The upcoming Toshiba Thrive tablet has certainly generated a lot of buzz both before, and after its official announcement. As a fairly late attendant to the Android Honeycomb party, the device has some serious competition to face. We managed to spend some quality time with the upcoming tablet at an event in New York and we have some early impressions for you.

In terms of build, the 10.1″ device feels quite solid. As far as weight is concerned, Read more »

While the sub-9-inchers tablets are fighting over in the other post, over here is a match between the high-rollers – the 10″ tablets. The newcomer, the Archos 101 G9 tablet, is the main interest here as it takes on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Apple iPad 2. While those two stick to 1GHz dual-core CPUs, the Archos shoots for the top with two 1.5GHz cores.

The Archos 101 G9 is also offering an unusual 250GB HDD version, but that adds quite a bit of thickness and weight and, I’m guessing, is a real battery drain. Still, the 101 G9 has some goodies like (gasp!) a standard USB port plus a miniHDMI port, while both the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the iPad 2 use a proprietary port. Despite boasting such impressive specs, the Archos 101 G9 is surprisingly modest in price. Read more »

The newly announced Archos ninth generation tablets made quite a significant impact on the Android world. For one the smaller of them immediately heated up the sub-9-incher battle as it offers an impressive specs sheet at a really attractive price point. To make it easier for you to make up your mind we are putting what we consider to be the three best slates “sweet spot” sales out there and see what’s what.

So we pitted the freshly announced 8-inch Archos 80 G9 against the 3D-shooting 8.9-inch LG Optimus Pad and the slim Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9. The Archos 80 G9 has some interesting tricks up its sleeve like a 1.5GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 processor and an optional 250GB HDD. The LG Optimus Pad on the other hand can shoot 3D videos and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 boasts seriously good looks and a gorgeous screen. Read more »

ASUS is on track to releasing the second generation Eee Pad Transformer late this year, probably some time in October. The tablet-slash-notebook will probably pack the NVIDIA Tegra 3 chipset, which is said to feature a quad-core monster of a CPU. Reportedly the company is also releasing a second Padfone with Android Ice Cream Sandwich and making available the Eee Pad Slider and a 7″ Eee Pad MeMO tablet with 3D support this year.

This information comes from respected Chinese source Digitimes.com and we are really hoping it’s true as it will bring the next evolutionary step in tablet world. The next Transformer crossover between a tablet and a netbook will offer the Tegra 3 chipset, rumored to be the 5x faster than Tegra 2 Kal-El. The original Transformer single-handedly put ASUS over its competition in the non-Apple tablet manufacturers club with 400.000 shipments in the first half of 2011. Read more »

Archos dropped a tablet bomb. Two actually as the new G9 Android tablets – the 80 G9 and 101 G9 – put Android 3.1 and 1.5GHz dual-core processors in the same package. Better yet, they will go for peanuts when they come out later this year.

Oh, and they come with a full-sized USB port and there’s an option for a 250GB HDD (there are flash memory versions too). Interested? Wait till you hear the price. Read more »

Another Android tablet was just thrown our way by Huawei. The Chinese company unveiled the 7″ MediaPad, which will be the first slate to run on the Android 3.2 Honeycomb, which is supposed to be the edition of the Google OS best suited to smaller-screen slates.

On the hardware side of the things the Huawei MediaPad 7″ sounds pretty attractive too with its 7″ IPS LCD capacitive display and 10.5mm slim waistline. The 390 grams of weight actually make the MediaPad a pretty portable device, while the Snapdragon chipset featuring a couple of Scorpion cores running at 1.2GHz should give you all the processing power you need. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has finally gone on sale in the US. As was announced before, it will be priced at $499 for the 16GB and $599 for the 32GB models. For now, there is no 3G version of the device. The tablet will ship with the latest Android 3.1 Honeycomb OS that hasn’t been tainted with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI but you can download it later if you wish.

However, there seem to be some shipping delays, which could crush the hopes of those wanting to buy it on day one. Read more »

The Optimus Pad is the weapon to help LG battle into the recently started Honeycomb tablet war. Besides its 8.9-inch display, Tegra2 chipset and 32GB internal storage, the Optimus Pad has a secret trump card.

That’s right. We are speaking about that dual 5 megapixel camera at the back capable of recording 720p 3D videos. Later you can watch them with a pair of standard red-cyan glasses. Read more »

The HTC Flyer is the first ever true tablet to come out of the HTC portfolio (those humongous Advantage things don’t count). It looks very cool and sleek in its white-slash-aluminum casing and feels very solid in your hands.

When you unlock this bad boy, you are greeted by the awesome HTC Sense 3.0, popping up on a 7-incher and it really lights up the entire experience compared to the smaller smartphone screens. Some might argue that offering only a phone-optimized Gingerbread instead of the tablet-in-mind Honeycomb OS is a bad thing but this has allowed HTC to bring the proper Sense feel to the Flyer. Read more »

When Sony announced their S1 and S2 Android tablets, they left a few things out – like a launch date for example. Now there’s chatter that the tablets (or at least one of them) will be arriving in Europe in September.

An alleged note from Sony says that a tablet (which the note doesn’t explicitly name) will be available through three retailers in September, after a pre-order period in August. Read more »

Here we go again. Someone has discovered some high resolution images within the Twitter framework portion of the iOS 5 SDK and not just any high resolution images but those with 2048 x 1536 resolution, four times the current resolution of the current iPad.

Now we have gone though this before the iPad 2 was released. Unfortunately, the iPad 2 was launched with the same resolution display as the first iPad. But now it’s starting to seem that the next iPad will have a higher resolution display. Read more »

One of the vendors, CPT, was displaying an iPad with a 3D display at the Display Taiwan show. Although they did their best to cover up the logos on the back there was no mistaking what was the first generation iPad. The standard display on the said iPad was replaced with a 3D panel which has to be seen through polarized glasses for its magic to work.

Do note that this is not the official Apple branded Magic™ and definitely not the next generation iPad, no matter what the video says. It’s not even the iPad 2 for that matter, just the first iPad running a 3D display. This was just done to get some eyeballs at the event and there is very little chance that Apple would consider a 3D display for their next iPad. Or even if they do, you can be damn sure it won’t require glasses. Check out the video of this prototype in action after the break. Read more »

After upsetting the Atom domination with ultra-portables and netbooks with its E-series, APUs AMD has set its sight on the more powerful portable computers. The company has just unveiled its new A-series of CPU-plus-GPU chips.

The A-series includes a couple of dual-core processors and five quad-core offerings. The two lowest sitting members are the 1.9 GHz A4-3300M and the 2.1 GHz A4-3310MX, which both support dynamic turbo boosting of up to 2.5Ghz and have 2MB of L2 cache. The Radeon HD 6480G with a clock speed of 444 MHz is the GPU of choice for both A4 chips. Read more »

Toshiba has finally started selling the Android-based Thrive tablet that they have been showing us for quite some time now, or at least started taking pre-orders. The Thrive will be sold in three models, 8GB for $429.99, 16GB for $479.99 and 32GB for $579.99.

The Toshiba Thrive has a 10-inch display with 1280 x 800 resolution. It runs on NVIDIA Tegra 2 and Android 3.1 Honeycomb. Read more »

After announcing that the TouchPad will go on sale on the 1st of July, HP has now also revealed the official pricing for its accessories. The Touchstone charging dock will be priced at $80, the wireless keyboard will be $70, the case will be for $50 and the standard charger will cost you $30.

Along with the pricing, HP has also released a slew of YouTube videos showing the new TouchPad in action, doing stuff like multitasking, web browsing, gaming, typing, etc., you know, the stuff that you’d normally do on a tablet along with stuff that is exclusive to the TouchPad, such as the Touchstone technology and wireless charging. Must say though there is a heavy Apple vibe to all the videos. Even the music sounds similar, with the word “magic” being thrown around a few times. But don’t just take my word for it, check them out for yourself below. Read more »