What exactly is this mystery device that just shuffled through the FCC? Well, it’s definitely a Motorola tablet and a member of the Xoom family, but beyond that we can’t tell you much. The FCC ID, which ends in 56MJ3, makes it clear that this is part of Moto’s flagship tablet line, but whether this an upcoming Xoom 2 or simply a souped up variant of the original Honeycomb slate is unclear. The filing makes no mention of cellular connectivity, only WiFi and Bluetooth, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t any on board. We do know that, whatever this turns out to be, it sports an HDMI out, 1GB of RAM, a dual-core 1.2GHz CPU, a 1200 x 800 screen and comes in 16, 32 and 64GB varieties. If you’re in the mood to dig through the test reports yourself, check out the source link.

Mystery Moto tablet swings through the FCC, refuses to take any questions originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If Apple is that paranoid friend that has four deadbolts on his door and a loaded weapon in every room, then Microsoft is the over-sharer who tweets where, when and what he had for lunch — including both before and after photos (and we’re not talking about pictures of a clean plate). Redmond wants you to know about everything it does — no accomplishment is too minor for a lengthy explanation of the what and why. Take for example, portrait mode. Windows 8 will have one. We know what you’re thinking, “well I would frackin’ hope so,” but the devs want you to know this isn’t just some feature they slapped in the OS knowing people would expect it. The team studied users both familiar with and new to the tablet form factor. They looked at grip, posture and when people chose to rotate their slates. And, if you’re some weirdo who likes reading things on their side, there’s a rotation lock option. For more details hit up the source link and the video after the break.

Continue reading Microsoft talks Windows 8 portrait mode, really wants you to be proud of it (video)

Microsoft talks Windows 8 portrait mode, really wants you to be proud of it (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Oct 2011 11:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Early adopters are usually SOL a few months into owning their new doodads. After helping make products successful, their version 1.0 devices are often cast aside to make room for the newer, better, faster kit waiting in the pipeline. If you happened to jump on the Kindle bandwagon early on or even just a short while ago, you may be feeling these very flames of tech fury whenever you consider the company’s newly refreshed line. Well, buck up bookworms, a partial solution to your economic woes is now available. Amazon’s accepting your used and abused e-readers in exchange for a gift card applicable to any purchases you make on the site. It’s the same old trade-in program the Bezos-backed company’s been running for years, only now you’ll have a more sensible way to upgrade your E Ink or tablet game.

Amazon adds e-readers to Trade-In program, ebook lovers pass the old Kindles to the Bezos side originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Sony Music Unlimited arrives for Android tablets, bearing gifts of unlimited music

Sony Music Unlimited arrives for Android tablets, bearing gifts of unlimited music originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Whoa, Nelly! ASUS head honcho Jonney Shih just revealed the “next-generation Transformer tablet” here at AsiaD! It’s the same one that we saw teased just yesterday, and Jonney affirmed that it’ll ship with a quad-core NVIDIA chip, 10-inch display, mini-HDMI port, a 14.5-hour battery, an SD card slot and a top lid that looks precisely like its Zenbook line. Oh, and it’s 8.3mm thick, though Jonney didn’t specify as to whether that was docked or undocked (we’re guessing the former!). Naturally, it’ll ship with Android, and we’re assuming it’ll be Honeycomb to start. That said, Shih did affirm to Walt Mossberg that he expects Ice Cream Sandwich to hit tablets by the end of the year — “perhaps earlier.” Finally, we were informed that it’ll be called the Transformer Prime, and while a final ship date wasn’t given, we’re told to expect more news on that front during the November 9th “official reveal.”

ASUS’ Jonney Shih unveils Transformer Prime Android tablet: 10-inch, 8.3mm, quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We just witnessed quite the interview between ASUS chairman Jonney Shih and Walt Mossberg at AsiaD, and outside of revealing the Transformer Prime (and affirming that the impending Padfone would ship with Android 4.0), he also dropped a few other nuggets worth mention to the audience here in Hong Kong. For starters, he finally caved to Walt’s pestering about who his main competition was, specifically related to the new Zenbook. “The Mac[Book] Air,” he stated, chuckling slyly afterwards, but quickly continuing on to plug his own machine based on its own merits. Not surprisingly, he also expressed his confidence that Android tablets still had a lot of life left in the market, and he stated that ASUS is still on track to move its target — around two million — Android tablets this year. Moving onto the topic of netbooks, Shih noted that rather than being buried, netbooks are simply “evolving.” More importantly, however, was his subtle confirmation that a new ASUS netbook is en route: “You’ll see on our new netbook, it’ll be very thin.” In fact, he even suggested that the design may follow that of the Zenbook, but just… smaller.

When asked about his thoughts on people replacing laptops less frequently, and perhaps shifting disposable income to smartphones and tablets, Jonney maintained that all of those markets were key to ASUS’ success, and that none were taking a backseat. “We believe that this a very critical time, transitioning from the personal computing era to the ubiquitous cloud computing era.” Sounds a bit like another mantra we heard, truth be told, but ASUS has been riding the cloud bandwagon long before most other consumer companies even knew what it was. The original spate of Eee PCs had next to no internal storage; rather, they relied on accessing the web in order to deliver the bulk of their functionality. Jonney also noted that ASUS is attempting to tackle an interesting problem with its products, which is that few people can truly separate work and entertainment — in other words, you need products that adequately handle both worlds. We’re guessing a Padfone + Transformer Prime + Zenbook is his preferred trifecta to do just that.

ASUS’ Jonney Shih: Android 4.0 hitting tablets by year’s end, ultrathin netbook is coming originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 22:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Is there such a thing as too much Ice Cream Sandwich? We didn’t think so either, and booted up Google’s own Android Emulator to play around with version four-point-oh — in tablet proportions. We don’t know whether manufacturers will end up slathering their own interpretation of Ice Cream Sandwich on top of the vanilla original, but this is probably very close to what we’ll be dealing with when arrives on tablets sometime this quarter. Scrollable, resizeable widgets are here, as is a tabbed, synchronizing web browser. There are some minor niggles; we hope they’ll make some adjustments to the comically over-sized native keyboard, but the main thing we took away from this stuttering simulation is that the UI is nigh-on identical to what we were using on the Galaxy Nexus. Android looks like it has any future convergence issues in order — this version will feel at home on both your phone and tablet. Android Beam has never sounded better. If you can forgive the low-performance emulation, check out the video after the break for more Ice Cream Sandwich, king-size.

Continue reading Android Ice Cream Sandwich: What will it look like on a tablet? (video)

Android Ice Cream Sandwich: What will it look like on a tablet? (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 20:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google’s Andy Rubin kicked off the opening keynote here at the Asian branch of All Things D (that’s AsiaD, if you’re curious), and he finally cleared up a figure we’ve been wondering about for eons. During a back-and-forth with Walt Mossberg about the proliferation of the iPad and whether or not Android was “a flop” in the tablet market, he affirmed that around six million Android-based tablets were “out there.” Of course, that’s only tablets that access Google services, as those are the only ones Google can account for with any degree of certainty. For comparison’s sake, Apple pushed 15 million iPads onto the market in 2010 alone, selling three million in just 80 days after the launch of the original. In fact, Apple sold 11.12 million iPads in its most recent quarter alone (9.25 million the one before that), which represented a 166 percent increase year-over-year. Moral of the story? Apple still owns the tablet market, but hey, at least we now know the score.

Filed under: Tablet PCs

Google’s Andy Rubin: ‘six million’ Android-based tablets out there originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 07:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google’s Andy Rubin kicked off the opening keynote here at the Asian branch of All Things D (that’s AsiaD, if you’re curious), and he finally cleared up a figure we’ve been wondering about for eons. During a back-and-forth with Walt Mossberg about the proliferation of the iPad and whether or not Android was “a flop” in the tablet market, he affirmed that around six million Android-based tablets were “out there.” Of course, that’s only tablets that access Google services, as those are the only ones Google can account for with any degree of certainty. For comparison’s sake, Apple pushed 15 million iPads onto the market in 2010 alone, selling three million in just 80 days after the launch of the original. In fact, Apple sold 11.12 million iPads in its most recent quarter alone (9.25 million the one before that), which represented a 166 percent increase year-over-year. Moral of the story? Apple still owns the tablet market, but hey, at least we now know the score.

Filed under: Tablet PCs

Google’s Andy Rubin: ‘six million’ Android-based tablets out there originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 07:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Could it be that a trio of LTE-powered Superfriends are ready for a throwdown on the same exact day at your local Verizon outlet? According to a leaked internal doc courtesy of Droid-Life, signs point to November 10th as a probable launch date for what could be this year’s top three holiday gadget gifts: the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Motorola Droid RAZR and HTC Rezound (formerly known as the Vigor). We’re a tad confused, however, because Motorola’s hero device is referred to as the Droid HD — which, as we’ve recently discovered, is certainly not the phone’s real name. Also interesting to note is the introduction of a “SMS Sync for Tablets” feature on November 13th, which may refer to some type of cloud backup service or a bridge between your tablet and phone. Either way, color us intrigued. Let’s cross our fingers that we’ll have a few more details to lean on tonight.

Continue reading Verizon looking at November 10th launch for Galaxy Nexus, Droid RAZR and HTC Rezound?

Verizon looking at November 10th launch for Galaxy Nexus, Droid RAZR and HTC Rezound? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Oct 2011 19:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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