Review Now here’s an odd one. Sony has created what looks like a monster Nintendo 3DS but is actually an Android Honeycomb tablet computer. So you get a sort of flattened tube that folds out to reveal two screens. Will it work? Should it work? Read on…
Android fondlecrab: Sony’s Tablet S
This is actually one of two new tablets from Sony, the other is the Tablet S, which is a more conventional model with a 9in screen. The Tablet P however, is something else altogether. Read the rest of this entry »
Product Round-up Tablets, eh? A nice idea but a shame about the price. From the iPad to the Xoom, the PlayBook to the TouchPad prices starting at or near £400 are a little on the steep side for many folk. Well, the TouchPad maybe an exception these days but only very recently.
You’ll pay a premium to buy into fondleslabs from Apple, HP or RIM, but Android users have another option, a cheap tablet. These can be picked up for anything between £100 and £230 and sometimes less if you are in the right place at the right time.
Across the board cheap Android tablets are nowhere near as ghastly as they were just a year ago. Of course, there are sacrifices. You are not going to get Honeycomb or a glass screen or a true multi-day battery life. Increasingly, what you will get is a capacitive rather than resistive screen, Android in it’s 2.2 or 2.3 incarnation – rather than antediluvian 1.6 version – and even access to the Android Market and Google mobile apps.
Buying a cheap tablet today may be false economy because what you can get for your money is changing at a dizzying rate. For instance, it won’t be long before you can buy the recently announced Archos 1.5GHz Gen9 8in Honeycomb fondleslabs for around £200. But for the moment here is a quick trawl through some tablets for the impecunious. Read the rest of this entry »
Review 10.1? The impression I get with the naming of this much-anticipated grown-up version of last year’s Galaxy Tab is that it has psychological hangups about (ahem) ‘size’. I imagine it loitering down the pub, boasting of its prowess: “It’s not just TEN inches, Al, it’s TEN-point-ONE!” It wants to be the Spinal Tap of Android Tablets, with Nigel Tufnel asserting that other 10in tablets only go up to, well, 10.
Classier and less gadgety: all that extra screen space makes a big difference
You can’t blame Samsung for showing off its nice new screen size, though. The original 7in Galaxy Tab was an interesting experiment in product design but it suffered from those mid-size blues: too big to be a phone, too small to be a netbook, and sporting an underpowered operating system in Android 2.2. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Despite the original Streak being one of the first devices of its type on the market, Dell’s Android tablet didn’t really set the word alight. A less than fresh version of Android, a high price tag and a distance between the screen corners too close to many a smartphone, all counted against it.
Clean slate? Dell’s Streak 7
Now we have version 2.0 with a 7in screen, a 1GHz dual-core CPU, Android 2.2 and a much more realistic sub-£300 price tag, £100 less than its unloved 5in sibling would have set you back at launch around 12 months ago. Read the rest of this entry »
Hands On HP has learned from Apple. Not simply by mimicking – or judging it to be the correct size in any case – the iPad’s 9.7in screen defined dimensions, but by avoiding the obvious operating system: Android.
Hardware being what it is, the only true way to differentiate your product is the user experience, and WebOS allows – as iOS does for Apple – HP, not another company, to define it. Google seems less keen on permitting UI overlays on Honeycomb tablets than it has on smartphones, so it’s going to become ever harder for vendors to avoid offering ‘me too’ Android products.
HP’s TouchPad: the design shows an iPad inspiration
Beyond the branding, there’s not an awful lot of difference between, say, a Motorola Xoom, a Toshiba Thrive and a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10. Read the rest of this entry »
