn Labs’ streaming tech to be a part of other manufacturer’s tablets. If that doesn’t happen, Gamestop may build a tablet of its own.