HP TouchPad (16GB) Review

The good: The HP TouchPad uses Palm's unique WebOS interface and delivers Adobe Flash-enabled Web browsing, Beats audio enhancement, and impressive compatibility with third-party calendar, messaging, and e-mail services.

The bad: The TouchPad has a thick, smudgy design, offers no rear camera or HD video capture, includes a limited app selection, and its unique cards system of multitasking isn't as fully utilized as it could be.

The bottom line: The TouchPad would have made a great competitor for the original iPad, but its design, features, and speed put it behind today's crop of tablet heavyweights.

HP could have taken the easy way out. Like many computer manufacturers today, HP could have easily jumped on the Google Android bandwagon, lobbed out a Honeycomb tablet, and called it a day. Instead, through hard work and some key acquisitions (most notably Palm), it set out to create an entire ecosystem of mobile hardware and software that could truly rival Apple's.

The HP TouchPad is one result of this effort. In a tablet market that is more or less split between Apple and Google, the TouchPad offers a refreshing alternative with a distinctly different take on how these types of devices should work, and how users interact with them.

Priced at $499 (16GB) and $599 (32GB) with no option (yet) for cellular data service, the HP TouchPad isn't priced like an underdog. It has the app catalog of an upstart, though, with a selection of native tablet apps that numbers in the hundreds and around 8,000 WebOS apps in total.

Is the TouchPad the perfect option for those fatigued by the iPad's app-centric tablet, or did HP miss its mark? Let's have a look.

Design
While the TouchPad's WebOS software is inspired and unique, its design is quite the opposite. Half an inch thick and wrapped in high-gloss plastic, the TouchPad's look and feel share more in common with a kitchen cutting board than the svelte designs of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 or iPad 2.

To be fair, the TouchPad's construction feels solid and worthy of HP's reputation for quality. It's the thickness and choice of materials that's throwing us off. After a few minutes of handling, the slippery plastic backing feels like a plate at a pizza party.

The HP TouchPad looks the part, but the plastic construction doesn't feel great.

We suspect HP's choice of materials has something to do with the TouchPad's special Touchstone inductive charging dock ($79), which uses an electromagnetic field to transfer power through the back of the tablet. Still, a textured finish like the one found on the Asus EeePad Transformer, would have gone a long way to diminish the ick factor. Sorry to be so fickle about the TouchPad's feel, but there's no way around the fact that tablets are handheld devices. This stuff really does matter, and frankly, not harping on it would be a disservice to all the great tablets out there that get it right--from the iPad all the way down to the Barnes & Noble Nook Color.

HP does nail down some of the standard design elements, such as the dedicated buttons for screen lock and volume control, along with an ample (though somewhat invisible) home screen button. Two slim speaker grilles are found on the left edge, making them unlikely to be covered by your hand while holding the tablet in landscape view. A standard headphone jack is located on the top edge, and a Micro-USB port is located on the bottom for charging and syncing.

Related links: TechRepublic's business perspective
• HP TouchPad leapfrogs rivals in productivity
• Three areas where HP TouchPad trumps the iPad
• Teardown of HP TouchPad

The choice of using a broadly compatible Micro-USB port is both refreshing, and surprisingly short-sighted. With so many of today's tablets making use of their dock connections for video output and other accessories, HP seems content to leave those features for version 2.0. On the upside, it's very easy to find a replacement charging cable.

We should also note that the TouchPad lacks a hardware switch for the screen rotation lock. The rotation lock function can be activated using a simple pull-down menu, but given the device's sensitive accelerometer, a dedicated switch like the one on the Acer Iconia Tab or iPad would have been more satisfying.

Features
Beauty is more than skin deep, and those desperate for new flavor of tablet may be willing to overlook our aesthetic gripes. You want to know if the TouchPad can deliver the goods--so here you go.

In terms of hardware, the TouchPad runs a Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-CPU APQ8060 1.2GHz processor and comes with either 16GB or 32GB of RAM. There's no option for memory card expansion. The front panel is a 1,024x768-pixel resolution capacitive display blessed with multitouch and connected to a graphics chip capable of rendering 3D graphics. Your location can be approximated using the integrated Wi-Fi (802.11n), but no GPS is included (though later models with wireless cellular data may offer it).

Another feature missing from the TouchPad is a rear-facing camera. Now, we take the camera criticism with a grain of salt, since the idea of capturing photos or videos on a tablet still feels absurd, even under the best circumstances. Still, it's nice to have the option, and it's one more spec the competition can point to.

You do get a 1.3-megapixel camera on the front, but good luck finding a use for it. Even with the stock messaging app synced with our Skype account, it was unclear how to initiate a video call. A task as basic as taking a self portrait seems impossible using only the preinstalled software. Our vanity may never recover.

To more practical matters, the TouchPad's core features revolve around the five main apps tucked in the home screen dock. These include the Web browser, e-mail, messaging, photos, and calendar.

The TouchPad's Web browser is clean and capable, but it is surprisingly not the standout feature we were hoping for. It's based on the WebKit engine common to most modern browsers and includes Adobe Flash compatibility right out of the box. Videos on YouTube play with no extra app required, and most Flash-heavy sites display with none of the missing plug-in icons we're used to seeing on the iPad. That said, the browser itself feels a little slow to load pages and we've seen Flash integration and playback handled better by devices like the BlackBerry PlayBook. Common browser preferences, such as pop-up blocking, cookie and JavaScript disabling, and cache clearing are all available from an intuitive pull-down menu. Missing are the bookmark folders, private browsing modes, and bookmark syncing found on iOS and Android.

The TouchPad's ability to triage e-mail is one of its standout features. During setup, the TouchPad prompts you to enter any and all of your e-mail accounts, including Gmail, Microsoft Exchange, Yahoo, and more.

The TouchPad is an impressive tool for e-mail.

A three-pane view follows, which allows you to view your accounts, e-mail list, and e-mail preview all in a single view. E-mail replies pop out of the three-pane arrangement as a new window floating above your inbox, where it can be addressed immediately or toggled behind your inbox to deal with later. It's a distinctly different approach to e-mail than you'll find on the iPad, and one that better resembles the desktop computer method of multitasking and window juggling. For us, it's a natural fit, and composing e-mail and managing multiple inboxes feels intuitive.

Thank you :
http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/hp-touchpad-16gb/4505-3126_7-34499289.html#reviewPage1
http://techalife.com/news/HP-TouchPad-%E0%B8%9E%E0%B8%A3%E0%B9%89%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%A1%E0%B8%82%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A2%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%99%E0%B9%81%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%81-1-%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%8E%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%84%E0%B8%A1%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%B5%E0%B9%89-%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%84%E0%B8%B2%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B4%E0%B9%88%E0%B8%A1-499
http://www.thaiware.com/news/news_detail.php?id=653&title=Tablet%20%B9%E9%CD%A7%E3%CB%C1%E8%C1%D2%E1%C5%E9%C7%201%20%A1.%A4.%20%B9%D5%E9%E0%BB%D4%B4%B5%D1%C7%20TouchPad%20%E3%AA%E9%C3%D0%BA%BA%20WebOS%20%A8%D2%A1%20HP
http://newsinabox.net/1569/new-hp-touchpad-pro-and-cons.html
http://www.widemagazine.com/content_detail.php?cont_id=994

http://www.siammono.com/hp-%E0%B8%9E%E0%B8%A3%E0%B9%89%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%A1%E0%B8%88%E0%B8%B0%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%9B%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%94%E0%B8%95%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%A7-touch-pad-wifi-%E0%B9%83%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%97/android/

Boot To Gecko: Mozilla’s Open-Source, Mobile Answer To ChromeOS

Straight from the heart of Mozilla’s developer newsgroup comes news of an ambitious new project: a standalone, web-based operating system. If that concept sounds familiar, I’ve also just described the core of Google’s Chrome OS which we’re beginning to see pop up on netbooks. The big twist?

It’s currently being developed for mobile devices. And it’s partially Android-based.

According to Dr. Andreas Gal, researcher at Mozilla, the impetus behind the Boot to Gecko project is to “make open web technologies a better basis for future applications on mobile and desktop alike”. A lofty goal to be sure, as the core underpinnings would ultimately extend beyond just mobile devices. Should Gal and his colleagues (and really anyone who wants to help) succeed, Boot to Gecko would have the potential to change how we interact with the web, regardless of platform.

Gal breaks the process down into actionable steps. First, the Boot to Gecko project aims to take the primary functions of a mobile device (i.e. “Telephony, SMS, Camera, USB, Bluetooth, NFC”) and create web APIs to handle them. From there, they intend to develop a way for web pages and applications to safely access those components as needed. They hope that by doing this, they (and other intrepid developers) will be able to create native-grade apps that run directly on the web instead of only being available on certain devices.

As I’ve mentioned, the open-source project is based partially off of Android — nothing terribly high-level though, just the kernel and the drivers so as to ensure that whatever progress they make can actually boot. It also doesn’t hurt that Android works (and in many case, has been made to work) on plenty of different hardware configurations, which is exactly what they need to see if the concept pans out. As it stands, development is in such a nascent stage that we have no idea what to expect visually, so no images yet folks.

Personally speaking, this idea has me on the edge of my seat. It will take a lot of work, and a lot of time, and there’s no guarantee that we’ll ever see a complete release. That’s the funny part though: I don’t think it really matters. If all they ever did was finish the API for telephony and SMS messaging, that would still signal a tremendous shift in how we use the web. Boot to Gecko will inevitably draw comparisons to ChromeOS (and I was guilty of this just a few paragraphs ago), but we stand to gain a much richer online experience if B2G comes to be. Only time will tell if these gentlemen succeed, but we’ll be certain to keep you up to date during the ride.

Thank you :
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/25/boot-to-gecko-mozillas-open-source-mobile-answer-to-chromeos/

Apple releases iOS 4.3.5 for iPhone, iPad, more

Apple on Monday released iOS 4.3.5 for iOS devices to address a security vulnerability. The update comes just 10 days after Apple issued iOS 4.3.4 to address a security hole related to PDF support. The new update was released with the following notes:

iOS 4.3.5 Software Update

Fixes a security vulnerability with certificate validation.

IOS 4.3.5 is available immediately through iTunes for the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, iPad and the last two iPod touch models. Apple has also released iOS 4.2.10 at the same time for Verizon Wireless’ CDMA iPhone 4.

Thank you :
http://www.bgr.com/2011/07/25/apple-releases-ios-4-3-5-for-iphone-ipad-more/

EA Sports subscription model in the works, may take a while

While the idea is still on the drawing board, Electronic Arts has confirmed to be investigating an annual subscription model for its "EA Sports" brand. One document, said to be from the company, describes the service as, "an annual paid subscription that enhances your gaming experience," which is to include EA's core sports titles: Madden NFL, FIFA, NHL, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, SSX: Deadly Descents and NCAA Football.

With the regularity at which sports titles are released and the burgeoning expense of downloadable content, EA may be banking on avid armchair athletes finding an all-inclusive subscription peppered with incentives a fairly attractive offer. Such benefits are slated to include reduced prices for DLC (downloadable content), early access to unreleased games (up to a week), social recognition in the form of badges, DLC version portability and a few other perks.

According to a survey in circulation, EA's purported subscription plans may be similar to the ones outlined below:

his is also interesting news in the wake of the recent friction between Origin (EA's recent digital game distribution service) and Steam (Valve's well-established, competing platform). EA claimed a major hurdle with Steam as Valve made it impossible to, as an EA spokesperson put it, "give you the best possible gaming experience" through direct updates, patches and support. While some readers may find that statement dubious, one may possibly see the difficulty EA could have implementing this type of subscription plan on Steam.

There has been no mention of whether or not subscriptions are intended to eventually replace future purchase-to-own games, but depending on the annual price, this could either be a huge upset or a viable future for gaming. Of course, if this proves most successful, there may be little to keep EA from offer subscriptions for all genres of its games.

Is this the beginning of the end for á la carte gaming? What price and what features would convert you to a subscription?

Thank you :
http://www.techspot.com/news/44816-ea-sports-subscription-model-in-the-works-may-take-a-while.html

Best Buy offers $350, $380 Sandy Bridge notebooks

Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture has trickled down to the sub-$400 notebook segment courtesy of two machines from HP and Toshiba. Listed at Best Buy for $350, the 4.7lb Pavilion g4-1104dx is potentially the cheapest Sandy Bridge notebook around with a 2.0GHz dual-core Pentium B940, which carries a 650-1100MHz IGP (Best Buy's product page claims it's the HD 3000, but we're not sure if that's accurate).

It also features a 14-inch 1366x768 LED-backlit display, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, a 320GB 5400RPM hard drive, and a DVD burner. There's wired and wireless network connectivity, three USB 2.0 ports (no USB 3.0, but again, we're talking about a $350 notebook here), HDMI and VGA outputs, a card reader, a built-in webcam and mic, Windows 7 Home Premium, and a six-cell battery that offers up to 4.25 hours of battery life.

Meanwhile, the pricier $380 Toshiba Satellite L755-S5216 comes in a slightly larger 15.6-inch, 5.7lb package (same resolution) that gets up to 5.75 hours of battery life, but the core configuration is largely identical. Again, neither system is equipped for heavy media consumption or gaming, but they should prove adequate for basic productivity sessions, and it's no coincidence that the back-to-school season is underway.

Thank you :
http://www.techspot.com/news/44812-best-buy-offers-350-380-sandy-bridge-notebooks.html

Facebook’s iPad App Is Hidden Inside Of Their iPhone App

There are things out there all around us that we often miss because we’re just not looking. This is perhaps most true in the tech world, where thousands of secrets are out there in the wild, hidden in code. If you know where to look, or if you can read the code, you can find those secrets. It’s how so many features of iOS get revealed early by sites like 9to5 Mac, who are great at parsing the code (and confirming our non-code-digging scoops). It’s how we knew basically everything about Chrome OS before it actually launched. It’s how we knew Facebook Places was coming before it was announced. And now we’ve just uncovered a new massive find this way.

Hidden in the code of Facebook’s iPhone app is the code for something else. Something everyone has been waiting over a year for. The iPad app.

Yes, it’s real, and it’s spectacular (well, very good, at the very least). And yes, it really is right there within the code. Even better, it’s executable. (Update: a lot of pictures here.)

For the past couple hours, I’ve been using Facebook’s iPad app. Well, I should qualify this. I can’t be sure if this is the version they’ll actually ship, but based on everything I’ve seen, I’m going to assume it’s at least very close to the version they’re going to ship. While much of it is written with HTML5 (as you might expect from Facebook), the native iPad work is very good too.

In particular, the navigation system is great. Unlike the iPhone app — which even its creator is complaining about now as being stale — the Facebook iPad app uses a left-side menu system that can be accessed by the touch of a button or the flick of the iPad screen. The app also makes great use of the pop-overs (overlay menus) found in other iPad apps. When you flip the iPad horizontally, the list of your online friends appears and you can chat with them as you do other things on Facebook. The photo-viewer aspect looks great — similar to the iPad’s own native Photos app. Places exists with a nice big map to show you all your friends around you. Etc.

It’s all good. I’m going to put up a post after this one with a ton of screenshots of the entire app.

All of this is possible apparently thanks to a seemingly tiny update Facebook pushed yesterday to their iPhone app. Version 3.4.4 seemed like a small version that restored the “Send” button for comments and chat among a few other little things. Facebook may have even pushed it out in response to some backlash they had been getting about the app, as Financial Times covered a few days ago. Perhaps it was the rush to fix some of those issues that caused Facebook to push this version — which will clearly eventually be Universal Binary (meaning it will house both the iPhone and iPad versions of the app) — with the iPad elements inside. Whatever the case, the app is carrying a payload of much greater importance than some bug fixes.

So, I’m using it. Can you? Well, yes — if you don’t mind doing some things you’re technically not supposed to do to your iPad. We obviously don’t recommend it, but if you catch my drift, I’m sure you can figure out a way to access Facebook for iPad. Related, it must be noted that a Canadian engineering student, Marvin Bernal, who calls himself an “iOS Enthusiast” actually noticed this Facebook mistake almost immediately and tweeted about it.

So, after over a year of complaints, Facebook now appears to truly be on the verge of releasing the iPad app. It has now been well over a month since the New York Times’ Nick Bilton reported about the app’s existence and said it should launch in the “coming weeks”. At the time, we further verified its existence , but did not hear a timetable for the launch. Once source now says that based on the HTML changes rolling out on an hourly basis, it looks like work is still underway. But much of that work appears to be smaller tweaks at this point. We’re close — just in case the code being attached to the iPhone app didn’t give that away.

During the launch of the Skype video chatting integration a few weeks ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that the company was gearing up for a full slate of launches in the coming weeks. The iPad app will be one of them. And based on what I’ve seen tonight, I’d be even less surprised if Project Spartan ties in with it as well eventually. The one thing the iPad app (like all the other Facebook mobile apps) is missing is gaming (and all other third-party apps). Spartan could bring that down the line.

We’ll be doing a post with a ton of images shortly. Below, a quick taste.

Update: And all the images. Enjoy.

Update 2: I’ve confirmed with a source who had previously seen the Facebook iPad app that this is in fact the very app that they were planning to launch with. We’ll see if that timetable gets sped up now.

iPhone 4 Review

http://mobiletechupdatenews.blogspot.com/2011/07/iphone-4-review.html

Apple iPad 2 (16GB, Wi-Fi, black) Review

http://mobiletechupdatenews.blogspot.com/2011/07/apple-ipad-2-16gb-wi-fi-black-review.html

Thank you :
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/25/facebooks-hidden-ipad-app/

BlackBerry PlayBook First Tablet Certified for US Federal Government

We have very significant news to share with our government customers – today the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet officially received FIPS 140-2 certification, the first tablet to ever have received this certification. With FIPS 140-2 certification, the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet can now be used by the U.S. federal government with confidence, knowing that it meets their policy requirements for securing and protecting sensitive data.

This absolutely underscores the commitment by Research In Motion® (RIM®) to building products that meet stringent security requirements of the US Federal Government.

There are a wide variety of smartphone and tablet products available on the market today, many of which don’t meet the highest level of security standards that government agencies demand. The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and BlackBerry smartphones are clear exceptions.

The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is a natural extension to the hundreds of thousands of BlackBerry® smartphones that are used in the Federal Government today. With the BlackBerry® Bridge™ application, the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet can be paired with a BlackBerry smartphone to provide secure access to information on the larger screen while keeping the data stored safely on the BlackBerry smartphone. Secure network communication is also extended to the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in this manner, designed to allow the government to be assured that they can securely access applications and other critical data.

I’m pretty excited about the opportunities that the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet presents for government agencies. Pilot projects to use the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet are already underway across the government and the use case scenarios are impressive. Give me a shout in the comments if you would like to discuss how the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet would fit into your agency or department.

BlackBerry PlayBook (16GB) Review

http://mobiletechupdatenews.blogspot.com/2011/07/blackberry-playbook-16gb-review.html

Thank you :
http://www.cookiecoffee.com/news/14805/playbook-blackberry-pad-spec
http://www.cookiecoffee.com/news/17926/blackberry-playbook-price-500-us-thailand-confirm
http://www.exgadgets.com/pc-computer/rim-%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%9B%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%94%E0%B8%95%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%A7-blackberry-playbook/
http://www.tukkaeit.com/showthread.php?t=2673
http://blogs.blackberry.com/2011/07/playbook-government-certified/