You’ll have the usual access rooting your device would have. You may run a custom OS and install unsigned apps.

Before we start: On your Playbook, Navigate to the Storage and Settings panel and enable file sharing and Wi-Fi Sharing without a password. Navigate to Security panel and enable Developer Mode; keep the password entered nearby, you’ll need it later.

Download Dingleberry Jailbreak app (windows) Mac version coming soon. [Download].

Step 1. Run DingleBerry.exe, click Continue.

Step 2. Connect your PlayBook to PC and enter IP Address and Password when the Dingleberry application prompts you to.

Step 3: Click the Jailbreak button and with couple of minutes, your device would be jailbroken and rooted.

Warning: There’s  rat race going on between Dingleberry team and Blackberry. Blackberry is working on an update to secure this vulnerability to prevent Jailbreaks in future. And Dingleberry will try to Jailbreak it everytime. You must stay away from Firmware updates to retain Jailbreak & root.

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Metro UI

The initial response to the tablet is sure positive but if don’t like Metro UI, you would hate this. Microsoft is calling Windows  8 a post-post-PC device, which in other words means a post-Tablet tablet.

Microsoft is  trying to unify the User interface across PCs, mobiles and Tablets and Windows 8 is their first step towards it. Like Apple, Microsoft has inspired its tablet and PC devices from the mobile interface, making it easier than ever. Windows 8 borrows largely from its mobile kin, Window Phone 7, bringing its signature live tiles to tablets and PCs, and from what we’ve seen it does so effortlessly.

Samsung’s prototype is claimed to have a all day battery life, but can run all PC applications like Photoshop, Excel and Outlook. You can connect upto two external monitors, without hiccups.
Update: You can download Windows 8 developer preview now.
The Samsung Tablet Hardware Specifications:

The Series 7 sports following specifications:

• a bright (400 nit), 11.6-inch capacitive panel (1366 x 768 resolution),
• CPU: Intel’s 1.6GHz Core i5-2467M CPU,
• GPU: Integrated Intel graphics,
• 64GB SSD
• 4GB of RAM.
• 2 megapixel camera and a light sensor on front, and 3 MP rear.
• Connectivity: 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, USB 2.0 port and a micro HDMI port.

The Windows 8 – The OS Feel
Hardware sure looks competitive with any Android Tablet out there in the market. But we can’t be certain that Win8 tablet will boast the same level of wow factor once these begin hitting the market at some point next year (Q2 2012?). What also concerns is whether a full fledged OS (windows 7++) will need a better horsepower.  Of course Windows 8 is a Full desktop OS unlike the iPad or Honeycomb Android tablet.

Windows 8 Handson Video

Not the whole experience is smooth at this point fo time and 1.6ghz trying to run Photoshop can sure be a painful thing. But what is worth applauding here that Microsoft has managed to trim the fat surrounding Win8 in order for it to run shockingly well on a tablet.

But the real question is: By the time NVIDIA’s Tegra 4 and hexacore CPUs hit the tablet market, Windows 8 would still run on dual cores.

OS Customization
You can do all the customizations you could do on a Metro UI Windows Phone 7. You can customize lock screen and choose between standard password, PIN, or picture password.

Live tiles are same from WP7 world, nothing fancier. Navigation in Windows 8 OS is a left-to-right affair, as oppose to up and down, and is indeed very smooth. Heavy apps really brings the tablet to ground level but the launcher is never slow.

Along that right edge reside a series of five “charms,” as they’ve been unfortunately named: Search, Share, Start, Devices and Settings. If you’re in an app, you can use the share charm to Tweet your latest Facebook update, or Facebook your favorite recipe. It’s another point at which it becomes apparent that this is a desktop OS with a mobile mind.

Full-screen apps
All apps run in fullscreen mode. If you swipe from the left, you can navigate through other open apps, even snapping them in place for a split-screen view. The right side contains the hidden charms, while the bottom and top are reserved for app-specific controls.

Apps & Desktop
It all nails down to apps. It would run Windows apps, thats sure a big win. It would also run WP7 apps, unaltered but they face same problem as android mobile apps on honeycomb tablets.

The normal desktop view is actually a Tile, which one touched displays the conventional Windows 7 desktop, which will play host to your more serious applications like Excel and Photoshop, is treated just like your Twitter client and RSS feed. It’s an app like any other on the Start page, but in reality it’s an entirely different user interface.

Verdict

Apple created a Post-PC tablet and then brought the features back to the Mac. Microsoft is taking the idea further, giving tablets power of  desktop apps, without giving the hardware enough boost. The whole thing, in our opinion, would depend on how great the hardware is that ships with it. Everything else looks good.

Related: Windows 9 Features & improvements

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Both the overclock and volume boost hacks come packed in a single app from a xda developer, here’s a list of all the things you get:

• CPU speed. Total custom CPU speed stepping.
• Headphone analog gain.
• External speaker analog gain
• Separate DAC (digital to analog amp) gain.

From the developer’s notes:

You can also use this app to help get rid of hiss and noise on your headphones. With B&N default settings, one can only turn up the "Android media" volume to 25-35% before its too loud. This means the volume difference between the noise floor and the audio is very small which makes the noise noticeable. The workaround is that you can either lower the DAC volume in this app or lower the headphone analog gain.Its better to lower  the analog gain until you increase the "Android media" volume to 85-90% for comfortable listening levels.
If the external speaker is too quiet you may need to increase the DAC gain. Note that this will also increase the headphone volume so you may need to subsequently decrease the headphone analog gain.

The Nook Color Tweak app makes low level changes in the driver to increase volume helping to ensure that audio quality versus hardware level changes remain balanced.

Note:

You need a newer 2.6.32 kernel found in CM7 Nightly 88+ or my(Dalingrin) overclock kernel for B&N Froyo 1.2 and CM7. For CPU settings you will need a 2.6.32 overclocked kernel from 06/09/11 or later.

Get it on Android Market

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Today’s announcement brought a new promise to MeeGo tablets. The announcement came from Tencent and Intel launching the new renewed vigour and Tencents dedication to bring games to MeeGo tablets.

China is a perfect breeding ground for MeeGo because of their new grown hatred for Android. The Chinese journalist confirm that the lack of marketplace support leaves a bad taste for consumers.

Meego Fair is the new Tablet hardware based on Oaktrail. Its a 10.1 inch tablet tat is just 1cm thick (10mm) powered by the Z670 1.50GHz processor and 1GB of RAM and 16GB and up SSD drive. It has all the stuff you would fin in a Honeycomb or iPad tablet : Micro SD, wifi, accelerometer, etc.

The best part of this Tablet is the all new UI that hates vertical stuff, and sports horizontal scroll to navigate among app widgets. Checkout the UI, you will be amazed with the number of improvements:

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Blackberry realizes the fact that it landed in the modern smartphone/tablet OS market quiet late and that’s why they would like to cover-up the shortcomings by letting users run Android apps on their Playbook, which are already available in large numbers.

RIM today announced that the PlayBook will be able to run Android 2.3 (interesting that they’ve assigned an OS version requirement) applications via runtime environments that will handle both BlackBerry OS phone apps and Android apps.

Of course we would love to see them running but there are a number of problems that Blackberry would run into.

Android apps run on top of a customized Java virtual machine aka Dalvik virtual machine that is cleaner and meaner than the desktop counter part. The apps are written in Java using the Android SDK but at the runtime, these API calls are translated to call core system libraries that are written in C/C++. This is done using JNI (Java native interface). These system libraries talk provide the core functionality and often interact with the kernel that provides Hardware abstraction layer. Kernel is also responsible for interactions with the hardware. So in order to run android apps outside of the android eco-system, you would need to have the fullstack implemented. Alternatively, you can translate java calls into your OS specific (QNX here) native calls which in turn controls the hardware. But doing that is both tricky and incomplete solution.

Alien Dalvik made it possible to run Android apps on Blackberry, Nokias and its not hard to guess that as a hacker hobby, this project is way to wonderful, and its too far from being “usable”.

So where is the Problem with Running Android apps on Playbook?

• Barely any Hardware acceleration: None of the Android apps on Playbook would leverage hardware acceleration. Clearly most graphic intensive apps especially Games would run painfully slow and glitchy on the device.
• Poor Hardware support: You might not even get access to your hardware through android apps to Playbook. Even when it does, it would have slower response times, defeating the purpose. e.g. accelerometer used to play games would create an almost unbearable experience. And don’t forget that your camera, NFC, bluetooth, wifi apps (that directly talk to hardware other than for network connectivity) would not work.
• Fragmentation to a new Level: If you look closely at the some of the apps (especially games and highend apps), they have different flavors of the apps designed to run optimally on a different hardware using NDK. On Playbook, such apps would not be just slow, but also incompatible most of the time.
• More Resource hungry: The customized Dalvik that would run on Playbook would be an additional layer for the QNX based tablet device. It would crunch more CPU, memory when trying to run android apps vs. blackberry native apps. Even the RIM’s CEO agrees with this, Jim Balsillie noted that the virtual machine could have performance issues, and that games and other resource-heavy apps will want to be coded specifically for the PlayBook using RIM’s QNX platform and SDK.
• No Honeycomb support: Oh yeah, even if they plan to cover up all those drawbacks, they just actually ported smartphone apps to a tablet device, not Tablet OS/apps. Would you be ever happy with Gingerbread apps stretched onto 7″ screen?
• No Android Market: RIM will run its own android market, and will not have license to run Android Market. So it would be purely upto the mercy of the android developer to publish their app to Blackberry’s android market which would be called “App Player”. To me that sound like VMWare or  Wine on Linux.

Porting a VM alone would not help Blackberry get where they want. There has to be a deeper OS-wide integration to support full Android apps. As far as we know, they have actually done a part of that with Playbook, but its not good enough for the claim. It would be much worse than running a Mac OS X inside windows using Virtualbox or VMware.

Of course we can achieve near-native experience but it would take years to have full deep down integration with Android. It won’t be as easy as RIM is touting it to be. We won’t be surprised when we get handson on one.

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iPad 2 was a decent upgrade for the iOS lovers giving them more power and camera. On the Android side of things Motorola XOOM and Samsung Galaxy TAB 8.9, 10.1 Samsung’s 8.9-inch Android tablet based on Android 3.0 Honeycomb.

Samsung has done some brilliant job making the Galaxy TABs 8.9, 10.1 slimmer and lighter than any of the tablets. Also what it comes with is a custom UI called TouchWiz 4.

Let’s look at how these Tablets stack up:

Samsung Galaxy TAB 8.9 10.1 vs Motorola Xoom vs iPad 2

The Display

Needless to mention, the most vital part is the screen quality.

Motorola Xoom: A 10.1-inch widescreen panel at 1280×800 with sharp and well produced colors.

iPad 2: With 9.7-inches and 4:3 ration screen at 1024×768,  makes video a little more awkward to watch, but the tablet can be comfortable to use in portrait or landscape orientation when compared to widescreen tablets like XOOM.

Galaxy Tab 8.9, Galaxy TAB 10.1 8.9-inch model has brilliant pixel density endorsing 1280×800 on a smaller screen. Tab 10.1 has exactly same pixel density as XOOM, and obviously better than iPad 2.

Design: Size and weight

You will be holding your Tablet in your hand most of the time, and if its not designed for comfort, you would lose the interest. The biggest trouble I had with iPad 1 was the bulkiness which actually made me like the Galaxy Tab 7.

Xoom:  Xoom weighs 1.6lbs (730g), nearly a third of a pound heavier than iPad 2 (601g). And since its widescreen, it would actually feel alot heavier than iPad 2.

The Xoom is 12.9mm thick, whereas the iPad 2 is much thinner at only 8.8mm. Xoom did well against the progonal iPad, but against iPad 2, it really gave us set back.

Galaxy Tab 8.9, 10.1 beats both of these tablets by significant margins. Galaxy Tab 8.9 weighs just 470gwith thickness of  only 8.6mm (same as Galaxy S2 smartphone), making it the thinnest Tablet you would find out there.

Software: The OS & apps

Xoom is running stock Honeycomb, its great with its nitty gritty new graphics and ease of Multitasking. Honeycomb lacks variety for apps, but it would get better over next few months.

iPad 2 runs Apple’s iOS  4.3. UI, just like any other apple’s interface, has the appeal of ease but its is less powerful. Unlike Android, there’s a little users can tinker with look and feel but the focus is on ease. There are plenty of apps already out there from music creation to pro gaming.

Galaxy Tab 8.9, 10.1 also runs Honeycomb, but with custom re-skining on top of Honeycomb. The UI is called Touch Wiz 4, which endorses so-called Live View interface with its own set of widgets designed to take advantage of the extra space on tablets. Samsung has also tinkered with the multitasking UI, making it more like the BlackBerry Playbook app switcher. But if you are a power user, you shouldn’t really bother about the custom UI, you can always get a custom ROM running to get the look and feel you want.

Hardware & Specs

Xoom is powered by atop Nvidia’s dual-core Tegra 2 SoC running at 1GHz per core. This enables high-end games on Android. There’s a dedicated app store for Tegra games.

iPad 2 runsApple’s custom A5 dual-core SoC which is 900MHz per core. The graphics did get a better jump with 8x times power from iPad 1, making it actually more powerful than Xoom for all graphics rich applications, especially OpenGL Games.

Galaxy Tab 8.9, 10.1 is a Nvidia Tegra2 Dual core (or Exynos).

Specs Comparison

VERDICT

If I’ve to buy a tablet today, what would I go with? I love apps on iPad but learning from the past experience of Android, I believe theres no risk in waiting for the right apps on Honeycomb. I do love some awesome accessories in iPad 2 like Smart Cover, but I would rather settle with a Galaxy TAB 8.9 which is the lightest, thinnest and the smallest of all. Being a power user, I would love owning a Tablet that can do more and can still fit my hands without hurting them during long usages.

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The reviews state positive attributes of the new Tablet and even call it the First Real competitor of iPad, that actually does better at most of the tasks. Motorola XOOM vs iPad is really a question of comparing an older generation device with a new one, which makes Xoom rock on every front minus the number of apps available for the Tablets on each platform.

The battery life is slightly lower than iPad too, but that would not be a show stopper as it beats iPad at everywhere else, thanks to the all new Android 3.0 HoneyComb that features some awesome UI overhaul including smoother transitions, responsive UI, better notifications, faster performance.

There would be endless number of Motorola Xoom video reviews on web, we’ve shortlisted some of them which are wothy of being given a shot. Catch them after a break:

Scobleizer:

Engadget:

GigaOM(jkOnTheRun)

Gadgetlite

Android 3.0 Honeycomb Features, Factsheet – Everything you need to know about Honeycomb Tablets, Phones

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We knew it if there would be a Tablet that impresses every kind of user, it would be WebOS based and here it is: HP’s TouchPad Tablet.

TouchPad is a WebOS 3 Tablet beautifully designed weighing 1.6 pounds and measuring 13.7mm thick. HP’s TouchPad is based on its own Beats audio engine, and brings on Tap-to-Share (a feature that lets users easily transfer a website, document, song, text or call from the phone to the tablet — or vice versa — simply by tapping the two devices together) and a huge backing from the cloud.

The device is sized similar to iPad at 9.7-inch display (1024 x 768 screen resolution) but is much more powerful with a dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon CPU.

HP TouchPad Full Specs:

• 10″ IPS display 1024×768
• CPU: Snapdragon 1.2Ghz
• RAM: 512mb
• Sensors: inbuilt gyroscope, accelerometer, compass, notification light.
• Stroage: 16GB / 32GB
• Camera: There’s also a front-facing 1.3 megapixel webcam, support for video calling,
• Connectivity: 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, 3G (optional), AGPS
• Stereo speakers, microphone.
• OS: WebOS 3.0 optimized for tablets.
• Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Battery: 10 hours, 24Wh
• Size (w/h/d mm): 240/190/14 mm
• Size (w/h/d inches): 9.4/7.5/0.6

• Others: Full Adobe Flash, Touchstone support, Tap to share across all devices, online services.

HP TouchPad has superb UI, unmatchable from Android or iOS world. There’s a new paneled email application a Growl-like pop-up notification system, plenty of cal / email integration courtesy of HP Synergy, a slick virtual keyboard, VPN support, wireless printing as well as Google Docs, QuickOffice, Dropbox and Box.net compatibility.

Early video (check back for more videos)

The Touchpad also syncs with your Pre 3 in that they share text messages and phone calls over Bluetooth, so you don’t need to dig out your phone if you’re on your tablet.

Using apps is the same as on older Palm phones. You launch apps using the dock on the bottom or using the app launcher screen.

Emailing supports multiple accounts, of course, and looks very similar to email on the iPad. The left side gives you the list of messages, and the right side is the actual message. You can also slide everything over, giving you the ability to select between accounts.

One of the killer features that can’t be found on a competing tablet right now is this one’s ability to talk to the Pre 3 — so long as there’s a Touchstone involved, one can have their Pre 3 and TouchPad communicate, even piping over notifications and texts from the phone onto the slate.

TouchPad will be available later this year.

More Photos

Related:

• Android 3.0 Honeycomb Features, Factsheet – Everything you need to know about Honeycomb Tablets, Phone
• Motorola XOOM vs iPad
• Motorola XOOM – Dual Core Honeycomb Tablet with 10+hours Battery, HD screen, Video Recording

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Now its time to compare the latest Tablet from Android world with iPad.

Here’s a video preview of Motorola Xoom (Honeycomb tablet):

Seriously, iPad is nowhere near the Android based Motorola XOOM tablet. However, we’ve to wait for iPad 2 to see if it can match the latest contenders. From the rumors, iPad 2 looks good.

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Evolve III Maestro has built world’s first tablet that Triple boots Android, Windows 7 and MeeGo. The tablet has a 1.83GHz Atom N475 DualCore CPU based on OakTrail processor.

With Windows 7, you would be able to attain 8 hours of battery & 16hours of battery with Android, not bad for a Tablet that weighs less than 2 pounds.

The tablet features a large 10.1-inch 1024 x 600 capacitive touchscreen, 2GB of DDR3 RAM, up to 32GB of solid state storage, 3G and 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and 2 USB ports.

What Evolve Three hopes will make this device stand out is the fact that it’ll ship with Android, MeeGo and Windows 7 out of the box. Although a custom layer for Windows was in the works – imagine a mash-up of Windows Phone 7 and Android – it was MeeGo that had the developers really excited. A virtualised version was running on the device, and while the combo of pre-release software and hardware were still a little rough around the edges, it certainly seemed like it would make for a finger friendly consumption focussed interface.

The device is set for launch in Q2 2011 and at a price of $500, it could be a steal.

Unfortunately, there’ll be no quick way to switch between the different operating environments.

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The device looks incredibly thin, and from what we saw at the event, it will be one of the most powerful tablets on the market in 2011. Featuring a dual-core 1GHz processor, the device will first launch in a 3G version with a 4G version coming later in the year. It’s worth noting that it was said the 3G version can be easily upgraded to 4G once it’s made available. The device will not only feature impressive specs, Android 3.0 Honeycomb has been completely redesigned for the larger screens of devices. Building upon Android it will feature both widgets and multitasking and everything we have come to expect from an Android OS.

Motorola XOOM specs:

1. 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2
2. Display: 10.1-inch 1280×800, highest resolution ever on a Tablet
3. Connectivity: Wifi, 3G, upgradeable to  4G in Q2. 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR,
4. Camera: 5 megapixel camera, 720p video recording and 1080p video playback,
5. Storage: 32GB of onboard storage.
6. Battery:  The battery is rated to be capable of supporting 10 hours of video. If you do regular browsing, that should be 10hrs+.

Availability: Q1 with 3G on Verizon, Q2  $g (via software update) on Verizon.

Handson Video:

As per sources, minimum requirements for Honeycomb would be a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, in order to run properly as per Bobby Cha, managing director of Korean consumer electronics firm Enspert.

This clearly reflects that Honeycomb will be built with dual core processor support, ground up. So, the existing Android tablets will not be (officially) upgradeable to Honeycomb, as most of them run a single core processor. However, few devices like eLocity A7 (cheapest dual core tablet) will get an upgrade.

Google’s plan would be to support Nvidia’s Tegra 2 platform as the exclusive chipset, but it would be a matter of time when there will be software ports available for other single core ARM devices, which is of course upto the mercy of Custom ROM developers like Cyanogen, MIUI. Some manufacturers (like samsung) might release non-Tegra2 tablets and will officially bring Honeycomb to those tablets, early on.

Screen Resolution: Processor apart, it would mandate a minimum threshold for the display resolution. 1,280×720 might become the minimum spec for any Honeycomb Tablet. But that doesn’t mean you would not see devices with lower resolution. Someone will definitely still build (Say a 5″ tablet) with lower resolution. Google had demoed Motorola-based Honeycomb tablet-prototype, that device did look to be running at the specified resolution.

Sources also confirm that Google might run two flavors of Tablets in parallel:  First (current gen) Cortex-A8 processors and 1,024×600 screens (like Samsung Galaxy Tab) line of Android tablets run the “Froyo” version of Android, and can be updated to Gingerbread, 2.3, but not to Honeycomb.

Another pointer int his direction comes from eLocity (manufacturer of A7),

Hello Tarandeep

Thank you for your interest in the eLocity A7. The A7 will be upgraded to Gingerbread when its made available. As with regard to Honeycomb, we are releasing tablets with a much higher resolution that will support all aspects of Honeycomb in a better way.
Let us know if you have any other question. Thank you once again.
-Team eLocity

So, the minimum requirements for resolution seems obvious.

The good point is that doing so will not create Fragmentation among Android Tablet. Gingerbread supports split Activities, which allow multiple activities to be run at a time, removing the disparity between different screen layouts. Going further, “fragments” API will let apps display multiple views on tablets versus phones. Presumably, that will come to fruition with the next version of Android, codenamed “Ice Cream” – and that name is all we know about that upcoming version.

There will be lots of Honeycomb devices at CES. And if Cha is to be believed, the new OS will probably be ready for manufacturers to install “towards the end of January.” However, there is no official word from Google.

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Notion Ink has been working on a Dual core TEgra2 Android Tablet for a year now.  It recently became available for preorders and now it has just released a video of the Adam tablet in action, complete with that snappy new Eden UI.

Unfortunately, the video is not of a high quality but you can get a fair idea of what this device is all about – Real multitasking, running more apps at the same time on the screen. The device is worthy of the hype, with a responsive screen, a multitask-friendly interface and plug ‘n play peripherals via  USB.

iPad vs. NotionInk Adam Tablet

Adam Video Preview:

Another Video Preview:

Another interesting feature places the touch pad on the back, its a new experience to control a tablet from touchpad which is actually not seen during normal operation. The Adam tablet also features 3 USB ports, one HDMI out port for full HD in 1080p, eco-friendly using a tenth of the power, and boasting 24 hours of battery life (more than 10 hours 1080p HD video).

Notion Ink is based on a modified Android Gingerbread OS to fit the large screen. Also, there is a special SDK available for the device. The final date is not announced, but it should be in next 2 months time frame, with a price tag of $400-$550.

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For some obvious reason, users now agree that 7″ is a much better form factor for a Tablet rather than bulky iPad’s 10″. Success of Galaxy Tab says more than what we could question.

The 7-inch eLocity A7 tablet (comes from Stream TV networks), runs Android 2.2 on NVIDIA’s Tegra 2  T250 dual core silicon and the best part — its ultra affordable for the specs — $399 only. Its available on sale via Amazon, and soon on Walmart, NewEgg, BJs, Tiger Direct and Micro Center.

What’s more is that it has front camera for Video chat and plays 1080 FullHD videos.

From the press release:

The A7 optimizes portability, connectivity, and computing power like never before in one sleek device. The first mobile tablet available in the U.S. running Android 2.2 Froyo, the eLocity A7 offers a wide range of mobile apps, supports Adobe Flash and is enabled for 3D gaming with the NVIDIA Tegra T-250 dual core processor. Sporting a high resolution seven-inch capacitive and multi-touch screen, 4GB of high speed internal flash memory, the eLocity A7 is a multipurpose device that provides a full entertainment solution along with business productivity and wireless connectivity. The tablet is equipped with a micro SD slot supporting up to 32GB of added storage, a USB port supporting up to 64GB of added storage and a 1080p HDMI output. With streamlined dimensions of 8.2 inches by 4.8 inches and weighing just over a pound, the new eLocity A7 tablet is more portable than the iPad and sports a striking design expected to appeal to a wide demographic of users.

Update: eLocity Team has confirmed that Gingerbread update is pending:

Hello Tarandeep

Thank you for your interest in the eLocity A7. The A7 will be upgraded to Gingerbread when its made available. As with regard to Honeycomb, we are releasing tablets with a much higher resolution that will support all aspects of Honeycomb in a better way.

Let us know if you have any other question. Thank you once again.

Team eLocity

The introduction of the eLocity A7 tablet is the first step in Stream TV’s strategic growth plan to bring to market innovative products featuring state-of-the-art technology designed to transform consumer communications and digital lifestyle.

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Japanese brand, Woow Digital, shows of the First Android Gingerbread based tablet, that runs on Tegra2 Dual core processor with some great specs. The company calls is “The One“.

The tablet is packed with some customized apps to suit the large screen.

The one features NVIDIA Tegra 2 core, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of flash storage with a 10-inch display capable of doing  1024 x 600 resolution. On the connectivity front, it does Bluetooth, WiFi and WCDMA 3G radios.

Woow plans to launch The One in Japan before Christmas at a price of $504, which will be followed up by availability in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Europe. So in CES 2011, expect this Tablet along with loads of other Tegra2 tablets and Android smartphones.

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RIM’s  CEO announced the new tablet at keynote of BlackBerry Developer Conference on Monday. The new 7″ 1024 x 600 pixel widescreen device which they call as the “first professional tablet,” with BlackBerry enterprise integration and full web experience with HTML5 and Flash 10.1 compatibility.

Hardware Overview:

The PlayBook sports a 1GHz dual-core ARM Cortex A9-based processor with fair-enough 1GB of RAM, and GPU capable of running OpenGL code. The camera is good enough with front-facing camera rated at 3MP and rear at 5MP. The good part is that both of them can record HD video @ 1080p resolution.

On the connectivity side, it has robust 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth, microUSB, and microHDMI with  3G connectivity as of today and 4G options planned sometime next  year.

The device is fast but not as fast as android based Samsung Tab powered with single-core 1Ghz. Apart from  that, device’s design is pretty much similar.

There’s no official word on Battery life, but RIM promises battery life would be good enough.

The Operating System

RIM’s new PlayBook is based on QNX multitasking OS called BlackBerry Tablet OS. On the good side, BlackBerry will offer a full POSIX-compatible native SDK for its tablet OS, as well as a JavaVM to run apps written for BlackBerry OS 6, just like Android’s Dalvik VM.

Web Performance had been priortiy for RIM and that’s why Full native API support is available via JavaScript, and leverages the same WebKit-based browser as BlackBerry OS 6 for HTML5 compatibility. Even Flash 10.1 is hardware accelerated. And thats why Flash and AIR-based apps will have their doors opened for developers on the PlayBook.

It is said  that Cisco’s Android tablet woulds target similar Enterprise solutions with more media collaboration stressing of Video conferencing, VoIP and email.

Video Preview

Availability

Expected time-frame for PlayBook’s launch would be early 2011 but, Developers can sign up for access to cross-platform BlackBerry Tablet OS developer tools here, starting today.

Reelated: Cisco to Launch Android Tablet for Real-time Collaboration

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Somehow, a video of very close look to the device was just posted on the youtube. Remember, this product is head for the enterprise market and you probably won’t be able to buy it. Even if you could buy it today, the question is would you? Its really hard to use a windows on a Tablet that does nothing else but Touch. The hardware makes the experience fast, but that alone won’t do.

Watch the Video after the break:

The hardware looks promising but the OS doesn’t. I feel Samsung’s Galaxy tab offers much more robust solution even better that the iPad.

Related:

• Samsung Galaxy Tab Review vs iPad [Android Tablet]
• iPad vs. Windows 7 Tablet

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As illustrated in the video, there are things that iPad would do better than Windows 7 tablet, and vice versa.

Watch the Handson Comparison video for most daily use-cases:

Web Browsing: Windows 7 Tablet might be slightly faster at this but layout, screen size-wise, it fails to showcase its appeal.

OnScreen Keyboard: The on-screen keyboards are great, iPad definitely has a better one.

Flash, youtube: Windows runs native Flash in browsers and iPad relies on native youtube app to achieve the same. Other flash sites, just wont work. However, unofficial iPad Flash [Frash] should nail down to stability and support.

Screen: Windows 7 Tablets will feature different screens, varied by the vendor that manufactures it. But iPad already features best in class IPS display.

Email & apps: As you can see from the video above, Windows 7 tablet seriously lacks on user usability. Its not easy when it comes to touching small areas which were originally meant be used with mouse cursor.

Connectivity: Windows 7 Tablets have its edge over here as it provide all kinds of standard PC connectivity ports: USB, SDcard and what not.

Battery: Mileage may vary but, iPad gives a bare minimum of 10hours, which is atleast 2x times better than any Windows 7 Tablet device that will be coming anytime soon. This is one of the reasons why HP windows 7 Slate was dropped.

Multitouch: Nobody, I said nobody can beat apple in this. They are the mastters of multitouch gesture smoothness, google might be approaching them, but Apple is far more superior at this.

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Open source is always open to innovation whether its building a More capable Tablet than iPad or making it ultra affordable.

Related: NotionInk ADAM: Android Tablet vs. iPad

After having built World’s cheapest car: Tata Nano, and world’s cheapest Green car: Tata nano EV, India is now all set for another move to make technology affordable for it’s residents.

Indian Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Kapil Sibal has  launched a $35 computing device that is targeted on ‘learners’ right from primary schools to universities. The touch-enabled tablet device will eventually drop prices to $20 and subsequently $10, making it ultra-affordable. The Ministry has also begun discussions with global manufacturers to start mass production of arguably the world’s cheapest computer.

“This is part of the national initiative to take forward inclusive education. The solutions for tomorrow will emerge from India,” said Sibal.

The Tablet device will be available in different form factors with screen sizes 5″, 7″, 9″ featuring”

• A full internet browser
• a PDF reader,
• Video conferencing support,
• Word, excel, Office document support etc using Open Office
• Sci-lab
• Media Player
• REmote device management (like remote installations/ wipe)
• Connectivity: 3.5mm jack, USB, WiFi
• OS: Linux
• RAM: 2GB

Update: Here’s news coverage from an Indian channel:

This fully Open source friendly device would get attachments for running on solar power apart from the regular battery. As of now, there’s not word on the processor and other detailed specs, but it won’t be long.

There will be two variants of this device: One that is targeted for school students that will have limited memory and no harddisk., the second one  (costing Rs 1,500/$35) would have decently-sized disk space primarily targeted at higher education institutions,  colleges. the plan is to start shipping the device as early as beginning of 2011.  Even though the price would go low with mass production, Indian government is willing to subsidize it furhter by upto 50 per cent of this cost, bringing down the price  even further.

Update 2: On a closer look to the higher end device, it appears to be using Android:

It would be interesting to some freaking affordable Tablets like WePad, Notion Ink Adam, Samsung Galaxy Tab and most of them would be either Android or Linux.

[via IndianExpress]

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The 7-inch Galaxy Tab (previously called  S-Pad), runs Android with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI on top (similar to the Galaxy S). Samsung revealed it using strange resources: Tweets on Samsung Blog South Africa, it has a “high resolution” screen, it’s has a gorgeous AMOLED display which feeds on lesspower as compared to LED backlit iPad IPS display.

All Android apps would run out of the box with pixel doubling, However, the bad news is that Google currently doesnt allow dedicated Tablet form factor apps into the Market.  In the good side, Samsung  in introducing Samsung Apps store, which might host very platform-centric apps, but would be portable to ohter devices with minor modification when Google decides to lift the flood gates.

Samsung Galaxy Tab specifications:

AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size 1024 x 600 pixels, 7.0 inches
- TouchWiz UI
- Multi-touch input method
- Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate
- Touch-sensitive controls
- Proximity sensor for auto turn-off
- Swype text input
SOUND Alert types Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones

Java: Yes, MIDP 2.1

BATTERY Li-Ion 2000mAh

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The Video Demonstrates some great ideas that came-up from a young developer while he was tired of hearing to pre-iPad rumors. Apart from being better at hardware config, this device is much more efficient on the battery. Beyond that, it’s trans-reflective LCD works outdoors with a charm in monochromatic-mode.

Unlike the Apple iPad, Adam has a camera that nicely swivels front-back full 180 degrees. This has some great applications: Recording a keynote (without holding the device), self portraits, and even video conferencing.

Another interesting feature places the touch pad on the back, its a new experience to control a tablet from touchpad which is actually not seen during normal operation. The Adam tablet also features 3 USB ports, one HDMI out port for full HD in 1080p, eco-friendly using a tenth of the power, and boasting 24 hours of battery life (more than 10 hours 1080p HD video).

Notion Ink is writing modified Android OS to fit the large screen prespective and also developing a special SDK which they would release in May time frame. It would be out around June 2010 with a price tag of $327-$800.

Here are the Specs compared between Apple iPad vs. NotionInk Adam:

[via Technoholic]

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From what analysts predict, Google can give a competition to Apple with it’s Tablet powered by Chrome OS or even Android, former being more evident.

Chromium project have created some impressive  mockups of what Chrome OS would look and feel like on a tablet form factor.

These mockups were put together by Glen Murphy, Google Chrome’s designer, but it’s not an official google thing. But, there’s a good chance that the final version of Chrome OS will resemble this.

Checkout the Concept video after the break:

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Some one rightly said, iPad is a golden calf of DRM for which Apple wants us to fall for. Well, it won’t happen, Open software will always rule. With a number of Tablets coming to the market, Apple will find it hard to survive. The best one I see around is called “Touch Book”.

It’s developed by a company called “Always Innovating“. Well, company  claims that the purpose of the device is “to achieve a breakthrough in both architecture and design. The result: a revolutionary device that works as both a netbook and a standalone tablet thanks to a detachable keyboard and a 3D touchscreen user interface.”

Apart from what company claims, this device is really gorgeous in almost every sense. It’s powered by ARM TI OMAX3 chip which is very nice on the battery. Infact, it is he first ARM device to propose all major distros: Ubuntu, Android, Mer, Gentoo, Chrome OS, more

Touch Book comes with an optimized home-made Linux-based OS, and multibooting is no problem. Company has plans to run Google Chrome OS and Maemo plus Flash 10.1 Touch support soon.

The specifications

• 9.7″ x 7″ x 1.3″ for around 3 lbs (with keyboard) [Double the weight on iPad]
• ARM Texas Instruments OMAP3 chip 600MHz with a Numonyx 512MB (RAM) + 256MB (NAND) Memory
• 1024×600 8.9″ pressure sensitive TouchScreen
• 512MB RAM – 8GB SD card for storage
• Wifi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth
• 3-d accelerometer
• Speakers, micro and headphone I/O
• 7 USB 2.0 (4 internal, 3 external)
• 10 hours of battery life [Two batteries 6,000 and 12,000 mAh, replaceable]
• GPS & 3G dongle [Accessory]

don’t underestimate the capability, this processor can do decent 3D Gaming too. Also, being powered by flash-drive, boot-ups are going to be pretty fast.

Since it has no moving parts (no Hard disk, no fans, no optical disks) it is pretty efficient on battery and operates in Always-ON just like your cellphone or even iPad to compare.

The best Feature of this device is pull-off the Touchscreen and carry it along or attach it in your kitchen.
Watch it in action:

Touchscreen “3D interface”

You can endup using it  via keyboard and touchpad (yes its inbuilt)  OR as a  touchscreen-only like a  Tablet. The screen has decent response to touch (ofcourse not as good as iPad) decent enough for surfing (Mozilla Fennec), reading books.

And yes, most important, Total cost of ownership is much lower ($299 for tablet, $399 with keyboard) and can do more than you think it could. Checkout FAQs.

It may not be the best device, but definitely a lesson for Apple to learn. We ain’t falling for shiny stuff.

We write about Open Source, Gadgets, Apple, iPhone, Android, and latest in Tech @taranfx on Twitter.