The world’s first Android Honeycomb tablet, the Motorola XOOM was not as successful as the company would have liked it to be. There were a few issues with the tablet itself which eventually led to people returning tablets back to the manufacturer. And now a retailer, woot.com has apparently sold a few units of the tablet which weren’t properly refurbished. The new buyers of the refurbished tablets found data on the tablet. This is clearly an error by Motorola, failing to perform a factory reset of the devices before putting them up for resale as refurbished devices. Information from old users like passwords, images etc were all found on these tablets.

Needless to say, Motorola has been quick to respond to the issue and has given out a press release. It is reported that the affected tablets belonged to the customers who returned the tablet between March and October 2011. On the brighter side, only 100 of the 6,200 devices returned during the period are said to be affected. Well, this is a rookie mistake from a company like Motorola and you might want to check with the company if you returned the tablet during the specified time frame. Motorola is offering 2 years of free Experian ProtectMyID for customers who have been affected by this. Instances like these could be avoided if users reset their device or back up the data before sending it over to the company.

Contact Motorola by heading over to the Motorola XOOM Wi-Fi Return Submission page or simply contact Motorola via phone (1800-734-5870).

[Source]

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Kindle Fire is Amazon’s long-awaited leap into the already crowded tablet market. Powered by Android, and specs that are comparable with Research and Motion’s Blackberry Playbook for just $199! It might have the potential to be a value for money tablet that everyone would want.

Kindle Fire Specifications:

• 1GHz TI OMAP dual-core CPU
• 512 MB of RAM
• 8GB of internal flash storage
• 7 inch IPS Gorilla Glass scratch resistive display
• Amazon AppStore
• Free Access to Amazon Cloud Storage

Wilson Rothman managed to get a shot of Kindle Fire alongside Blackberry Playbook, and I must admit, it looks a bit sleeker than the Playbook. The user interface looks nothing like Android, thanks to all the custom skinning done by Amazon. Would it have a shot at Apple’s iPad 2? Along with 18 million pieces of content in the appstore (which includes games, apps, movies, TV shows and music), Amazon is pitching its new tablet with what they call “Amazon Silk Browser”

What is Amazon Silk?

Amazon Silk is a cloud-accelerated browser that splits the computational power required to render each web page between the device and Amazon’s massive infrastructure of computer. It works more or less like Opera Turbo and speeds up mobile browsing experience by compressing heavy components and makes dynamic assessments to either execute certain elements of the page remotely or run locally on the device.

Kindle Fire Cons?

Lack of 3G, and camera is a major letdown. Looks like Amazon’s AppStore will completely replace Android Market, which means you’ll be missing out on apps that haven’t partnered with Amazon.

Will it hurt iPad’s Market Share?

The device doesn’t seem to be as polished iOS-powered iPad, but for those who cannot justify a $500 iPad, Fire makes perfect sense. Only time will tell, if Fire will generate enough buzz to erode sales away from iPad! Do you think Amazon’s price-point will convince average consumers to consider Kindle Fire? Tell us through comments!

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Icons and controls have been sized up to enable smooth finger tap controls without accidentally tapping in the wrong area of the screen. It would be wrong to comment on the UI based on YouTube video, but it seems like the screen resolution is small and perhaps that’s why the reason why scrollbar appears to see more panels. Nevertheless, the Metro UI looks fabulous, and people are expecting nothing but the best from Microsoft’s immersive user experience.

Microsoft is also reported to be working on a new API codenamed ‘Jupiter’ which will allow developers to use Silverlight and create application packaged in .appx extension. The applications will be a part of Windows 8 through an app store. We’ll keep our fingers crossed till Windows Developers Conference in September this year.

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YTLive tries to fix this by converting YouTube’s flash feed to an iOS compatible format, and then re-stream it to your iPhone or iPad’s Mobile Safari. Copy the URL of the live stream, go to YTLive web app, paste the link and you are all set to watch any live event on your iOS device as long as YTLive can handle all the traffic.

Someday, hopefully, YouTube will completely embrace HTML5 and remove the limitations faced by iOS users!

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The Toshiba Tablet features a 10.1-inch HD display with a resolution of 1280×800 pixels, a 5MP back camera with a 2MP front facing camera, a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU, HDMI output, an USB port and a mini USB port each, and will run on Android 3.0 Honeycomb.

[Source]

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The sensation of the iPad 2 however, is its magnetically latchable smart cover, which comes in all different colors and removes the bulk out of the protective covering. iPad 2 wakes up from sleep, and goes back to sleep just as you open or close the smart cover. As Steve Jobs nicely puts it: “We designed the case right along side the product. It’s not a case — it’s a cover”. These Smart Covers cost $39 for plastic, and $69 for leather. You can fold up the smart cover and double it like a iPad stand, just I believe is truly just awesome! The old iPad official case always had this ergonomic issue associated with it.

iPad 2 Smart Cover

Now let’s get started with the boring new features:

• 33% thinner than its predecessor. iPad was always sleek, 33% of that gets the figures to 8.8mm
• Available in two colors: White and Black
• 2 times faster processor, 9 times faster graphics
• Available on AT&T and Verizon
• Shipping starts March 11^th, 2011

Things we were hoping to see on iPad 2, but didn’t make it:

• Retina Display: iPhone 4’s super awesome retina display didn’t make its way into the iPad
• Thunderbolt I/O: Super-fast 10GBps input output connection which made its way into the new Macbook Pro

And… The typical Apple Launch Video of the iPad 2: Download it!

Over the months, I’ve fallen so much in love with the iPad. I was always hoping it would let me hook it up with my office projector to give presentations, and now it does! Front and Rear facing camera was definitely a must have for those video chat junkies.

From the launch video, it looks as if Apple did a great job with Movie and Garage Band apps, but in the video they mention the instruments play louder if you tap harder. I wonder how that functionality works because there is no way to measure the velocity of the tap. Guessing it’s the accelerometer, which can determine how fleshy your fingers are, but then again, what about kids using the iPad? Would they have to tap extra harder to get louder sound?

Read the Tech Specs on Apple.com, or follow the live bloggers at Arstechnica

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The disappointing part though is that this is not a glassless 3D tablet. Meaning, you would need a pair of 3D glasses to view 3D content on this tab. Despite this tiny little flaw, the tablet doesn’t fail to impress us. A 1 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash along with a front facing camera, 32 GB of built-in storage, 3D and HD TV output and T-Mobile’s seamless 4G network should do the job pretty well.

LG’s Marketing Vice President, Tim O’Brien said – “We are excited to introduce the T-Mobile G-Slate by LG, which offers consumers an engaging new way to communicate, entertain and stay connected.”

The G-Slate has all the makings of an excellent tablet, some are even considering it to be a competitor to the iPad. But at the end of the day, it’s the sales that matters. Would the customers pick the G-Slate over a wide range of tablets available in the market today ?

via T-Mobile

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Nakayo, a Japanese telecommunications company, are coming up with a home phone which has an integrated tablet device. This 7 inch Froyo running tablet, could be taken out of the phone and used for web-browsing and to make hands free calls with the built-in microphone. The user would also be able to make video calls with the 0.3 megapixel CMOS camera on the tab. This home phone would support SIP(Session Initiation Protocol).

The tablet would feature a 7-inch 800×480 resolution display, a 0.3 MP CMOS camera, Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11b/g, a MicroSD card slot with an expandable memory of up to 32 GB, a USB port and would run on Android 2.2 Froyo as mentioned above.

The company will launch this device in Japan from July this year and aims to sell 30,000 units within the next 2 years. The price is not known yet.

via MobileCrunch

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So far, this is just a concept of Chrome OS’s touch interface, but Telegraph claims that Google is already in talks with HTC, the handset manufacturer behind Google branded Nexus One and countless other Android powered handsets.

“Although Chromium is not an official Google website, the concept video has been put together by Glen Murphy, one of Google’s Chrome OS designers. Google is also reportedly in discussions with Taiwanese consumer electronics giant HTC about making a touch-screen tablet computer. HTC already makes many of the mobile phones that run Google’s Android operating system, and designed and built Google’s own-brand handset, the Nexus One.”

Chrome OS was initially meant for the netbooks and this concept could very well mean they could be considering the possibility of scaling their new operating system to touch input based tablet computers as well. Meanwhile, companies like HP are already working on their own tablet computers.

Chrome OS tablet actually sounds like a neat idea, if at all it ever sees the light of the day. Since hardware manufacturers like Dell and HP would very soon be rolling out their own iPad killers, it makes sense for Google to support touch input devices for Chrome OS.

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