Acer is planning to launch a 7-inch and 10-inch tablet PC in the fourth quarter according to Digitimes. Both will sport ARM CPUs and run Google’s Android OS 2.2. These tablet PCs will go up against Apple’s iPad and tout its multimedia capabilities including the ability to run Flash. We all know Apple’s stance on Flash: not supporting Flash on iDevices. Flash 10.1 continues to crash my desktop browsers so hope it behaves better on mobile phones. I personally would like a Flash-free browsing experience where I don’t need any plugins to enjoy videos, graphics, etc.
There is no doubt many brands will enter the tablet market. Success will depend on an experience that matches or exceeds that of the iPad, providing the ability to easily purchase and consume media such as the App Store, iBookstore and the iTunes Music Store. According Phil McKinney, CTO of HP, and as reported by Wired.com, HP is prepping a tablet called the HP Slate using Palm’s webOS. HP will be controlling the experience like Apple has with much success. McKinney:
If you look at success in the market, they are those companies who can control the end user experience and the entire experience stack.
HP is serious about controlling the experience as it purchased Palm for US$1.2 billion that closed earlier in July. Can HP control the experience and yet be open?
One of the main criticisms of the iPad is its closed ecosystem and so there will be a good portion of the market that will respond to a more open platform. Google’s Android OS seems to be the platform of choice but where can users get the media they want? Rumor has it Google is working on its own music store that will allow you to download and stream music. It won’t be surprising to see a seamless cloud integration with Google’s Android. You can find the juicy details on c|net.
Amazon’s Kindle app is on all mobile device platforms so no matter what you’re using you’ll see still be able to get your books, magazines and newspapers. I just replaced my Motorola Motoroi (I will be giving you an update soon as to my experience with my replacement brand-new Motoroi) and the Kindle app synced all the books that I had downloaded with the previous Motoroi. I think that’s what you can expect on any tablet that runs Google’s Android. Cloud integration will be a major strength for Android. There’s also solid options for video: Hulu/Hulu Plus, Netflix, etc.
Will 7-inch, 10-inch tablet PCs displace netbooks? Who is to know. HP is poised to target its Slate as a mobile device slotting below the netbook in size. Apple on the other hand has publicly announced that the iPad would replace netbooks. No one knows what will happen, but one thing is for sure: most if not all brands will do their best to market their tablets as the next big thing. Apple is already on its way to success. Who will be next?
Sony → Photography Bay: The Sony NEX-VG10 Interchangeable Lens HD Handycam Camcorder makes use of the same APS-C Exmor HD CMOS image sensor used in the company’s latest NEX digital cameras. The image sensor is almost 20 times bigger than the sensors found in typical camcorders. Another exciting feature of the NEX-VG10 is the use of SLR lenses. And for just US$2000 you can shoot like the professionals, maybe even better. All of Sony’s E-mount lenses can be used and with an adapter you can take your pick from the wide variety of Alpha-mount lenses.
Unlike DSLRs that can shoot video, the NEX-VG10 can really shoot video: 1080/60p in AVCHD format (or 1080/50p for PAL) at up to 24Mbps. Unfortunately the film standard 1080/24p isn’t supported. But since the NEX-VG10, like the NEX digital cameras, are mostly about the chip and firmware I expect hackers the world over will get 1080/24p kicking in no time. Stills can be snapped too with 14 megapixels but only in JPG; RAW isn’t supported. Yet. Videos and photos are stored in Memory Stick or SD cards. Up to four hours of 1080/60p HD video can be stored using a 32GB card.
Sony paid a lot of attention to sound. Get this: a Quad Capsule Spatial Array Stereo Microphone is used to capture stereo sound. The 3.0-inch Xtra Fine TruBlack LCD viewfinder has 921,000 pixels. There is also an electronic viewfinder. The NEX-VG10 will be available in September and comes with an image-stabilized E18-200mm f3.5-6.3 lens. Pre-orders start on July 14th.
The 2010 iPod touch specs according to UK retailer John Lewis and reported by Pocket-lint:
I’m guessing a front-facing camera is a no-brainer if FaceTime is going to work. The gyroscope will be a big hit since a lot of the iPod touch users like to play games on ‘em. FaceTime is also going to be really big. Sure, there are situations when grownups can make use of FaceTime like the new Apple ads show, but the main market is for folks that are younger. Watch out YouTube; the site is going to get plastered with 720p HD video uploads.
Some would say the new iPod touch is like the iPhone 4 without the phone, but there is more without, and that’s a very good thing.
The iPod touch will no doubt have less if not any issues with signal degradation. It will most likely be thinner and have a longer battery life. The one thing that wasn’t clear according to John Lewis was whether or not the new iPod touch will have a Retina Display or not. I sure hope it does.
With iOS 4.0 the iPod touch should get multitasking. And that means I can run Skype in the background. I work at places with free WiFi almost all the time so the iPod touch can easily be an iPhone 4 replacement and for considerably less cost.
Maybe I should forget about the iPhone 4 and just get an iPod touch. A white one.
Consumer Reports on the iPhone 4:
… it sports the sharpest display and best video camera we’ve seen on any phone, and even outshines its high-scoring predecessors with improved battery life and such new features as a front-facing camera for video chats and a built-in gyroscope that turns the phone into a super-responsive game controller. But Apple needs to come up with a permanent—and free—fix for the antenna problem before we can recommend the iPhone 4.
Consumer Reports says it cannot recommend Apple’s iPhone 4 because of an antenna design flaw. On July 12th, the publication announced its judgement on the iPhone 4′s antenna issue. Mike Gikas, a Consumer Reports writer:
Our findings call into question the recent claim by Apple that the iPhone 4′s signal-strength issues were largely an optical illusion caused by faulty software.
This is the first time Consumer Reports has not endorsed an iPhone since the original model was released in 2007. The magazine conducted internal testings of three iPhone 4s purchased at three separate retail locations in the New York area. The tests were completed in a controlled environment (radio frequency isolation chamber) using a base-station emulator with other AT&T phones including the iPhone 3GS and the Palm Pre. The iPhone 4 exhibited the well publicized antenna issue, but the iPhone 3GS and the Palm Pre didn’t:
When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone’s lower left side-an easy thing, especially for lefties-the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you’re in an area with a weak signal. Due to this problem, we can’t recommend the iPhone 4.
Apple has sold 1.7 million iPhone 4′s in the first three days of its release. Almost immediately there were reports of reception issues and a bit later the issue focused on a certain spot toward the lower left portion of the stainless steel mid-section that was designed as an external antenna for better signal reception.
Apple has been less-than forward with this issue. Apple issued an initial press release stating that signal attenuation occurs on all mobile phones when held and suggested holding the iPhone 4 a different way. Read Apple: You’re Holding The iPhone 4 The Wrong Way. Obviously the tests conducted by Consumer Reports suggest not all mobile phones experience iPhone 4-like signal degradation when held. One of Apple’s suggestion is to purchase an iPhone 4 case. A quick aside: I do like the Vapor case from ElementCase. Read ElementCase Vapor iPhone 4 Aluminum Case: Helps Maintain iPhone Antenna Signal Strength. Gikas on Apple’s response:
You can’t just suggest people use their right hands or buy an aftermarket product. You have to fix it yourself.
Yes Apple, get with it.
The company then issued a statement pointing to a software bug, which was inaccurate and exaggerated signal strength. Read iPhone 4 Reception Issue: Signal Formula Error? This doesn’t fix the antenna issue but it does reset expectations. For example, the four or five bars you’ve been experiencing were actually one or two. So when calls fail you won’t be as disgruntled as before. This is a nice marketing trick: set low expectations or in this case reset to lower expectations. But the reality is still this: there is an antenna design problem. Wired.com’s Dylan Tweney:
Lab tests by Consumer Reports have confirmed what Wired and its readers have been telling you all along: The problem with the iPhone 4’s reception has nothing to do with how the signal-strength bars are represented, and everything to do with the phone’s faulty antenna design.
Consumer Reports recommend using duct tape, but I wouldn’t do that. I would instead get the Bumpers, a nice case (Vapor), or try… Colorware. If you look carefully the mid-section stainless steel is covered with beautiful paint. That might do the trick and solve the antenna issue. I would also choose the “Softouch” option just to make sure there’s enough between your fingers and the stainless steel antenna. It would also make it less slippery, a feature that feels good in your pocket but is the real culprit behind all cement face plants. The Colorware option is a terribly expensive one at US$250. And it’ll take three weeks to ship, once they get yours. You see, Coloware doesn’t have any iPhone 4 units to sell you so you’ll have to send in yours. If you can stomach not having your iPhone 4 for about a month and spending $250 to make it ultra-cool but without guarantees that it will solve your antenna problems, then, well… check this out: My OR3O concept.
The conclusion is this: It isn’t AT&T. It isn’t you. It’s Apple. But don’t all the best in the world have at least one fatal flaw? I’m Not Getting An iPhone 4, Yet.
Sources:
According to cheaa.com via Digitimes, TPV Technology will reportedly take over Royal Philips Electronics’ LCD TV business. An already-drafted agreement will give TPV the rights to use the Philips brand in its TV products along with LCD TV-related patent rights, inventories, customers and employees. Read Philips Opts Out of LCD TV Business, Funai Takes Over where Philips licensed its brand to Funai for the North American LCD TV market. It seems Philips want out of the LCD TV business for good.
Rest in peace. More photographs of George Steinbrenner at TPM.
LaCie’s XtremKey sports an impenetrable shell (2-mm zamac pipe) and is resistant to pressure, water (100 meters), drops (5 meters), and extreme temperatures (-50°C to +200°C). Great industrial design. Capacities from 8GB (US$49.99) to 64GB. There’s a video on LaCieTV. More info to come at Lacie.com.
Toshiba’s Portege R705 has an elegantly simple external design. The thing that made me perk up was that the R705 is a 13.3-inch notebook PC with an optical drive that weighs just 3.2 pounds. My sister often complains that her white MacBook is heavy. And it is. At 4.5 pounds the MacBook is more than 40% heavier than the R705.
The 13.3-inch glossy LCD sports a 1366×768 pixel format (1,049,088 total pixels). The MacBook as a comparison has a pixel format of 1280×800 (1,024,000 total pixels). So the R705 has a bit more total pixels but I’d love to see a lot more like what Sony has done with its VAIO Z. Read Sony VAIO Z: 13.1-inch 1920×1080 for more info. Viewing angles on most notebook PCs are simply terrible and the R705 is no exception.
Intel’s Wireless Display technology is incorporated but not the required Netgear Push2TV to get content on the TV without wires. The R705 has both a VGA and HDMI video out ports, which are much more useful than a mini-DisplayPort connection. For more information check out Engadget’s review and for full specifications hop on over to Toshiba’s R705 site.
Compared to the printed book reading speeds were 6.2% slower on the iPad and 10.7% slower on the Kindle 2. Nielsen states in his findings, however, that the difference between the iPad and the Kindle is not statistically significant. You can read just as fast on an LCD as on an E Ink display.
Other interesting findings:
…they disliked that the iPad was so heavy and that the Kindle featured less-crisp gray-on-gray letters. People also disliked the lack of true pagination and preferred the way the iPad (actually, the iBook app) indicated the amount of text left in a chapter.
Less predictable comments: Users felt that reading the printed book was more relaxing than using electronic devices. And they felt uncomfortable with the PC because it reminded them of work.
The Kindle 2 sports a 16-shade capable greyscale E Ink display. E Ink and Amazon will most likely need to increase the Kindle’s grayscale capability to 32 or 64 shades in the future.
I also think reading the printed book is more relaxing, especially if the paper quality is good. Is it just me thinking this or is quality of paper used in printed books generally going down? I don’t mind paperbacks using crappy paper but when I invest in a hardback I expect paper quality to be good. And yes the iPad at 1.5 pounds is a bit heavy to be used as an ebook reader if you plan on reading for quite some time, unless you have a bookstand for the iPad.
HP’s Phil McKinney spoke at MobileBeat in San Francisco on July 12th. Holding up a rugged Mylar-infused bi-stable flexible display, McKinney said:
These are the kinds of display technologies that will change what we think of in form factors, both in products from Palm with flexible displays, and with HP.
HP- and Palm-branded products sporting bi-stable E Ink-like displays are quite possible. Maybe HP or Palm is working on an ebook reader. Totally flexible and rollable displays like the one McKinney was holding up are… well… let’s just say I’m not holding my breath and neither should you. It is one thing to print circuits unto flexible substrates for technical feasibility and demonstration purposes; it is something completely different to volume manufacture them, get it into an affordable product that people would want to spend money for and use.
Looking at the super high-tech bi-stable Mylar-infused flexible display, I can see that it is flexible but it looks like I’ll be hard-pressed to keep it flat. The other transparent versions, on the other hand, don’t seem to be quite rollable.
It is quite interesting to see the difference between a secretive company like Apple and a fairly open one like HP. Apple doesn’t share anything until it has perfected something. Sure there are some patent applications here and there that get publicized, but in general you only get to see products and services that are fairly vetted. For instance you won’t see Apple talking about future display technologies for its next-generation iPhone or some other product. On the other hand you have companies like HP that shares that it is developing bi-stable flexible displays. In what product will that display technology be used? Who knows. When will it come out? That’s a good question. What type of performance can we expect? No one knows. How much? Weight? Ruggedness? Etc. No one knows anything. Why does HP do this?
My recommendation: Stop with all of this and just get busy making a product with it.
DisplayBlog is written and produced by Jin Kim. Subscribe via RSS.