Motorola has just provided further details of their upcoming Atrix device. The phone sports a dual-core processor with a huge 1930 mAh battery and will be aimed at business users. Featuring a qHD display and fingerprint reader, the Atrix will be a very powerful device for any business user who is distancing themselves from the desktop.
LG’s Optimus 2X was the first NVIDIA Tegra 2 powered “superphone” to be announced, though we know it won’t be the last; Motorola has since announced its own dual-core Android device, the Motorola ATRIX 4G. We caught up with NVIDIA and spent some time with the Optimus 2X earlier; check out our first impressions after the cut.
Video demo after the cut
As you’ve seen from our first hands-on, Notion Ink’s Adam tablet is a pretty smooth operator, but we wanted to see just how smooth. The company allowed us to load up an Android benchmarking app to see how the slate performs, but there are a few caveats to bear in mind.
Video after the cut
Launching in the US last week, and finally making a tardy appearance in the UK today, we already know that the Google Nexus S is a decent phone. In fact, we even called it the best Android handset on the market today in our review, and considering the strength of the competition right now, that’s an admirable place to be. Yet, despite having been using a Nexus S review unit for some time now, and having gotten on with the Android 2.3 smartphone well, I won’t be picking one up today. Let me tell you why.
Advent’s Vega tablet seems to have surprised everybody with its popularity, not least retailer DSG who can’t seem to keep them in stock for more than a few hours at a time. Our Vega review unit braved the UK snow to arrive on the SlashGear test bench, and we wasted no time checking out what Tegra 2 brings to the Android table. First impressions and some unboxing-style fun after the cut.
Video after the cut
Toshiba launched their Folio 100 smartpad earlier this week, and we grabbed some hands-on time with the Android 2.2 Froyo table at IFA 2010 today. The second significant Android slate of the day – after we played with the smaller Samsung Galaxy Tab earlier on – it’s a bigger beast too, with a 10-inch capacitive touchscreen (with 4-point multitouch) and NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 chipset like its AC100 sibling. The good news is that it’s a reasonably decent slate; the bad is that it looks like it won’t be reaching the US.
I first heard the term “Super Phone” used as it relates to a new category of devices at a conference I attended last month. I’ve thought for a while now that the industry needed to come up with a term other than smartphone to distinguish these new classes of devices. Even though I’m not completely in love with Super Phone as a term (and I’m pretty sure consumers don’t care about these terms anyway) it is perhaps the best so far.
In part one of our Notion Ink feature, we looked at the reasons for the delay in production of the Adam slate. Happily the company didn’t rest on their laurels while investor and ODM issues were ironed out. After the cut, details of hardware and software changes – including Notion Ink‘s take on iTunes – plans for Adam’s launch and pricing for all four versions, and what’s down the line in terms of follow-up hardware.
Notion Ink continues to be one of the most searched for companies on SlashGear, an impressive record for a start-up firm taking on the might of Apple. Closely followed since their CES 2010 debut with the Adam tablet, aside from a few morsels of news in the intervening months the company has dropped back into a stealth mode of sorts. Now, in the first of an exclusive two-part feature, SlashGear can flesh out the Notion Ink story so far, including investor nightmares, multiple ODMs and an Android app-drawer’s worth of custom Adam applications.
Toshiba‘s first MID (Mobile Internet Device) has made its debut, in the shape of the Android-based Toshiba AC100. Using a form-factor we’d more commonly describe as a netbook or smartbook – Toshiba say they picked the classic design over a more common slate-style MID because it’s more familiar for users and offers better ergonomics and text-entry – the AC100 runs NVIDIA’s second-generation Tegra 250 chipset making it 1080p HD capable.
First impressions and hands-on video after the cut
How foolish I’ve been. Five months ago I wrote that tablets had come of age, and even sifted my way through the line-up cherry picking what must-have features would make for the perfect device. A month later, in the afterglow – or should that be aftermath? – of the iPad announcement, I marvelled that, while Apple’s slate wouldn’t necessarily satisfy every user, there was nonetheless plenty of choice on the horizon for those given a taste for tableteering. Our analyst contributors wisely told me not to count my touchscreen chickens before they’d hatched onto the market, but I wouldn’t listen. I thought the iPad’s arrival would rejuvenate the tablet segment, but all it seems to have done is killed off any attempt at innovation.
Even before you leave an event like Mobile World Congress 2010 you get used to people asking you what the most interesting or exciting thing you’ve seen at the show has been. This year, while there was no shortage of impressive hardware imminent to the market, the real promise for me was in next-gen chipsets. Texas Instruments, NVIDIA, Freescale, Marvell, Qualcomm and others had all brought their wares along to demo, and the promises – not to mention the step up from existing platforms – were flowing thick and fast. So, what sort of devices can we expect using these new chipsets?
