New Era in Mobile Computing – Tablet PCs

As the Technology advances and the computing needs moves more to the mobile side and when you need your data and emails along with the computing power to be always with you and working, you select a device which can do all of this for you in your day today life without much hurdles of size and wires. On such scenarios we were taking the help of the so called  smart phones till now and it was possible up to a level now. But when you need little more power and comfort and real estate of the screen you wish if you could have managed to get a device which we usually see in the Sci-Fi Movies such as Avatar & Iron man 2. I always was a fan of the Tablet PCs and have been following all the Gadget and Scientific research sites closely. Listed here are some of the Latest additions to the Tablet PC and Ultra Portable regime with most of them supporting touch screens.

Tablet PC

Definition (wikipedia)

A Tablet PC refers to a fully functional laptop PC, equipped with a stylus and, in some models, a touchscreen. This form factor is intended to offer a more mobile PC; Tablet PCs may be used where notebooks are impractical or unwieldy, or do not provide the needed functionality.^{[citation needed]}

The term Tablet PC was made popular in a product announced in 2001 by Microsoft, where it was defined as a pen-enabled computerconforming to hardware specifications devised by Microsoft and running a licensed copy of “Windows XP Tablet PC Edition” operating system or a derivative thereof.^[1] Tablet PCs are personal computers where the owner is free to install any compatible application or operating system. Other tablet computer devices, such as eBook readers or PDAs, do not provide this option and are generally considered another category. The original Microsoft licensing specification required proximity sensing of the stylus, which Microsoft termed “hover”. This requirement was dropped with the later announcement of the UMPC.

As there are still lots of debates going on what should be the strengths and what operating systems can be ideal for the Tablet kind of PCs. We will be primarily looking the following characteristics when you will be going for  the tablet PC Side.

The advantages and disadvantages of tablet PCs are highly subjective measures. What appeals to one user may be exactly what disappoints another. The following are commonly cited opinions of the tablet PC platform:

Advantages

• Touch and Multi touch Centric and direct input type using the hand gestures and hand writing
• Light weight and long battery with standby time up to one week and working time of 10hrs+ and works with either the Intel Atom or NVDIA Tegra , Tegra 2 , Apple A4, Qualcomm Snapdragon A8 Chipsets etc
• Allows to you do both Data Transfers and also Voice and Voip using the 3G or 4G
• Most of the Tablets does support Bluetooth and WIFI, SD Card
• Operating System varies from Windows 7, Apple OS 3.0, 4.0 , Android 1.6, 2.1, 2.2, Linux Variants of Ubuntu and Mint OS, Fedora 10, Google OS (gOS) expected
• Enables users with Video Chat and Voice Chat
• Wireless sync of Data, Apps, Calendar, Contacts etc.

Disadvantages

• Cost of owning the Tablet may be high due to the fact that most tablets are touch centric and large screen with touch capacity and the battery for longer working may cost more.
• Accessory support is limited and can be costly mostly can be supported using bluetooth and WIFI
• Limited availability of the Expansion ports such as USB and Network Port
• Limited Computer Power and Memory, Multi Task is Limited
• Application availability limited for touch centric OSs with touch optimization
• Not fully stand alone and can not replace a desktop with a tablet PC in most cases
• As the input mediums are limited to touch and most tablets will not support a physical keyboard in package, with data centric applications speed may suffer and longer and continuos usage may result in more issues with palm and fingers injury.
• The screen is more exposed to  damages and impacts due to the nature of  input and less protection.

Look into the Existing and upcoming  Models

As all the mobile world was waiting for the release of Ipad from apple inc, so was I, I found the product release bit disappointing on my side not because of the fact it was not worth but because my expectations from such a high profile co. was so high, can not blame any one. The missing options in my concept are here, camera (at least one), USB port, SD Card Slot, uses Micro SIM, OS not Macintosh Full Version only Mobile Platform, no support for Flash applications

Apple Ipad

http://www.apple.com/ipad/

(Courtesy to Engadget Review http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/03/apple-ipad-review/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipad, )

The ipad is more than a device its and icon and fashion statement. There are more than 6 Models with 3 in WIFI only version and 3 in 3G+WIFI model, WFI only starts with USD 499 and 3G versions starts USD 629

The main advantages of Ipad are

• Screen and Portability, very good built quality and very responsive.( onboard is 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, a digital compass, an accelerometer, microphone, and ambient light sensor)
• Support most 1,50,000 apps in the Apple store
• 16, 32, 64 GB with WIFI and 3G+WIFI Models
• Uses A4 Chipset for Processing with 1Ghz Speed
• A 25Wh Lithium Polymer not removable
• 10+ hrs Battery Life on normal Usage
• Support iBooks and Ebook reading support
• Near to desktop Web Experience
• The Apps support such as Remote administration to PC and Macs, support for accessories such as Bluetooth Keyboard, Dock and Cover

Videos Link here

We Tab

WePad Android Tablet Launching Soon

In CarryPad’s live blog coverage of the WePad conference today we learned of new specs, pricing and initial launch date. The WePad is an Android tablet with 11.6 inch touch screen display, 1.66GHz Intel Atom processor, 16GB of flash storage, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1, and 1.3 megapixel camera starting at €449 ($611 USD) in July 2010. Shortly a 3G-32GB flash storage model will be available for €569 ($774 USD).

We’ve already seen Notion Ink’s Adam Android tablet sparking interest and rivalry with Apple’s recently released iPad. We’ll watch how this tablet stacks up… see the chart below.

JooJoo  - Fusion Garage JooJoo

The JooJoo is a beautifully crafted piece of hardware, and even if the iPad wasn’t out there for comparisons, its minimalistic design would remind us of an aesthetically pleasing Apple product. The front of the device is nothing but LCD, and the slightly recessed power button on the left edge is the only physical button on the entire thing. We happen to think the lack of hardware controls might be one of Fusion Garage’s biggest mistakes since there’s no easy way of getting back to the menu or home screen, but we’ll get to all that interface stuff soon enough.

The champagne-colored brushed aluminum backside of the tablet certainly gives everything a sophisticated look, and it also feels really nice in hand, if just a tad flimsy in the middle due to its expansiveness. But a “handheld” the 12.8 x 7.8-inch JooJoo is not — at least not in comparison to the iPad or other e-readers, like the Kindle or Nook. The larger and heavier form factor makes it more of a sit up / lap device, rather than something you can use lying down and holding it up. Obviously the payoff is in the bigger screen, and we really shouldn’t whine too much about a 2.4-pound, 0.7-inch thick device when it comes to portability, but one-handing this thing is pretty much out of the question.

A single USB port, a standard headphone jack, and a microphone jack live on the right edge. You can use the USB port to charge the device, but that’s all it will do since the operating system is completely browser-based and doesn’t allow for side loading music, video, or pictures. The camera on the top of the screen is apparently meant for video conferencing, but all our attempts to video chat through Meebo or Tokbox failed.

Screen and speakers

Obviously the JooJoo’s heart and soul is its 1366 x 768, capacitive 12-inch display. We have no qualms about the responsiveness of the glass display – light taps and swipes were all we needed to make selections / scroll down pages as long as the software was keeping up (we had to restart the device a couple times to get things working again touch-wise) – but viewing angles are less than stellar. Unlike Apple’s IPS display, colors fade quickly when the screen is tilted to a 120-degree angle (as demonstrated in our video walkthrough), and when we held it up while lying on our side it was hard to position it to get a great view of the entire screen. The horizontal viewing angles are wide enough for sharing the screen with a friend or two, though.

Getting the screen to rotate from vertical to horizontal can at times be a bit of a crapshoot – sometimes the accelerometer decides it’d like to pitch in and adjust just perfectly and other times it needs a bit of a shake to rotate (JooJoo thinks we might’ve gotten a lemon in this regard, and the problem certainly wasn’t consistent). We’re told the sensitivity will be tweaked in an upcoming software update, along with the speed of rotation. Luckily the ambient light sensor is much more accountable, dimming the screen when not in use and raising the lights in dimly lit situations, but unfortunately it’s positioned right where you might be likely to rest a thumb when holding the tablet in a landscape orientation, causing plenty of unintentional dimming. The two speakers on the back of the tablet sound like typical netbooks speakers – they’re loud enough for personal listening, but won’t fill a room.

Software: Browser and more browser

The user interface on the JooJoo can best be described as a Monet – very attractive from afar, but a total mess up close. Very much like Dell’s version of Ubuntu, the Linux browser-based OS is centered around rectangular shortcuts like Twitter and Hulu which are divided into different categories, including News, Social, and Entertainment. When selected they simply just launch the respective site in the browser. The homepage shortcuts are certainly helpful if you are looking to go to one of the preloaded sites, but there’s no simple browser shortcut if you just want to put in your own URL. Instead you’re stuck opening one of the shortcuts and changing the address. Counterintuitive, to say the least. And that’s all there really is to the entire OS – there aren’t any onboard applications for viewing pictures or music — the only other screen is just a settings section for adjusting the WiFi or brightness. From anywhere on the device you can swipe down at the top of the screen to bring up a navigation bar, which includes browser controls, in addition to quick utility items like bookmark, volume, onscreen keyboard, and WiFi.

Video

Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t (Tablet PC with Touch Screen and Keyboard)

Who says you have to pick between a netbook and the coming onslaught of standalone tablet devices? Okay maybe some (eh hem Apple), but Lenovo’s trying to have it both ways with the IdeaPad U1 and theS10-3t. In clamshell mode the S10-3t looks like any old 10-inch netbook, but swivel around its capacitive mulitouch display and it turns into that slate device you’ve been dreaming of. That’s not all: the S10-3t is one of the first netbooks (or netveritbles) that has the new Intel 1.83GHz Atom N470 processor. But can the S10-3t straddle both worlds and do it well? And perhaps more importantly, is it worth the premium $649 price tag?

There’s nothing too jaw-dropping about the S10-3t’s design, and we’d actually be totally fine with that if it didn’t have the glossiest black lid known to man. While the lid is inlaid with a subtle glitter tint and boxy pattern, you wouldn’t know it with all the smudgy fingerprints it collects. And though the plastic chassis feels solid enough, the lid did collect some scratches from being in our bag so you’ll want to pick up a case to keep the little guy clean and warm.

For a netbook the .79-inch S10-3t is actually rather trim, and it’s noticeably narrower than other 10-inch systems. While it’s obviously thicker than standalone tablets or e-readers like the Kindle DX, when equipped with its four-cell battery the 2.7-pound tablet was light enough to hold up in bed while reading. However, that eight-cell bulging battery version that we saw at CES looks like it would be incredibly uncomfortable to hold in arm.

We went into reviewing the S10-3t hoping it would be one of the faster netbooks we’ve ever used considering its new 1.83GHz Atom N470 processor and 2GB of RAM. However, those dreams quickly faded when we were met with the typical netbook performance. In fact, the N470 scored 1,348 on PCMark05, which is actually lower than the N450-powered HP Mini 210′s 1393. That’s sort of a letdown for us, but in typical usage — writing this review and surfing the web — performance seemed snappy. We did notice it taking a bit of time for certain apps within Lenovo’s NaturalTouch to open but we’re inclined to blame the slow 320GB hard drive or software for that. With no change made to the GMA 3150 graphics, the S10-3t was fine for playing standard def video, but couldn’t handle streaming a 720p music video without stuttering.

On our video rundown test the S10-3t’s four-cell battery lasted three hours and 12 minutes, but when we actually used the system to write this review and surf the Web we got close to four and a half hours of battery life. In our minds that’s not all that bad considering the battery fits flush with the system, but you can always go up to the chunky eight-cell for a couple more bucks.

As both a netbook and a tablet the S10-3t leaves a bit more to be desired. Sure, we’re disappointed that the N470 processor doesn’t provide improved performance, but what’s even more aggravating is that $649 buys you a tiny trackpad, sluggish touchscreen software and terrible viewing angles. Maybe you can live with those shortcomings, but we’re personally holding out for a better netbook / tablet combo to come along.

Video

Dell Mini 5 / Streak

Dell’s puzzled the world for quite some time with its outlandish Mini 5 / Streak — at first glance it’s just another Android-based MID, but a quick fiddle with it reveals the full-fledged 3G phone inside. So will it fit in a pocket? Can we carry it around like a normal phone? Is this the future form factor that will bring the ultimate balance between portability and practicality? With such heavy dose of curiosity, we eventually traveled all the way to Shenzhen literally just to grab this prototype. Now, before you read on, do bear in mind that some of its features — especially the OS — may not make it to the final design when it comes out later this year, nor do we know what stage this prototype was at. We good? OK.

Let’s start with the basics: the main specs on our unit include Android 1.6 (which will definitely be obsolete for the final product), five-inch 800 x 480 capacitive touchscreen, Snapdragon QSD8250 chipset (with CPU clocked at 1GHz), Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS and WCDMA radio. Sadly, we have no info on whether the Mini 5 will have other cellular radio options, but it wouldn’t hurt to send Dell a petition regarding this matter. For those who want the dimensions and weight in numbers, it’s about 152mm x 78mm x 10mm at 8 ounces (including the battery, which lasts for almost a day for normal usage on 3G). Memory-wise there’s 405MB RAM and 1.63GB of internal storage — a slight let-down for the latter, so let’s hope the retail unit will be given a more generous dose of silicon. You can add a microSD card next to the battery on the back, but it appears that the mysterious second card slot we saw in the earlier teardown only gave us false hope — we couldn’t find a way to get to it without prying open the housing. Connection to your computer relies on a proprietary port — similar but slightly larger than the iPod’s — to USB cable, which may suggest that we will see some more peripherals made for the Mini 5 and its future siblings.

Software, buttons and keyboard

We won’t bore you with a full list of preinstalled Android apps on our Mini 5, but there are indeed a few that are worth mentioning: the usual bundle including Google Mail, YouTube, Amazon MP3, WebKit browser (with pinch-to-zoom but no Flash support), Google Maps (no pinch-to-zoom, boo!), K-9 Mail (which supports Exchange server) and Quickoffice (a file browser that can also view Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents). For multimedia there’s the standard Android music app, a Gallery app by ArcSoft (pinch-to-zoom supported), and a three-year trial of the forthcoming CyberLink Live for Android that gives you “instant access to your photos, music, and video stored on your home computers.” There’s no social networking integration (like MOTOBLUR and Sense) as such, but you can use the preloaded Meebo IM for chatting on AIM, Facebook, Google Talk, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo, etc. If you want to be discrete about your gigantic phone, you may find the Voice Control app by Nuance handy for voice-dialing — it can be triggered by holding down the button on the bundled handsfree earphones.

Multimedia experience

Given the MID form factor and that gorgeous five-inch screen, we immediately loaded a few MP4 videos of various resolutions (1080p, 720p and 480p) to see what the Mini 5 could take. Annoyingly, our Mini 5′s default video player could only handle MP4V video codec, so we had to convert our test videos, including the MP4 files that were compiled by iMovie (which encodes in H.264). On the contrary, Carrypad‘s heard from Dell at MWC that the final product will support “H.264 and other codecs.” Even then, the device failed to open our 1080p files, but that’s not the end of the world considering 720p is already plentiful for the 800 x 480 screen — we had a 7Mbps 720p video playing smoothly with just the odd stutter. On a similar matter, the preloaded YouTube app performed nicely for us, except for the lack of higher quality playback options to make full use of the large screen.

Moving on to audio: the Mini 5 has a mono speaker on the back that sounds loud and surprisingly clear, but naturally, the bundled earphones sound even better — we’d scale it to somewhere between the levels of the iPod buds and Apple’s in-ear headphones. Fans of stereo Bluetooth headphones will be pleased to know that our Mini 5 supports A2DP and AVRCP, which are particularly useful for devices of such size.

Comfort

Understandably, most people are concerned about whether this 5-inch tablet would fit inside their pocket. We’re happy to tell you that it snuggled nicely in our jeans’ pockets, which is most likely to do with the device’s sensible thickness and our lack of tight pants. Apart from the slight exposure (as pictured below) and the occasional struggle when walking up stairs, we’ve had no other issues with pocketing our Mini 5. A more popular concern would be whether you’d look like a dork when holding the monstrous phone right next to your face. To be honest, it’s not too bad, except the user would most likely be more concious about the size, simply because you’d have to stretch your fingers a bit to accommodate the unusually large footprint and weight — you can see the size better demoed in the earlier walkthrough video. Just keep that to yourself and you’ll be fine — so far most blokes who’ve seen and touched our Mini 5 have said they want one, so this phone is already quite the masculine symbol. And yes, the phone makes a great tool for chatting up the ladies, too (although they’ve all said it’s too big and heavy after playing with it; perhaps the Mini 3 will strike their fancy?).

Wrap-up

Dell may not be the first to forage into the scene of oversized smartphones (see HTC Advantage and HTC Universal), but it looks like the combination of Android, Snapdragon, 3G affordability and resurrection of the tablet trend may give the Mini 5 a great potential. We found the five-inch form factor to be neither too big nor too small, perfect for browsing the web, watching videos (watch out, Archos 5!), car navigation and reading ebooks on the go. Even the battery life matches most current 3G phones, despite the larger screen and faster CPU. We haven’t seen one yet, but a dock for this phone would be a great addition as it’s just big enough to serve as a digital picture frame, if not a side monitor for your social networking apps or emails. Update: the dock exists!

Video

Archos 7″ / 9″ Tablet

Upon first look is there anything not to love about the Archos 7 Home Tablet? It’s .5-inches thick, has a seven-inch touchscreen, runs Android, and wait for it…only costs $199. It’s all sounded pretty great to us since its CeBIT unveil, but then small, yet saddening details began to emerge about the device: it has a resistive touchscreen, lacks an accelerometer, and doesn’t have access to the Android Market — and worst of all, it runs Android 1.5. Sure, you get what you pay for, but can the Archos 7 rise above those shortcomings and persuade us to dig $199 out of our piggy banks? We’ve spent the last week with the tablet, so you’ll just have to click on to find out.

Look and feel

There’s no denying that the Archos 7 shares DNA with the Archos 5 Internet Tablet, and considering we’ve always liked the look of the 5 that’s not a bad thing. The brushed metal back cover of the device feels comfortable in hand, and though it’s plastic at the core it’s still rather sturdy. It’s cheap, but we wouldn’t say it’s cheap-feeling. Sure, on the build quality scale it isn’t as rock-solid as the aluminum iPad, but the 7 Home Tablet has something the Apple’s tablet certainly should: a kickstand. A skinny plastic stand can be pulled out of the back of the tablet to prop it up on a tablet or desk, which means not having to invest infancy stands.

Size-wise, the tablet is actually ideal — the seven-inch display isn’t too wide, and at 8 x 4.2 x 0.5-inches it doesn’t take up much room on a nightstand or in a small shoulder bag. And because it weighs less than a pound (13.7 ounces, to be exact), it was quite easy to hold up in bed to read an e-book or surf the web – it’s noticeably lighter to hold up than the 1.5-pound iPad while lying down. It’s actually closer in size and weight to the 10.2-ounce and .36-inch Amazon Kindle.

There’s not much to report in the way of buttons and ports – Archos kept it relatively simple with a power switch and micro SD card slot along the top edge, and headphone / composite video out and mini USB sockets on the right side. There’s a circular opening on the front of the tablet where you’d expect some sort of cam, but unfortunately, that’s just a placeholder at this point. In the box, Archos includes a pair of pretty crappy earbuds, a standard mini USB to USB cable, and an AC adapter. Archos plans to sell the composite-out cable separately.

Android experience

In reality, the fact that the tablet runs an outdated Android 1.5 operating system will probably mean very little to the average consumer, but for us techies it means knowing that the software doesn’t include quick search, the advanced battery usage indicator, multitouch support (not that it matters on this device) and a bunch of other recent additions. Archos can always push a firmware update to the device, but these firmware updates will not be able to administer an Android OS update. Sorry. That’s really all we can say for this unfortunate reality.

Our bigger issue with the Android implementation is the lack of access to the Market. Yes, because of Google’s restrictions the 7 doesn’t have access the 50,000 apps designed for the operating system. Instead Archos has gone and created its own AppsLib store, which only has 1,000 approved apps at the moment. Even if Archos does plan to add 2,000 paid apps by the end of June, that’s still a lot of missing apps! And to say the selection is lacking is an understatement. Some of our favorites were missing, including Seesmic, Slacker, Pandora, and Facebook. And though Archos preloads five apps – eBuddy, Aldiko, ColorNote, DailyNote, and Deezer — there’s no Gmail and YouTube, and obviously those aren’t in the AppsLib store either. What does this all mean? It means you have to go out of your way to get your favorite apps on to the device. We managed to wrangle up Facebook, Seesmic, and Opera Mobile from AndroidFreeware.com. We also got Skyfire and Slacker by heading to their respective sites and grabbing them from there. But, yes, it’s incredibly frustrating to have to go searching for the apps / .apks around the net, and it’s even more frustrating is when they don’t work quite right.

Beyond the app experience, web browsing is what you would expect from an Android device. The default browser was quick to load sites and was easy enough to navigate using the resistive touchscreen. Again, we wished here that we could turn the tablet and read Engadget vertically. We did try out Skyfire so we could actually play some YouTube videos, but the browser itself was sluggish and videos were quite laggy even when connected to a very strong WiFi signal. Speaking of video playback, as a personal media player the Archos 7 does a stand-up job. With H.264, Realvideo, and MPEG-4 codecs it supports .avi, .mp4, .mkv, .mov, and .flv files. A 720p clip of Up in the Air played back smoothly with no audio or video sync issues. And after you’re done watching a video on the device, it also makes a decent e-reader with the Aldiko software – the app, though it takes a few seconds to open, defaults to a vertical orientation and on-screen swipes turn the pages. Since the book selection in Aldiko is lacking, we don’t need to tell you we were wishing for Amazon’s Kindle or Barnes & Noble’s Nook app, but that they aren’t available in the AppsLib store.

Notion Ink Adam

The folks from Notion Ink certainly haven’t been shy about showing off their Adam tablet in prototype form, but they unfortunately haven’t been revealing anything more than the most basic specs. That’s now changed with MWC, however, which seems to have made Notion Ink quite a bit more talkative. As we’d heard previously, the Adam is Tegra 2-based with a dual-core ARM CORTEX -A9 processor, and it packs a 10-inch transflective screen with a 1,024 x 600 resolution courtesy of Pixel Qi. Also now confirmed is a swiveling 3-megapixel camera, three USB ports, an HDMI out for full 1080p video, a promised 16 hours of battery life, built-in WiFi, 3G and Bluetooth, and some welcome touches like an ambient light sensor, a proximity sensor and, of course, an accelerometer. As you can see above, the device has also undergone yet more changes from the last prototype we saw at CES, and

Videos of Some more Concepts and upcoming Models

Microsoft Courier Tablet

HP SLATE

Dell Latitude XT2 Tablet PC

/more links here

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