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Verizon has confirmed that the Galaxy Tab 7.7 will be available exclusively through Verizon Wireless beginning March 1. The 4G LTE tablet features a 7.7-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, and is capable of full 720p recording and playback. The Galaxy Tab 7.7 also supports 1080p playback through HDMI dock or adapter. It will ship with Android 3.2 (Honeycomb).
US Motorola Xoom Wi-Fi users are now reporting that they are starting to receive the promised Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) update over-the-air. They now join Xoom early adopters who owned the Google Experience version of the tablet who received a special early update last week. The major update has arrived relatively quickly to the Xoom as it was loaded with an unskinned version of the Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) software.
Roughly a month after the 3G European update, those with the Wi-Fi version of the HTC Flyer have reported getting Android 3.2 on their devices as of Tuesday. The upgrade brings a genuine tablet-optimized version of Android and the same custom HTC interface layers that first came about with the Jetstream. Some have also reported overall performance boosts inside the interface and individual apps.
Motorola's MOTOACTV sports watch became the most unusual subject of an Android hack Saturday after DingleBerry developer Chris Wade posted guidelines and proof of a root. The trick involves flashing the firmware with a modified boot image and then using Google's ADB to get root access. Afterwards, it's possible to load any launcher and app, including Google's own Android Market.
The HTC Flyer is now getting its promised update to Android 3.2, HTC Hub has learned. The update has been rumored as far back as three months ago for the seven-inch device. The 210MB over-the-air update is now being delivered to French Wi-Fi and 3G models that have 32GB of storage.
Mag+ has made several upgrades to its publishing platform, aimed at companies making magazines and other similar material for tablets. The first is Mag+ Go, a cheaper $199 license which covers just a single app and single issue; this makes it practical to put out content like books and catalogs. Other languages and operating systems, though, must be added at a cost of $199 each.
Mozilla quickly followed on a completed Firefox 8 by posting Firefox 9 in the beta channel for both the desktop and Android. On the desktop, the interface is now designed to blend in with Mac OS X Lion and properly supports two-finger scrolling as well as multiple displays. Speed is also a focus through a faster, inference-supporting JavaScript engine and the ability to break XML web requests into pieces to make a complex web page load faster.
Motorola provided a surprise quick reboot of its tablet strategy with fast launches of the 10-inch Xoom 2 and 8.2-inch Xoom 2 Media Edition. Both make amends for the bulky design of the original and are much thinner, in the full Xoom 2's case having exactly the same 8.8mm thickness as the iPad 2. They also tackle the low-quality original Xoom display with brighter, more color-rich LCDs, including a much wider 178-degree viewing angle on the Media Edition.
We've had the opportunity to test the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in its 3G version just ahead of its release on T-Mobile. While it's superficially the same, we'll check both 3G performance and how well Samsung's TouchWiz interface layer works in practice. Read below for what's different and whether our view has changed relative to the iPad since the 'pure' Tab 10.1 first showed.
Samsung brought one of its more important tablets to the US Friday with plans to sell the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus in the US. The seven-inch tablet should reach the country on November 13 with pre-orders at Amazon, Best Buy, and elsewhere starting October 23. Versions will start at $399 for 16GB of space with Wi-Fi only and bump up to $499 for a 32GB model, albeit only in early 2012.
ASUS CEO Jonney Shih took the stage at the AsiaD conference to tease the Transformer Prime, its sequel to its relatively hot-selling Eee Pad Transformer tablet. The 10-inch slate should be the first major tablet, if not tablet of any kind, to ship with NVIDIA's Tegra 3. The chip is considered the first real quad-core mobile processor and technically has a fifth core to handle low-level tasks.
Google gave its tablet users a lift Wednesday by updating Google Docs for Android (Market). The new version is now genuinely optimized for Android tablets and gives a three-panel view that lets users browse batches of documents, a list of the files themselves, and a quick preview of the files and who has access to a file. The actual workspace is larger, and autocompletion simplifies dropping in collaborators and others by their name or address.
Google's progress and drawbacks in Android were seen in equal measure at the start of the week as its latest version share breakdown showed how much it continued to depend on smartphones and older versions. After eight months, Android 3 (Honeycomb) tablets still make up just 1.8 percent of the user base. Less than half of that group, 0.7 percent, is using the latest version of the OS.
Motorola's two upcoming Xoom 2 models may have been tagged as Verizon models after they were spotted Sunday in the carrier's Cellebrite systems. The 8.2-inch Xoom 2 Media Edition has shown up under its Fleming codename and an MZ609 model number, Droid-Life said. The full-size, 10-inch Xoom 2 is now nicknamed the Pasteur along with its known raw model number, MZ617.
Dell's promise of an Android 3.2 update to the Streak 7 may have come true early after multiple anecdotes of the update. A handful of owners, so far of the UK version with unlocked 3G, have reported getting the new OS. While one has said the upgrade looks "great," another pointed out that it was "glitchy" and might have been rushed.
Samsung has taken the wraps of an unexpected addition to its ever increasing line of tablets. The new Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus joins the Galaxy Tab 7.7, Galaxy Tab 8.9 and Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Samsung’s Android tablet fold. The new slate is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core processor matched with 1GB of RAM and runs Android 3.2 (Honeycomb). It also appears to be a direct successor to the original Galaxy Tab released nearly a year ago.
Photos of an upcoming 4G tablet from Huawei have been shared online on Thursday by TMoNews. Expected to be a US and 4G version of the MediaPad for Asian markets, an official reveal is expected at CTIA in October, though early specs include a seven-inch IPS touchscreen with a 1280x800 resolution and a 1.2GHz dual-core processor.
Toshiba in an evening unveiling showed the Thrive 7" tablet. The Android 3.2 slate still carries a dual-core Tegra 2 and even a 1280x800 display like its 10-inch cousin, but it shrinks ports to fit the same expansion in a smaller profile. A microSDHC card slot, micro HDMI, and micro USB let it get expansion through either adapters or direct connections, including with a Toshiba-written file transfer app to let users shuffle files.
Motorola's Xoom 2 and smaller Xoom 2 ME have been spotted again in a rare side-by-side look with additional details. Both are now known to be about as thick as each other at roughly 9.3mm but wouldn't necessarily sacrifice features if Engadget is correct. Both would have LTE-based 4G, and both would also have Android 3.2 and five-megapixel cameras.
Motorola's mystery smaller tablet has been identified and is being cast as a potential category defier. Leaked as the Xoom 2 Media Edition, it would have an unusual 8.2-inch display and focus on not just a second round of competition with the iPad but with e-readers. The LCD would use a much more colorful IPS-based panel, closer to Apple and Samsung, and carry an anti-glare finish to help with reading outside.
Google gave notice to developers that they should change their apps to support Ice Cream Sandwich. Anyone writing apps for Android 3 (Honeycomb) has been asked to write code either excluding phones from support or adapt what they have to support smaller screens. Android already has a Fragment interface that lets developers write an app that can go back as far as Android 1.6 but which recognizes 3.0 and beyond.
A new Motorola tablet has shown up online, with the image posted by ThisIsMyNext. Expected to be the "fun" seven-inch device promised back in February, the device would be rounder than the 10-inch Xoom and thinner as well. An unspecified version of Android is onboard.
On cue, Sony on Friday started shipping the Tablet S to stores in North America. The 9.4-inch inaugural Android tablet carries a unique 'folded' design and extra tricks like built-in infrared control of home theaters and real SD card file transfers. It ships for $500 in 16GB Wi-Fi trim and $600 for 32GB.
Archos commmitted itself to the US launch of its first truly native Android tablets on Thursday with release details for the 80 G9 and 101 G9. The unique eight-inch 80 G9 will be the first and ship September 20 for $299 with Android 3.2, making it one of the least expensive Android 3 tablets in the US. The entry version has a 1GHz dual-core TI OMAP processor and a light 8GB of storage.
ASUS at the Pepcom event Wednesday night committed to American launch details for the Eee Pad Slider. Its unique, tilt-sliding tablet will reach the US by the end of September and cost about $475 for a 16GB Wi-Fi version and $575 for 32GB. US models will ship with Android 3.2 already installed.
Sony has often been one to pick its battles carefully: sometimes it enters first, like with the Walkman, while in others it waits until it thinks it can achieve something distinct. With the Tablet S, that's more true than ever: Sony is taking on the iPad in the hopes that an infrared remote, custom apps, and a genuinely unique design will give it an edge. Whether or not Apple or Sony's fellow Android tablet rivals have reason to worry is the core of our Sony Tablet S review.
HTC Flyer owners got a preview of what the Android 3.2 upgrade will look like on the tablet after a leaked build was given an unofficial preview. The OS resembles a smaller version of that from the Jetstream and mostly has the same light touch in terms of Sense widgets and skinning the interface to fit HTC's preferred look. The XDA-Developers forum goers testing it out have noted that the Scribe pen works, however, up to and including the hardware pen button.
Gateway has taken the Acer Iconia Tab A500 and rebranded it as its own, calling it the A60 in the process. Specs remain largely the same, with a dual-core 1GHz Tegra 2 for a processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of integrated storage. The Android 3.1 tablet is still framed around a 10.1-inch, 1280x800 screen.
Dell has reportedly committed to offering a Honeycomb update for the Streak 7 tablet. The device currently runs Android 2.2, which is focused on smartphone-size devices, however recent rumors suggested the company was working to outfit the Wi-Fi models with a tablet-optimized variant of the mobile OS. The official confirmation points to Android 3.2 as the chosen build, rather than an earlier version.
Toshiba confirmed plans on Thursday to make amends for a year of rough entries into tablets with a completely new model. The AT200, better known as the Excite, drops the thick rubberized shell of the Thrive to become the thinnest tablet of any type. At 0.3 inches thick, it's thinner than the iPad 2 or Galaxy Tab 10.1 and is even slimmer than the slightly thicker Galaxy Tab 7.7 unveiled the same day.
Toshiba's much improved tablet, the Excite, has already been observed at the IFA show ahead of time. Although staff were closely watching it, the Android slate was in plain sight at the Toshiba booth before the expo opened. While only some info could be gleaned by Notebook Italia from appearances, it appears to use a mostly stock version of Android 3 and has the mini HDMI, microSD, and microUSB support leaked out earlier.
Sony's highlight of IFA on Wednesday was its introduction of the Tablet S and the Tablet P. Both Android 3.1 tablets are designed to be more portable than usual tablets as well as tap into Sony's existing services, like Music and Video Unlimited as well as Reader and even home theater equipment. Read ahead for our hands-on time with the Tablet S as well as launch details for both models.
Mozilla's Ian Barlow gave a preview of a long sought after tablet-native version of Firefox for Android. The new version is native to Android 3 and takes advantage of the widescreen OS to change the interface depending on the layout. In portrait, it turns the browser tabs into a menu; in landscape, they unfold in a side strip with visual thumbnails of each page.
Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps on Monday estimated that Amazon could "easily" ship three million to five million of its anticipated Android tablet. She saw Amazon having the first real competitor to Apple's iPad provided it could ship at $299 or less and didn't have problems keeping up supply. Amazon's willingness to price dump, or sell at a loss to gain market share, could make that possible, Epps said.
Sony's second tablet, the S2, was given some last-minute details Friday in a leak. The Android 3.1 clamshell is now known as the Tablet P, a direct tie back to the VAIO P it effectively replaces, and will support 4G along with Wi-FI. Whether that's LTE or pseudo-4G like AT&T's HSPA+ wasn't gleaned by Engadget tipsters.
HTC's first full-size entry into tablets, the Jetstream or Puccini, has at last been sighted live for the first time. Its 10-inch tablet is now known for certain to have the dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon processor and the AT&T-ready LTE to preempt any 4G iPad plans. Android 3 ships mostly stock, although there's some light customization in Engadet's view that includes HTC Hub for content like news and weather as well as Notes, presumably for Scribe pen input.
Sony's S1 tablet has had some of its launch details spoiled just a week before it's expected to show. Now rechristened the Tablet S, the 9.4-inch slate should now be shipping with Android 3.1. Its support for remote controlling home theaters over IR was known, but Engadget has seen that it will now have a pseudo-AirPlay style "throw" over DLNA and should be groomed for Ice Cream Sandwich when it arrives.
The Advent Vega has received an unofficial update to Android 3.2. The improved version of Honeycomb is being offered by the tablet's dedicated user community TabletRoms. The major improvement on the tablet over earlier hacked installs is full native graphics acceleration.
ViewSonic has finally announced US launch plans for its 10pro tablet, which was first unveiled at the end of May at Computex 2011. The tablet features dual-boot capabilities, enabling users to run Windows 7 or Android. The latter OS is limited to Google's Gingerbread build, however, rather than a Honeycomb 3.x variant that is now common to high-end Android tablets sharing the same 10.1-inch display size.
Google's Android partners may have made a costly mistake in ignoring the Linux licenses behind the very foundation of the OS. New findings have emerged that many phone and tablet makers aren't properly giving out source code to meet the GPL version 2 license requirements at the heart of the Linux kernel Android uses. As such, these same companies have officially lost their rights to distribute Linux and could be found responsible for violations in lawsuits and trade disputes, Florian Mueller noted.
LG was one of the few companies to readily acknowledge that it had started work on an Android tablet as a direct reaction to Apple making the iPad. When it launched the Optimus Pad -- better known to the US as the T-Mobile G-Slate -- it set out to not only have a smaller design than the iPad but to offer a more productive model than what Apple offered. We'll discover in our review of the Optimus Pad and G-Slate if it came close or if it's lost in a sea of look-alike Android tablets.
ASUS has quietly posted an official page for the Eee Pad Slider that confirms many of its details. The unique tablet has the same Tegra 2 processor, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB or 32GB of storage as the Transformer but, because of the built-in keyboard, will necessarily be a lot bulkier at 0.68 inches deep and 2.12 pounds. It should ship with Android 3.1 from the start and already has a promise of upgrading to at least Android 3.2.
Acer on Friday at last confirmed the launch of the Iconia Tab A100 in the US. The design is the first seven-inch tablet to ship with the Honeycomb interface and uses Android 3.2 to scale the tablet interface properly to the smaller screen. It fits the same dual-core Tegra 2 chip, five-megapixel rear camera, and two-megapixel front camera as its 10-inch A500 counterpart, just at a smaller 1024x600 resolution.
A pair of leaks have provided the first glimpse at Ice Cream Sandwich. The OS has its expected influences from Android 3 tablets but also appears to take some direct cues from iOS. The always-on app shortcuts on the home screen now have an iPhone-like grid, RootzWiki saw, and now also appears to have iOS 4-style app folders.
HTC appears to have slipped several screenshots that show the company's Sense interface running on Honeycomb. The images, which were posted on Android Central, first appeared in OpenSense documentation on HTC's development site. The screenshots are believed to show the Sense UI that may eventually land on the rumored Puccini tablet.
A rumor floated Tuesday claimed that the first devices using Google's Ice Cream Sandwich, possibly called Android 4, were being moved up to counter Apple. The first round would arrive in October as Google was keen to avoid creating too much of a gap between its new wave and an iPhone 5 launch in October or September. The BGR tip maintained that Google is concerned the iPhone 5 would be the only model in the limelight at the time.
The recently leaked Google TV Android 3.1 revamp has had its first trial runs through video (below) and reports from those on GTVHacker willing to experiment. A run-through from Channel Android on a Logitech Revue has shown more of the interface than what was seen at Google I/O in May and shows that virtually none of the original interface is left over, and much of it is now devoted to apps and widgets. Android Market is the most relevant as it's now known to have a "featured for TV" section much like that for tablets as well as a clearly TV-native interface.
Screenshots have leaked of HTC's first full-size Android tablet, the HTC Puccini. The screenshots show the tablet running Honeycomb with an updated version of HTC's Sense UI. The new UI takes advantage of the tablet's 10-inch screen with a separate number pad on the virtual keyboard. The pen icon seen in the tray seems to indicate that the tablet will support Scribe, like its sibling the HTC Flyer.
Images from the support site for the upcoming Sony S1 and S2 have leaked and contain a few surprises. The source says the images were taken from the "Troubleshooting" page for the devices and purportedly show screenshots of the S1 tablet. The page has has since been pulled down. An image that seems to be from the Settings app shows the tablet shipping with Android 3.2. Other screenshots appear to be part of a walkthrough on setting up Chumby apps and the Zinio magazine reader app.
Sony plans to follow an at once higher- and lower-end approach to launching its S1 and S2 tablets. A leak Monday had the core S1 slate coming in 16GB and 32GB versions, each in Wi-Fi only as well as editions with 3G added. The S2 clamshell would have the same capacity, but it would only come in the 3G-plus-Wi-Fi models, CNET gleaned from an insider.
