New Tablets Surface at Microsoft

The biggest Tablet News since the March release of the New iPad was last week’s unveiling of Surface, Microsoft’s own line of New Tablets based on Windows RT and Windows 8. Both Win 8 Tabs, introduced last week in Los Angeles, were designed and built by Microsoft itself. Price and release date for the new tablets are still question marks.
The Surface Pro and Surface RT versions look very similar, but there are key differences between the two. We’ll first discuss the RT and then point out some of the differences between it and the Microsoft Surface Pro.
Windows RT Surface Tab
As far as specs, the Windows RT Surface Tablet is powered by a yet-to-be-named ARM-based chipset. The new tablet weighs slightly less than 1.5 lbs (676 grams) and features a 10.6-inch, 16:9 ratio high definition screen display under Gorilla Glass II. Both USB 2.0 and HDMI-out ports are integrated into the side of the tablet’s thin 9.3-millimeter case. The magnesium case features a neat pullout kickstand that props up the device on a table or desk while using a keyboard or watching video.
The tablet’s case has a magnetized connector that holds a “Touch Cover” in place. This new, innovative tablet cover appears to be a winner – it’s only 3mm thick and serves double duty as a fully functional multi-touch keyboard and trackpad, The Touch Cover’s keyboard has touch-sensing keys that become inactive when the cover is closed.  Also, there’s “Type Cover”  as an alternative to the Touch Cover that’s a little thicker and features tactile keys that depress.
The MS Surface RT tab will be available with 32-gigabytes or 64-gigabytes of memory. This model appears to be geared for the consumer. It will come with Xbox Live as well as a native app for Netflix. The MS Surface RT will run Metro-style apps, engineered for Windows on ARM. According to Microsoft, its new Metro user interface and Windows 8 will provide the complete mobile solution for tablets. The new tablet will feature front- and rear-facing cameras optimized for Skype, which is owned by Microsoft.
MS Surface Pro Tab
The Windows 8 Pro MS Surface Tablet (or MS Surface Pro) is powered by an i5 processor from Intel. The tablet is a little heavier (903 grams vs 676 grams) and slightly thicker (13.5mm) than the ARM Surface model. Also, its magnesium case features an innovative active vented cooling system to keep help cool the processor. With the Pro version, buyers will have a choice of 64 and 128 gigabytes of memory.
Microsoft seems to be positioning the Surface Pro as an enterprise-grade tablet that doubles as an ultrabook. Using the Intel processor, the Surface Pro will be able to run traditional Windows programs. The Pro’s screen resolution ( 1920×1080 ) is also better than the RT’s, although only cryptic details have emerged

on the RT’s screen resolution so far. There is also better peripheral support with the Pro version – USB 3.0 versus 2.0, DisplayPort, as well as SDXC expansion slot. The Pro tablet will also come with a stylus and a cover that reads writing with pen input and digital ink, sampled at 600 dpi.
Questions, Questions
Although there is much to appreciate about Microsoft’s new Surface tablets, it’s far too early for any definitive conclusion about the two upcoming mobile devices. The tablets are currently in prototype form only.  There’s still no definitive information regarding pricing, battery life, processor speed, etc., and reports are coming in that the Surface will be WiFi only (disheartening if true). Microsoft says the Surface RT tablet will come out around the time Windows 8 ships (which is expected in the fall) and the Pro version will come out three months after that.
Microsoft says pricing for Surface for Windows RT will be similar to ARM-based tablets and the Pro version will be priced similar to ultrabooks.
Another question is how the OEMs and Microsoft Partners will ultimately respond to Microsoft building its own hardware. Prior to Microsoft’s announcement,  At least 12 OEMs had been expected to come out with their own Win 8 Tablets.
Initial assessments of Microsoft Surface have been mixed. For example,  PCWorld’s Ian Paul says early impressions of the tablet are generally positive, but we’ll have to “wait a few months yet to find out if the company’s promises will meet consumer expectations.” ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, however, says he fully expects Surface tablets to make his  end-of-year round-up of “tech flops”.

With so many unanswered questions and potentially 4-5 months to go before the RT version comes out, this upcoming new tablet from Microsoft already has “Saga” written all over it. Stay tuned.

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New Google Tablet – Nexus 7 Tab “Best of Class”

One of the most anticipated new Android Tablets coming out in 2012 – the Google Nexus 7 – has officially launched. The 7 inch Google Nexus Tab with 8GB capacity has a price of $199 (the same cost as the first generation Kindle Fire} and is currently available for order in the Google Play store as well a number of retail outlets. There’s also a 16 GB version with a $249 price tag. UK prices will be a reasonable £159 for 8GB onboard storage and £199 for the 16GB model.
Predictably, there are now growing rumors that there will be a 10-inch Google Nexus Tablet, Nexus 10, coming out before the holidays.
The 7 inch Google-branded tab, manufactured by Asus, provides home screen access to the continuously expanding Google Play, the search giant’s online marketplace/ecosystem that the company has developed and quicly grown to compete more directly with Amazon and Apple media stores.

Google reportedly had initially planned a May release date for the new tab, but decided to push it back in order to provide a better tablet for a lower unit cost — the company wanted to reduce the price from $249 to $199, and that meant design changes. If true, then it was worth the wait because the high performance components and features of the Google Nexus 7 truly separate it from other similar sized and priced Android Tabs currently on the market.  The bar has now been raised in the  smaller, lower-priced Android Tablet arena.
Google New Tab Specifications
This new Android tablet from Google sports a sleek (10.45mm thick) design, a nicely shaped bezel surrounding the screen and a rubberized back with a nubbly, dimpled pattern that provides for a good in-hand feel and makes the Nexus 7 Tab easy to grip. The new tablet weighs just 340g (0.7 pounds). High performance hardware includes a 1280 x 800 pixel resolution HD (216 pixels per inch) back-lit display measuring 7 inches on the diagonal. A Tegra 3 quad-core processor (a powerful chip usually reserved for higher-priced tablets)  powers the New Tab, and a 12 core GPU. Google says the tablet will give around 9 hours of battery life while playing at 720p HD video. Nice.
The new Google Nexus tablet comes ready for videoconferencing, equipped with a low-resolution front-facing web camera, built-in microphone and bluetooth for headset use. The new Nexus tab also has GPS chips for use with navigation software as well as one for near-field communications.  This allows the tablet to directly communicate with some Android phones and tablets as well as some store payment terminals when the tab is tapped against them.

The only features  lacking in the new tab include: no micro SD card slot for expandability/local storage, no back camera for taking photos or videos, and no cellular access. It comes with Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n.
Know What I Mean, Jelly Bean?
The Nexus 7 comes with the latest version of the Android operating system – Android 4.1 “Jelly Bean”. This new OS has been finely tuned to run on this new tablet (and Galaxy Nexus smartphones), representing a significant upgrade for an Android-based tablet, providing a wide variety of new features and performance improvements.  Because the much improved “design polish” of the new OS provides a more consistent user interface and experience, this should also likely lead to better designed third-party apps.
 Tablet Has Gaming Edge
To say that the Google Nexus 7 Tab is a game-enabled Android Tab would be an understatement. It has 1GB of RAM, which provides for a smooth gaming experience.  In addition, its quad-core Nexus Tegra 3 CPU and a 12 core GPU allows developers to finally create complex games for this Android market segment. Gaming developer site Gamasutra reports that Google and Nvidia have both indicated that that several leading game companies are currently developing mobile games optimized for the Tegra 3 CPU, thereby further complimenting the tablet’s new hardware.

Shades of Things to Come?
Only two months ago, the headline for a post by Forbes Contributor Todd Hixon asked, “Are Android Tablets Dead?” Things have looked quite dire for the Android Tablet over the past two years, but by the end of his article, Hixon predicted a wave of new, lower-priced products coming out during the fall selling season that could help Android Tablets turn the corner.  With new releases like the new Nexus 7, as well as the new Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, he most likely will be proven correct. Given its $199 price, there’s very little to complain about Google’s new tablet. It’s an impressive tab that provides good value.  Hopefully this represents shades of things to come for Android in this increasingly aggressive market.

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Amazon Kindle Fire HD – 7 & 8.9-Inch Feature-Rich Tablets

Amazon is coming out with two new Kindle Fire Tablets – the HD and HD 8.9″. Both tabs offer a full array of new features over the first Kindle Fire introduced last year. The base Fire remains in Amazon’s expanding stable of tablets and its price has dropped $40, to $159. Although it still has the original tab’s lower resolution 7-inch screen, it now has double the RAM, a 40 percent faster CPU and boasts longer battery life.
Amazon Kindle Fire HD Tablet
The new Kindle Fire HD has a 7-inch display with 1920×800 HD resolution and is available in 16GB and
32GB variations, priced $199 and $249, respectively. The new tablet is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU and is equipped with an HD front-facing camera that supports Skype integration, plus the new Amazon tab reportedly will provide the user with 11 hours of battery life. Amazon is indicating its HD tablets, which are outfitted with dual-band Wi-Fi, will receive faster download speeds when compared to the New iPad and Google Nexus 7 Tablet. USB 2.0 (micro-B connector) and Micro-HDMI (micro-D connector) ports are two of its features and the device is also outfitted with an ambient light sensor, accelerometer, and gyroscope.

Kindle Fire HD 8.9
With the exception of processor model and screen size, the new 8.9-inch and 7-inch Amazon tablets are essentially the same, spec-for-spec. The HD 8.9 features a 1.5GHz dual-core CPU and an 8.9-inch display with 1920×1200 resolution. This model is available in Wi-Fi-only or Wi-Fi + 4G LTE variants. The 4G version will run on AT&T’s LTE network in the U.S. The Wi-Fi only version will cost $299 for 16GB storage and $369 for 32G of storage. Prices for the 4G LTE version is $499 and $599 for 16GB and 32GB, respectively.

New Tablets for Christmas 2012

Amazon knows many parents will soon be looking to buy an appropriate new tablet for children for Christmas 2012. In a brilliant bit of Holiday Season timing, the company’s new HD tablet line will come preloaded with “Kindle FreeTime.” With this new app, parents can limit which apps their kids use and also limit the amount of time they are allowed to use the tablet.

Would you like some ads with those fries?

Advertisements will appear on the lockscreens and home screens of these new tabs. Initially the e-retailer wasn’t offering to remove them for a buy-out price, as it had with its original Kindle Fire. But a few days after its new tablet and eReader media event, Amazon finally came out and said that for $15 owners could opt out of these “special offers”  after registering their device.
This illustrates how new mobile tablet hardware is progressively being made to serve two masters – the owner of the tablet and the tablet’s maker. For Amazon, every new Kindle tablet sold dynamically serves as one more high performance advertising delivery device for the company. Or, it wins a $15 “consolation prize” from those customers who elect not to play.

incremental device improvements bring incremental customer conditioning

But this may actually tell us more about the typical Kindle buyer (and a growing number of other mobile device buyers) than it does the seller. Amazon knows its customers very well. And it knows its market better than anybody because it essentially invented it. We’ll be able to opt-out of the ads for a relatively small cost after accomplishing some time-consuming (like 3-minute) procedure. Like those of us prompted to make a purchase at Fry’s or Best Buy because of a great mail-in rebate offer that we never get around to mailing, Amazon has likely already projected out, by quarter, the tablet customer segment who will convince themselves that they’ll opt out of the ads but never will.

The Soundtrack of our Lives

But a lot of people don’t seem to mind the ads. “Look around,” as Nitrozac and Snaggy has their Jeff Bezos point out to us in their recent Joy of Tech comic. “What once seemed widely annoying and totally unacceptable is now Completely Normal!”
Many musicians have become famous because their unknown song was the soundtrack for a popular ad – a 180-degree shift from not too long ago and propelled even further recently thanks to apps like Shazam. And for those of us who enjoy ADD/OCD-ing our movie-watching experience by incessantly searching for info about the film’s stars, there’s now an app for that –”X-Ray For Movies.” Amazon’s new movie viewer app will let us call up information about an actress, actor and other related info simply by touching the screen as we watch the movie.

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New Galaxy Tab 3 Line & Nexus 7 Refresh Coming Out

Upcoming New Tablets from Samsung (Galaxy Tab 3 line) and Google (Nexus 7 II) will be available very soon. Tomorrow, in fact, (July 7) for Samsung’s new Galaxy Tab lineup of 3 different sized tablets. Although Google has remained mum so far regarding a Nexus 7 Gen2 (Generation II),strong indications are that the company will be coming out with the new model by the end of this month. Google had released the original Google Nexus 7 about this time last year.


Unlike last year, however, besides the iPad and Amazon Kindle Fire, Samsung’s and Google’s upcoming 2013 tablets will be competing with an onslaught of new Android Tablets as well as a growing array of Windows 8 Tablets, including Win8 Tabs from Acer, Dell, Levono and others.
Three Sizes, Prices: Samsung Galax Tab 3 
Samsung’s New Tablet line includes the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1, the Galaxy Tab 3 8.0, and the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0.
The Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 features a compact size and lightweight design featuring a 7-inch, 1024×600 resolution TFT display. It’s outfitted with the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system, a 3-megapixel back-facing camera, a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, and a 1.2-GHz dual-core processor. It has 8GB of storage (plus microSD expansion). Price: $199
The Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 is being positioned to compete in the e-reader as well as tablet markets. This tab features “reading mode” technology that provides “paperlike readability in various lighting conditions.” It comes with a 1280×800 resolution display (PLS), 5-megapixel back-facing camera, 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, 1.5 GB ram and a 1.5-GHz dual-core processor, and runs Android 4.2. Base model has 16 GB internal storage.  Price: $299

Pre-release reviews of the new tabs have been mixed, especially the 10.1, with some early reviewers citing dissatisfaction with the low resolution display for the money

The Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 also has a 1,280×800-pixel resolution display (PLS) and runs Android 4.2. It’s further powered by a 1.6GHz dual-core CPU (Intel’s new Atom Z2560 chipset), and has 1GB of RAM. It includes 16GB of storage, IR Blaster, a micro SD expansion slot and, like the other two in the new Galaxy line, a 3-megapixel rear camera and a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera. Price: 399 Pre-release reviews of the new tabs have been mixed, especially the 10.1, with some early reviewers citing dissatisfaction with the low resolution display for the money.



Google Nexus 7, 2^nd Generation

Although the company has not publicly released any information, Google’s high-res (323 pixel density) Nexus 7, second generation tablet, is anticipated to be released (or at least announced) by the end of this month.
Mingchi Keo, KGI securities analyst reported (source: AppleInsider) that it will have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chip, 1920 x 1200 7-inch display, 5 megapixel camera for the same price as the original version that came out about this time last year. $199. Sources have told Reuters that Google is aiming to ship as many as eight million of the 7-inch tablets in the second half of the year.
Besides its retina-quality display, sources also says that the new Google tab will be sized very close to or possibly smaller than Apple’s iPad Mini. $199 is far less than Apple’s entry point with its mini at $329. And with its higher resolution screen, better cameras, and larger storage, it’s hard to imagine the new Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 offering any serious competition to the new gen2 Google 7-inch tablet, unless Samsung drops the price significantly and quickly. The generation 1 Nexus 7, however, has lately been receiving reports of a downgrade in performance following extended us, so stay tuned.

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Pipo Max-M1 Pro Tablet Features Rockchip Quad Core CPU, Priced at $162

The Pipo Max-M1 Pro tablet is yet another one of those affordable models with a quad core CPU inside. The device goes for $162 and it packs an IPS 9.7 inch screen and Android 4.2. The CPU inside is a 1.8 GHz Rockchip unit and the device is pictured below
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The chipset here is the Rockchip RK3188, China’s first 28 nm chip. It integrates 4 ARM Cortex A9 cores and as a GPU we’ve got the ARM Mali 400 with a frequency of up to 533 MHz. We also get 2D acceleration and optimized power consumption. The IPS LCD screen offers 178 degrees of viewing angles and a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels, plus a maximum brightness of 650 nit, two more the normal screen brightness.
The M1 Pro runs Android 4.2.2 with several customizations from the tablet market, brand new UI, with fresh icons and some bundled apps. The tablet relies on an 8000 mAh battery (3.7V), a Li-Ion setup that offers a very good battery life. The screen supports 10 point multitouch and has great accuracy rate.
Finally, Bluetooth 4.0 is also on board, together with dual 2 MP cameras and 1 GB of RAM.

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Pipo M9 Pro Tablet With Built in 3G Goes for a Bit Over $200

Pipo and Cube are two Chinese brands I keep hearing about lately, with the Pipo M9 Pro being the latest slate from the company to grace us with its presence online. We’ve got fresh pics and specs and also a very affordable price for this model

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It’s supposed to cost around $220, but internationally it may even got to $300. The M9 Pro is a 3G slate with a high resolution and an upgrade to the original Pipo M9 9 inch slate. It comes with built in 3G, good performance and as shown in the pictures it doesn’t look half bad. The product is powered by a Rockchip RK3100 processor and it packs a Ful HD display and HFFS, a technology that allows the screen to be ultra bright.

There’s also a GPS on board, Bluetooth 4.0, a 5 megapixel rear camera and a lot of ports and plugs to use. The device will be priced at $227 in the 32 GB version in China and the international one may be a bit pricier. I’m curious about Pipo’s next move, since they seem to be churning out quality slates on a regular basis

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Amazon Kindle Fire HD 2 to be Announced By the End of August

We’ve been hearing various rumors about the versions that Amazon Kindle Fire HD 2 will get in the future and all the info came over the last days. It appears that the leaks are continuing today, as we learn that the product will debut by the end of August

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The first Kindle Fire HD sold well in USA and the countries with developed Amazon services and as said services expand, Amazon must launch even more products for the avid public. The HD 2 is expected by the end of August or early September, according to supply chain sources from Taiwan. It’s a known fact that Amazon turned to Asian makers for its slates, so they may be leaking info.

3 new Kindle HD 2 tablets are in the making, replacing all the current lineup of slates from Amazon. Compal Electronics, already received orders to ship 1 million units of the next gen slate, apparently. The Amazon Kindle Fire HD 2 7 inch version will have an entry level 1280 x 800 version and a 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution. The 8.9 incher will go up to 2560 x 1600 pixels and the design approach will be angular instead of rounded this time.

Will you buy a new Kindle Fire HD?

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