The new iPad, as you know, has arrived with impressive specs, but all those features have resulted in the device becoming fatter and heavier. That’s certainly not a big problem, but those of you who are dying to see a super-thin tablet should check out the Android-running Archos G10 XS, which is the latest in a series of G tablets from the company.

Yes, that’s yet another Android tablet. But while all the other manufacturers focus on design and specs to set their Android tablets apart from other Android slates, Archos is concentrating on another aspect: material. The tablets in the G10 series will boast a chassis that is made of “paper-thin” steel, rather than aluminum.

The new material might have helped the company to design the G10 XS with a thickness of only 7.6mm. In comparison, the new iPad measures in at 9.39mm. But an incredibly thin tablet is not actually a big thing. It won’t be effecting user experience that much. Hopefully the device, which will be running Ice Cream Sandwich, will arrive with attractive specs.

And the slate also has a keyboard dock (which doesn’t appear to be adding that much to the thickness), which might make it a rival to the Asus Transformer Prime. No hints on when the device will be released, but we are expecting it to arrive sometime later this year. It will have a price tag between €200 and €400 (around $250-500).

The company is also planning some budget and mid-range models, head here if you want to take a peek at some promotional materials.

[ source ]

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Ice Cream Sandwich for the ASUS EEE Pad Transformer Prime Android tablet was planned to be available much later than it appears to be happening, as it has started to roll out for users just a couple of days ago.  ASUS, ever anxious to see their achievement properly appreciated at CES 2012, even decided to make an introductory video themselves.

Although the video shows some basic functionality that we have all seen about ICS before, it leaves a few things unknown:

• Where is facial recognition unlocking?
• Swipes and transitions didn’t look overly fluid. Was the video of ICS beta?
• When in the Browser, how does it scroll, especially when a web page is not fully loaded just yet? Reports are already coming in stating that rendering speed was improved for the browser. We’d be interested to see benchmarks on that.

With a price tag of $499, the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime might be looked upon as a direct competitor to the iPad 2.

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CES is only a few days away and we know that many of you are waiting anxiously for it to begin to learn about all the coolest gadgets that will be unveiled at the show. If you can’t attend the event but would love to hear about all the latest stuff, you will be glad to know that NVIDIA will be offering a video feed of their CES press conference live on the web.

Coming Monday, January 9th at 4pm Pacific Time, you can tune into NVIDIA’s CES 2012 page to take a peek at the devices and technology that the company will unveil.

CEO Jen-Hsun Huang will take stage to elaborate on the company’s new Tegra multi-core mobile processors, the latest in their GeForce line of GPUs, and advancements in their 3D Vision line. You will also get a preview of their new in-vehicle navigation and infotainment systems.

And for those of you who are interested in free stuff, NVIDIA has announced that it will be giving away a free ASUS Transformer Prime every day during the show. If you are interested in trying your luck, just pay a visit to the company’s Facebook page and hit the Like button.

More details on the upcoming NVIDIA products are not available because that’s the whole point of unveiling the tech at CES. Check out the NVIDIA blog, their Social Media Newsroom and their Twitter feed to get the latest updates from CES.

And of course, we will also be bringing you all the latest info from CES. So stay tuned to this space as well.

The post NVIDIA To Give Away Transformer Primes @ CES appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

According to NotebookItalia, who got this leaked rendering, ASUS will officially announce a 7-inch version of its successful Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime. The rendering makes it look like it’s running Android Honeycomb, and at launch time it’s quite possible, as no recent ASUS Android devices were launched with Ice Cream Sandwich just yet. Apparently it will sport the same mighty Tegra 3 processor as its bigger brother. However, here’s where this rumor gets quite unclear: a 7-inch tablet from ASUS was demoed at CES 2011 where it was called ‘ASUS Eee Memo Pad’ and was said to be based on a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 1.2 GHz processor.  Some models of that Memo (or was it ‘MeMO’?) might even be set with glasses-free 3D screens, but it didn’t happen just yet.

Whatever the discrepancies between the two proposed pocketable  ASUS tablet prototypes, the same press photo leak source has its price point pinned at $299. Will it be based on Tegra 3, or Snapdragon S3, or even S4, will be established at CES 2012.

The post The Rumored ASUS Transformer Prime Mini/Memo 7-Inch Android Tablet appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The fine folks at XDA-Developers report that ASUS has chosen to lock a bootloader on its flagship tablet, the Eee Pad Transformer Prime. This is extremely sad news for all the tinkerers who were hoping to get Ice Cream Sandwich on this powerful tablet currently running a lightly customized stock ASUS Android 3.2 (Honeycomb). First reports of this discovery looks like this:

Asus has Encrypted the bootloader on the prime with a 128 bit Encryption (basically impossible to crack!) like HTC did awhile back…. This makes it impossible to flash ROMs and kernels which can really unlock the devices full potential, that is overclocking, flashing Linux distros, customizing, undervolting, denying installation of Windows 8, etc. The sky is the limit but it depends on YOU!

After weeks of demanding they allowed us to do what we want with the devices we purchased from HTC, and HTC finally caved and unlocked it!

Protests to this ASUS decision multiply in social networks, at the ASUS official Facebook and Twitter pages, even all around the globe. It’s worth to mention that the original ASUS Eee Pad Transformer (not Prime) was launched with a locked bootloader, too, but XDA member named 9600pro87 found a secure key to unlock the bootloader for this previous ASUS Transformer tablet. Now, there’s no obstacles in developing alternative firmwares for it.

All in all, purchases of Transformer Primes may dwindle if the decision to unlock its bootloader, or a leak of the key won’t be made  soon enough. A good example of such a reaction is the Nook Tablet with its bootloader also locked: if it could be launched and unlocked it might fare a better situation than its direct competition, the Kindle Fire.

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