Inplay Interactive, a company that is not that famous MMO company in Korea. They were known recently by developing F.E.A.R.: Origin Online which also licensed by Warner Bros. Entertainment...
Razer’s Project Fiona might not be the only gaming tablet in the works, since Alienware is also considering branching off in the same direction by delivering a slate designed from the ground up to satisfy gamers.
With regards to Alienware product manager Eoin Leyden, it appears the high-end PC manufacturer could be looking into something similar. We asked Alienware what it thought of Razer's efforts.
"We have discussed it [tablets] a couple of times." explained Leyden. "There are issues and limitations that make it difficult to see that would appeal to our core audience right now."
The problem is that translating a hard-core gaming experience to tablets is very difficult. For casual applications, Angry Birds for example, the touch interface makes sense. The intricacies of PC controls however are very different.
"The issue is the input mechanism and how the game uses the the mechanisms and turns them into in-game actions."
Possible fixes are alternative ways of play. Unlike Razer's bolt-on controllers, Leyden sees very different control methods being used in future:
"At some point in the future tablets could have eye tracking in there, so you could control your character that way."
Thanks to the likes of Nvidia and its Tegra setup, tablets are going through a rapid power increase. More cores, bigger GPUs and larger amounts of RAM are being added yearly. This is leading to a rapid portable graphics evolution. It still isn't quite enough for the likes of Alienware to get excited however.
"From a performance point of view tablets are on an accelerated curve. They aren't quite there yet though." So no tablet from the gaming experts just yet. Clearly though the market share tablets are chewing up has sparked the interest of top-end PC manufacturers. If what Razer releases proves a success, who knows - we might see Alienware jump on board as well.
Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu believes that Apple will sell at least 48 million iPads this year by their upgraded iPad which is the iPad 3.
Wu recently indicated in his forecast speculation that iPad 3 will reach customers in March and would be a "significant update" over the last iPad models and he did say that new features and improvements would be "welcome surprises." Also, there are many reports that show around regarding the next iPad that it will be powered by a quad-core chip and will support 4G LTE.In some cases, many people criticized mobile phones that support 4G LTE for draining battery life quickly. But according to the analyst, that would be a limitation Apple may have been able to talk to.
Wu wrote, "Our industry sources indicate Apple has made noticeable progress in improving battery life that have plagued competitor products. This is due to the company's ownership of core intellectual property including systems design, semiconductors, battery chemistry, and software."
With that said, if the next tablet of Apple would have major changes and improvements regarding its features, Shaw Wu believes Apple will push it sales even higher that could lengthen the gap from all Android devices and from its only real rival- Amazon's Kindle Fire.
The company is due to release its sales figures for the December quarter on January 24.
Apple is set to show its next-generation iPad - which testament come in two versions - at the iWorld scheduled for Jan 26, 2012, according to sources at its cater strand partners. The new models will connect the existing iPad 2 to affirm Apple's good iPad serial targeting the entry-level, mid-range and high-end market segments, the sources claimed.
The iPad 2 will be competing direct with Amazon's light Furnish in the price-sensitive activity portion, piece the new models present focussing on the mid-range and high-end segments respectively, the sources said.
Apple officials declined to report.
Instead of the previously-rumored 7.85-inch, the upcoming iPad models testament comfort lineament 9.7-inch screens but amount with QXGA resolve (1,536x2,048 pixels), the sources indicated. Dual-LED insufficient exercisers are fashioned for the new iPads to change the luminousness of the panels, the sources further.
Penetrating testament be the leading body bourgeois for Apple's next-generation iPad broadcast, spell Samsung Electronics and LG Demonstration are also causative for a division of the orders, the sources said. Minebea, from which Smart sources backlight units (BLUs), has accordingly entered the cater constraint for the new iPads, the sources tapered out.
Apple continues to fall Samsung to manufacture its quad-core A6 processors, which present be misused in the next-generation iPads, the sources revealed. The existing iPad 2 is supported on the dual-core A5.
Samsung is also among the CMOS ikon device (CIS) suppliers for one of the versions of the new iPad that comes with a 5-megapixel lens, symbol the Korea-based vendor's ordinal indication to touch CIS orders from Apple, the sources noted. Sony is the another CIS provider for the else poser with a higher 8-megapixel lens, the sources superimposed.
In acquisition, Simplo Application and Dynapack Socialism Field person both secured orders for batteries with a susceptibleness of as dominating as 14,000 milliampere-hour (mAh) old in the new iPads, according to the sources.
Last May 2011, Asus announced the Padfone. With Asus' chief introduced the Padfone to the public doing his Steve Jobs impersonation, a phone that is dock into a tablet. Even the CES 2012 (The world's greatest tech show) is coming on its way, they will not force to launch it at CES 2012 instead at Mobile World Congress which will happen next month. Which means the launching of first tablet with a dockable phone will be delayed for at least another month. In any case, they are making rounds and trying to deliver on the promise of making a big tablet push in 2012. It’s clearly an awesome device. Let's see if they're going to deliver.
If you're looking for maximum exposure for your developer event, might as well host it during the same week at CES.
For bonus points, have it in the same city. That's precisely what AT&T has done for its 2012 Developer Summit, and while the majority of the sessions won't tickle the fancy of everyday consumers, there's one slot in particular that's giving us pause. Titled "A Metro Style Hemi," an afternoon session at the event will showcase a Windows 8 tablet, reportedly powered by one of Qualcomm's many chips. There's no details on whether or not a physical unit will be on hand with an active LTE radio, but it's useful to know that Microsoft's already talking with the carrier about hosting such devices.
After all, we're still believing that Win8-based tablets are a few months out (at the very least), but if AT&T's already got one in its lab for testing, we could be looking at a little LTE + Windows 8 love sooner than anticipated. Let's just hope it doesn't pull a Jetstream on the pricing, eh?
Sony has become the new entrant in the booming tablet computer market with two models, named the Tablet Sand the Tablet P. Sony’s entry into this market is a good two years behind the Apple iPad which created the market and continues to dominate it with market shares upward of 75 percent.
There are now over a dozen makes in the market including Samsung, Motorola, blackberry, and HP. The tablet computer market is however booming with 2012 sales expected to top 100 million units, growing 50 percent over 2011. Sony’s late entry will therefore not be a problem in this boom market. Sony, given its iconic image in consumer electronics, cannot come out with a me-too product and the tablet S and the tablet P are distinctive products with some compelling features. The Sony tablet S is priced at around $500, the same level as the iPad, signaling that there is, as yet, no call for a price based market positioning.
Wedge shaped shape
To begin with, the Sony tablet S has an unusual wedge shape, with a thickness of 0.3 inch at the thin edge and 0.79 inch at the thick edge. This shape has been described as that of a magazine folded open. Sony claims that the wedge shape makes it easier to hold the tablet as the weight distribution reduces wrist strain, though the Sony tablet weighs the same 1.33 pounds as the iPad. More practically, the wedge shape permits the tablet screen to be visible and usable when laid on the table which is a problem with every other tablet. The casing is in black textured plastic which looks elegant. The tablet has a 9.4 inch screen, similar to the iPad’s 9.7 inch.
The tablet P is hinged and has dual 5.5 inch screens that can be used independently or configured as a single screen. The folding feature makes the tablet P more convenient to carry in the pocket. The LCD displays incorporate Sony’s TrueBlack technology used in HD TVs to improve clarity. The capacitive touch screen has been tweaked to improve response to finger movements. Both front and back cameras are built-in. The front camera is for video conferencing and the 5 megapixel back camera for still and video photography.
Android operating system
The tablet uses the android 3.2 honeycomb operating system. Trade circles, however, claim that this will soon be upgraded to the new android 4.0 operating system. The android operating system is continually being upgraded but lacks the completeness of Apple’s iOS system, which is the major, plus point of the iPad. The Sony tablets use the Nvidia Tegra 2 processor with 1 GHz clock speed. It has a built in 1 GB memory expandable to 16 or 32 GB through memory cards. The expanded memory is however only partially usable as about half of it is lost in file configuration.
Interesting additional uses
Sony has capitalized on its entertainment electronics repertoire to build in two interesting features. One is the ability to use the tablets as a universal remote that can control TV sets, the home theater system, blu-ray players, and DVD players of all makes. The Sony tablet is also designed for use as a Play Station terminal which should make it hugely popular with gaming enthusiasts, as Sony is the leader in this segment. A thoughtful minor feature is that the Sony tablet can be propped on a stand on the tabletop to display a clock face or to be used as an electronic picture frame.
Access to Sony’s cloud based content
Sony has built-in its own music player into the tablets, which is superior to the android music player. The tablets also have access to Sony’s cloud based Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited stores and in the future could have greater access to the Play Station gaming modules to make the Sony tablets approach the Apple iPad level of integration of hardware, software and services which is the benchmark to which other tablets have to measure up.
About the author: Alia Haley is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology, luxury and fashion. Beside this she is fond of gadgets. Recently an article on free Android apps caught her attention. These days she is busy in writing an article on Green building.
Between the line of Cedar Trail notebooks marching their way through the FCC and Intel's recent shipping announcement, it's high time manufacturers started parading out next year's kits. Today's tease hails from Lenovo,
which has outed the Ideapad S110 in no less than four fabulous colors.
Although the outfit's promo video doesn't touch on hardware specs, a Pro Vantage
product page claims the setup sports an Intel Atom 2600 processor. The
self titled "mini notebook" features a 10.1-inch "HD display,"
presumably rocking the same 720p resolution as the rig's optional 2
megapixel webcam, if not the full 1080p Intel says the N2600 supports.
Buyers will also be able to opt for an optional 3G radio,
though USB 3.0, Lenovo quick start "instant on," and a 98-percent
full-size chicklet keyboard all come standard. The video didn't pack an
official press release, but we hear there's a major trade show right around the corner that's just perfect for announcing products.
When the Kindle Fire, Amazon’s first tablet, was announced in early
October, people went wild for it, thinking it would be the iPad killer.
Now, after about a month of its being out, it is clear that it is no
iPad killer, and since its release there have been some complaints about
its performance. Still, the Kindle Fire just might break the market as a
solid tablet for a price that you can’t argue with.
Amazon’s entry to the tablet game comes with a lot of brave
decisions on the business and content sides. First off, it doesn’t
decide to go head to head with the iPad, and it’s for this that I will
say that it is no iPad killer. Costing less than half the price of the
lowest-configuration iPad, and also being the cheapest good tablet out
there (sure there are dirt cheap tablets available, but these make you
pay in terms of UI, pathetic battery life, and other hardware concerns),
the Kindle Fire just plain undercuts all competitors and still delivers
a great product.
Most people who buy the Kindle Fire will be buying it not because
they are techies, but because they are book fans, or they want to try
out tablets. Thus, selling it for cheap works for Amazon. They make
their money not through the sales of the hardware itself but through
selling content or through Amazon Prime memberships, which greatly
enhance the Kindle Fire experience. Which is to say, really, that if you
are having second thoughts, then know that when you buy this product
you will be getting your money’s worth.
Instead of telling you about specs, I’ll tell you about
performance. First off, the Kindle Fire operates on a system based on
Google Android, but that Amazon built on top of. This means an OS that
functions a lot like Android, and that will allow you to install Android
apps, but also one that centers on providing you with Amazon content
and a distinctly Amazon experience.
What is this Amazon experience? From my own use of it, it’s
strongly centered on reading. As an ebook reader, it’s a great device.
It’s more customizable in its reading options than the Nook and it’s
easy to navigate and get your books. Syncing with other devices is easy
and downloading or sideloading books is a cinch. Even better, with the
Prime membership you can borrow a book a month from a long list of books
made available by Amazon (this feature has generated a lot of trouble
with publishers, but in the end, it’s the readers who are benefitting).
There’s also the great book lending feature, which allows you to borrow
and lend ebooks from friends. When you lend a book, it becomes
unavailable to you for fourteen days, in which time your friend can read
it on their devices.
Beyond books are other media like movies and TV shows. However,
this was a problem when I tried to access them. There’s a wealth of free
content available for streaming, but I couldn’t get to any of it. I’m
not sure if it’s my bandwidth, but I couldn’t stream any of the series
or movies that I tried to get into. Despite that problem, I decided to
try to watch other things on the Kindle. It plays .mp4, among other
video formats, so I sideloaded some videos and these came out looking
really good and crisp. I wouldn’t go so far as to start commending its
HD capability, but the video output is more than satisfactory for
viewing movies and TV series, if you really want to do that (I’m
generally not a fan of viewing things on a small screen, so I haven’t
made much use of the feature, but hey, it’s there if you need it).
Along with video content you get a good digital music player in
the Kindle Fire too. Once again region purchasing issues become a
problem, but I decided to just load music straight into the Fire and it
was alright. It’s a bit unwieldy as a big music player if you’ve become
accustomed to the front-pocket friendly iPod, but it functions alright
and if you can do with not having any side buttons or other ways to
control the music than the screen, it’s a passable player too.
Speaking of buttons, that’s one of the issues with the Kindle Fire
that has come up. The tablet has a clean front with no covers, and in
fact everything is run through and controlled with the touchscreen, with
only one button for waking it up and for turning it on and off. This is
good aesthetically, but it does bring about a problem. Along with the
aforementioned lack of controls for things like volume (and the volume
isn’t controlled in the music player screen either, but rather in the
general settings; sure it only takes two taps to get there, but still
this could have been more elegantly built into the music player) the
placement of the single button, on the device’s bottom, can become a
problem. Hold it the wrong way and you might wind up turning it off.
Similarly, lay it on a surface and it’s that button that gets pushed.
One remedy has been to just flip the device upside down. Sure that
works, but then I shouldn’t be looking for a workaround in the first
place.
The button placement is a small design criticism, but it’s
something that I can live with. Otherwise the Fire has a clean, smooth
physical design. While lacking the design flourish of the Nook, the
Kindle Fire’s simplicity and portability make it a pretty machine to
hold and look at. It’s not that heavy (if you’re used to reading
hardbound books this is nothing) but you might find it getting
uncomfortable to hold up after twenty minutes and you’ll be shifting
weight.
A more pressing concern is the device’s apps. While ideally Amazon
has a wealth of apps, its App Store is currently unavailable to us in
the Philippines. That’s a major bummer and it makes a strong argument
for just getting an e-ink Kindle, since you can’t maximize what the
tablet does through conventional means. However, you can actually
download Android apps and install them to the Kindle Fire. Of course
Amazon won’t teach you how to do that, as it subverts their own app
store, but, hey, they are the ones stopping us from buying things when
we want to pay, and it’s easy enough to learn how to do this using a
little bit of google.
That said, once you’ve got your essential apps on the device, it
generally works great. There’s been a lot of talk about the speed of the
Silk browser, and in general it delivers. It is considerably faster
than a lot of the mobile browsers I’ve used. So productivity, surfing
the net, and social networking are all covered. You can do all this
stuff and best of all it’s small enough to fit in a pocket (I carry mine
around in my back pocket usually).
I don’t know if I’ve just been lucky, as I haven’t encountered any
of the problems that people have been complaining in the forums online.
But thus far, I can’t help but recommend the Kindle Fire to friends who
want to try out their first reader or their first tablet. While people
who want dedicated reading are better off getting e-ink readers, the
Fire has the wow factor that I think will sell people on reading
e-books. And as a cheap tablet it performs remarkably well.
What I get from the Kindle Fire is the feeling that more people
will be using tablets. It’s this optimism that comes from using a
product that doesn’t necessarily revolutionize things (in the way that
the iPad did), but that suddenly makes technology so easy and cheap that
more people will readily take to it.
The Amazon Kindle Fire was a relatively easy device to root. All that
was required was the SuperOneClick utility that rooted the device which
in turn, allowed the Kindle Fire to have custom firmware
such as CyanogenMod installed on it.
Each time an update arrived it
unrooted the device, but after running SuperOneClick it was rooted
again. This has changed though. Amazon has just released the 6.2.1
firmware update for the Fire which interestingly blocks the
SuperOneClick software from working.
Amazon uses an automatic update procedure which means that as soon as you connect to a wireless network
the download will commence and the update process will automatically
run. To prevent this you'll need to switch off wifi and then follow the
instructions over on Liliputing
to root the device. Unfortunately there is no way around for those who
have been already automatically updated to 6.2.1, but if you are lucky
enough to not be on there then follow the instructions at the link above
which will also show you how to prevent automatic updates in the
future.
We suspect that the folks at XDA developers will find a way around the blocking of SuperOneClick, so hang on for a bit longer.
Rumors are spreading about the next generation of iPads, which are all about the release of iPad 3 on early 2012. Funny, eh? All iPad lifetime will take only almost a year just like the iPad – iPad 2,
if these rumors were true. It will be great if these rumors will have
some sort of much more solid proof. But at least there are few things
that makes this rumor possible.
According to some sources, iPad 3 will have a greater screen resolution compared to the older iPads. It will feature a 2048×1536, 9.7-inch display for its display. Also, a supplier of iPads said that the production of iPad 2 will be much less than before by now, so that Apple will be focused more about the development of iPad 3.
Moreover,
someone toyed with the iOS SDK discovered something. Noticing that
there’s something odd with the Twitter framework on it, which is an
image that has a resolution of 1,536 x 2,048. It is twice the max
resolution of the current iPad (and they are the same with the screen resolution rumor for iPad 3) has.
Well, let’s wait for the end of 2011 and Apple might announce something, hint us about it, or even respond from these rumors spreading on the Web. If all of these are true, well that’s too good to be true, maybe iPad 2 prices
will depreciate, and new developments for the iOS platform that isn’t
capable with the regular iPads today should work by then. But what will
be the new features of the rumored iPad 3? Can’t think of something else besides its screen improvements.
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