What’s the best use for an NVIDIA Tegra 250 second-gen tablet? If you said Condé Nast’s Wired digital magazine demo, or indeed popular Facebook game Farmville, NVIDIA have you covered. The company had their latest tablet prototypes on show, and were demonstrating the finger-friendly magazine together with the addictive farming game.
We didn’t hide our confusion back at the Samsung bada launch late last year; at the time, a disappointingly vague presentation and a complete absence of demo devices left us uncertain as to where Samsung expected the new smartphone-for-the-masses platform to fit into the current ecosystem. Having spent some decent hands-on time with the first bada phone, the Samsung Wave S8500, and our very own hands-on at MWC 2010 – we’re a little more confident in the device if not the positioning. Check out our first impressions – and video – after the cut.
While we were with NVIDIA today, we ran into one of the guys from tablet start-up Notion Ink. We’ve covered their Adam tablet several times here at SlashGear, and so jumped at the chance for a hands-on with their latest prototype unit. The company have confirmed that there will be two models on offer when the Adam hits the market in Q3 2010, one with the innovative Pixel Qi display (at 12.9mm thick) and another (11.6mm thick) regular LCD. They’ve also sent over a video demo of a Flash-based digital magazine, which you can see after the cut.
Video hands-on & Flash digital magazine demo after the cut
The first nuvifone took its time reaching the market and met with disappointing reviews when it finally made it, so you could argue the bar is set low for the Garmin-Asus nuvifone A50. The first in the model range to run Android, we grabbed some hands-on time with the A50 at MWC 2010 this week; turns out, the partnership have learnt plenty from their first efforts, and while the smartphone won’t knock HTC off their perch it joins the ringing death-knell of standalone PNDs. More first-impressions after the cut.
Toshiba’s two new Windows Mobile 6.5 devices ended up a little overshadowed by Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 launch, which is a shame since we’re hoping the company has learnt its lesson from the mediocre TG01. One of our biggest complaints was the poor custom UI; that’s been replaced with a slick new 3D interface, which looks pretty impressive on the 4.1-inch WVGA display. It also does duty on the Toshiba K01, which basically takes the TG02 and adds a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.
MWC 2010 isn’t our first encounter with the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10; after all, we joined the company in London back in November 2009 for the official launch of the Android smartphone. What it is, though, is a good chance to catch up with a very much more optimized build. The XPERIA X10’s debut was marred by jittery performance and sluggishness in the company’s custom apps, Mediascape and Timescape, leaving us somewhat unconvinced about the handset. Happily – and handily, since Sony Ericsson tell us the X10 is mere weeks from launch in the UK – the current build is far more impressive.
Back when we gave you a sneak preview of Texas Instruments’ OMAP4 developers device – since named the Blaze – what we really wanted to show you was video demo of its strutting its tri-display Full HD potential. Unfortunately they weren’t quite ready to go public with that, so we’ve had to wait until MWC 2010 this week. While the next-gen chipset battle is nowhere near finished yet, it’s certainly an exciting time for mobile devices; after the cut, the Blaze gets a video demo – including custom dual-screen Android – and TI tell us why not all ARM Cortex A8 cores are created equal.
Sony Ericsson’s Vivaz pro potentially has a tough sell on its hands: its XPERIA siblings, like the X10 and the new X10 mini and X10 mini pro, have an arguably more eye-catching OS in Android, and a more impressive UI in the form of Timescape and Mediascape. In contrast, the Vivaz and Vivaz pro both get S60, albeit with a little of Sony Ericsson’s own tweaking. Hands-on, both devices feel lighter than they look, though on the downside we weren’t entirely convinced by the quality of the plastics.
Biggest surprise about the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 mini and X10 mini pro? Just how small the new Android smartphones are in the plastic. We grabbed some hands-on time with both earlier today, and while they don’t have the original X10’s eye-catching 4-inch display they go some way to making up for it with extreme pocket-friendliness. Check out the live photos and video demos after the cut.
While Android might have ruled the roost at HTC this morning, the Legend and Desire weren’t the only new devices. The HTC HD mini is a compact, cheaper version of the HD2, running Windows Mobile 6.5.3; check out our first impressions and some hands-on photos and video after the cut.
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