Are you in the market for a new Android tablet? Do you want something bigger than the 7-inch display on the Nexus 7 and do you need to have wireless data connectivity? A pretty great deal has popped up on the Internet for the Motorola Xoom. It’s unlocked and ready to do the 3G thing with your GSM carrier of choice and, better yet, it’s selling for just a touch over half price!

You might remember my review of the Motorola Xoom Android tablet last year. It’s a seriously solid Android Honeycomb tablet which can be updated to ICS. This version comes with both Wi-Fi and 3G to go along with its 10.1-inch display and 32GB of internal storage. Power comes by way of a dual-core 1GHz Cortex-A9 OMAP 4 processor, 1GB DRAM, and integrated NVIDIA graphics.

When you consider that this 3G-enabled tablet originally listed for $699.99, the current sale price of $379.99 sounds pretty darn good. That’s $320 (47%) off the list price and it comes with free super saver shipping too. Having it unlocked certainly helps too, especially if you plan on doing any sort of international traveling.

The post Unlocked 3G-Enabled Motorola Xoom Android Tablet for Half-Price appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Although all tablet lovers are waiting anxiously to know all about what’s new from Apple, at least some of you are looking forward to play with the Tablet P, Sony’s unique clamshell Android tablet. The dual-screened device, which was announced last year, is finally making its way stateside via AT&T on March 4^th.

Just to refresh your memory, the Tablet P boasts a pair of 5.5-inch LCD screens which work independently or combined into a single large screen. So, when folded, that will be a 10-inch device in your pocket.

Running Android 3.2 Honeycomb with the company’s software additions (upgrade to ICS has been promised to arrive in a few months), the Tablet P also features a dual-core Tegra 2 processor, 1GB of RAM, 5MP rear cam and just 4GB of storage with a microSD card slot for cards of up to 32GB. You will have access to many apps optimized for the dual screens of the tablet from the company’s Select App, and of course Android Market is always there. And it is PlayStation Certified as well.

Via AT&T, the Tablet P will be available for $399 with a 2 year contract. It is a 4G device and you can choose from two monthly plans: $35/mo for 3GB of data or $50/mo for 5GB. But if you choose the latter, after two years you would have spent $1600. But you can get the device contract-free for $549 and select a pre-paid data plan that suits you.

But forget about all that if you have marked March 7^th on your calendar.

The post Sony Tablet P Finally Coming To The US Via AT&T appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Consumers have a lot of choices when it comes to tablets these days. There’s the iPad 2, of course, but you’ve also got an assortment of Android tablets, in addition to cheaper alternatives like the Kindle Fire. In the world of Honeycomb tablets, though, it can sometimes be difficult to really differentiate between the different offerings. Sony is certainly giving it a try.

You might remember when we first previewed the Sony Tablet S and now we’ve got our hands on one for a more comprehensive review. How different is it compared to all the other Honeycomb tablets that are already out there? What sets it apart from the pack that would make you choose it over the others? Read on to find out.

Features at a Glance

On paper, the Sony Tablet S is going to sound a lot like the competitors. It gets its power from the standard NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, backed by 1GB of RAM and your choice of 16GB or 32GB of internal storage. They’ve opted for a somewhat nonstandard 9.4-inch touchscreen, but most people will just place this in the same bin as the 10-inchers. One big differentiating feature is the inclusion of a full size SD card slot, whereas many other tablets go with microSD. That’s great for travel when you might take the photos from your camera and plunk the SD card in here for a bigger viewing experience.

Here’s a quick overview video that I put together that better illustrates some of these features.

The 5MP rear camera and VGA front camera do the job that they need to do, but they’re far from being the top of the league. Rounding out the specs are the usual array of WiFi, Bluetooth, microUSB and Flash support. There’s also infrared support, so you can control all of your home theater equipment with the right apps too.

The Folded Magazine Design

Another big way that Sony is trying to separate its Tablet S from the rest of the pack is with the physical design. Instead of going with a regular flat slate, the Tablet S has a unique “folded” design that is meant to mirror what you get when you open a page of a magazine and fold it over. This makes for a wedge-like profile.

In some ways, this works, since it creates a slight angle when you place the tablet on a flat surface. It also creates these indented grooves on the sides, so the buttons are less likely to be pressed accidentally. I’m not saying that it’s necessarily superior to the more conventional flat sides, but it does make the experience just a little different.

Everyday Performance and Benchmarks

Using the Sony Tablet S as an everyday device, I don’t have a lot in terms of deal-breaking complaints. Flipping between the different home screens and quickly scrolling through webpages isn’t quite as snappy as it could be, but it’s not so painfully slow as to render it frustrating. I tried a variety of media streaming apps, games, and so on to see how it stood up and the Tablet S is perfectly suitable.

In running it through the Quadrant Standard benchmark, though, I found that most of the scores ranged from about 1,550 to 1,750 or so. This isn’t so painfully useless, but it is toward the lower end of the spectrum. This is the same range as the Motorola Xoom, but a fair bit behind the 2100 range that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is able to achieve.

It’s possible that the ICS update could help this, but that’s all really conjecture at this point.

It’s a PlayStation Tablet…

Just like the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play smartphone, the Tablet S comes with PlayStation certification. In the grand scheme of things, this really won’t make that much of a difference to most tablet users, but it does mean that this tablet is somewhat optimized for the Sony mobile gamer. And yes, I know that Angry Birds Seasons isn’t a PlayStation game.

Conclusion

What makes you special? It’s the question that we ask of just about every tablet that we see, since they’re all so similar. They come with different sized screens, but the processing power is roughly similar, as are battery life and general daily performance. You are stuck with a proprietary charging port, complete with a power supply brick, but most other Android tablets don’t charge over USB either. I do like the full size SD card slot, though, and the “folded” wedge design is growing on me.

The recent price cut might help a little, but just about every other manufacturer of Honeycomb tablets is doing much the same thing. At the end of the day, the Sony Tablet S is perfectly adequate, but it’s also not terribly special either.

The post Review: The Sony Android Tablet S appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Those of you who are already playing with a white version of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 or the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus won’t be too happy with this news. It appears like the device you all are handling is not exactly white. Someone in Vietnam has had access to pure white versions of the two Honeycomb tablets.

The black and white models available on the market at present differ only by the color of the back. All the models have a black bezel around the display on the front.

As you can see in the above image, the new models have a white bezel around the screen. But the specifications are the same. You will be getting dual core processors, Android 3.2, 3 megapixel rear camera, 2 MP front shooter and 1GB of RAM.

No word on pricing and availability at the moment. But we are expecting a slightly higher price tag than currently available ones.

So, are you interested in the pure whites? Or are you looking forward to playing with the latest addition into the Galaxy Tab line?

The post Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 And Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus In White Emerge In Vietnam appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Hopefully this is just the first update for the Flyer this year.  It hasn’t been announced, but we can always hope the Flyer will receive an additional update to Ice Cream Sandwich later this year. Sure, after the first official Ice Cream Sandwich tablet Ainol Novo Basic was released in China last December, there can be little doubt that WiFi only HTC Flyer with its quite powerful hardware won’t be capable to run Ice Cream Sandwich.

The post Honeycomb Update For WiFi HTC Flyer Rolls Out appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Forbes’ contributor Todd Hixon follows TechCrunch analysis of the importance that perceived openness of the Android platform brings. The problem is very multi-faceted and complex, especially when taken in a perspective, and with inevitable comparison with closed-source platforms, such as Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Windows. Arguments of both analysts tend to agree that the openness of Android as its strong point is suddenly nowhere to be found when business and market considerations prevail. Sure, from a business standpoint, it really doesn’t matter what platform and development models are used in a given product: it’s an impact of a product itself that has an importance.

So stating an openness of an Android platform as a central point of Google’s Android ecosystem is no more than a marketing ploy from Google’s, and as such, it can be taken down any minute. This is exactly what happened when the Android Honeycomb source was closed several months ago and stayed so until recently. Did it help sales of Motorola XOOM running that very “closed” Honeycomb OS? I don’t think so. Will “open-sourced” Android Ice Cream Sandwich make it fare better? Hardly. Of course, there will be more powerful devices than the doomed XOOM, and they may sell much better with “open” Ice Cream Sandwich, but it’s clear that “openness” has nothing to do with the success of this or that product.

Both quoted analysts agree that Amazon with its Kindle Fire ignores every possible guideline of Google’s proclaimed  Android ecosystem: they build their own ecosystem that eliminates Google’s at every point and even block other competitive companies. Maybe in a lesser extent, but Samsung, HTC, Motorola, and many carriers do these “customizations” with an obvious target: re-directing revenue flow from Google’s coffers to their own.  There’s really nothing here that needs a winded, full-blown discussion and explanation. What the proclaimed openness of an Android ecosystem has to do with it? Nothing, it’s pure business.

So, next time you’ll hear the news that forthcoming Android Jelly Beans will be “source-closed” and put only on Google’s certified pieces of hardware, don’t be too surprised.

The post Consequences Of Android’s “Openness” appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Latest news has it that these nVidia Tegra 3 quad-core 32GB 10-inch tablets running customized Android 3.2 Honeycomb were sold out quickly. However, slates are about to reappear soon, or can be shipped to stores (at least in Silicon Valley where I checked) in 3-5 days from now. So anyone feeling holiday blues and 5 Franklins in his/her pocket thats left unspent, may try this toy instead. Droid-Life’s Kellex has put up an interesting video review of the slate, so much of the boring tech specs could be just omitted:

On top of what was being said in this review, it’s worth to mention that the responsiveness is not so stellar throughout the tablet’s UI. ASUS customizations of a clean Android 3.2 are suspected to be responsible for this, then the nVidia Tegra 3 code for drivers and such might be just quite immature for the first Tegra 3 based device.

The post ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime Available at BestBuy for $499 appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

We already know that you can get something like the Kobo Vox or Kindle Fire for $200, but they’re not really in the same kind of Android tablet league as their more expensive counterparts. Archos is breaking the Honeycomb price barrier today, though, with the unveiling of the Archos 70b Internet Tablet. This is the first Honeycomb Android tablet to sell for under $200.

Set to ship with Android 3.2 Honeycomb, the Archos 70b is powered by a 1.2GHz processor and 512MB of RAM to go along with its 1024×600 capacitive touchscreen display. And yes, it has full access to Android Market, not restricting you to a smaller app store. Rounding out the key specs are WiFi, a 3D graphics acceleroator, microSD expansion, and HDMI output.

That’s the good news. That bad news is that it won’t be arriving in time for you to stuff it under the Christmas tree. The Archos 70b Internet tablet with Android 3.2 Honeycomb hits retailers in January with an MSRP of $199.

The post Archos 70b First HoneyComb 3.2 Android Tablet Under $200 appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

From this first look at the tablet, you can tell that the design is quite different. For starters, you get more of a wedged-in corner kind of style, not unlike the design cue that we see in the recently launched Droid Razr. The back has an industrial design that almost reminds me of Getac’s rugged convertible tablet PCs.

While the Droid Xyboard ships with Honeycomb, it will be eligible for Ice Cream Sandwich at some point in the future.We’re being told that two sizes will be available too: 8.2-inch and 10.1-inch, both of which have the same 1280×800 resolution display, dual core 1.2GHz processor, 1GB RAM, Verizon 4G LTE, 5MP rear cam, and 1.3MP front cam.

The 16GB version of the 8.2-inch and 10.1-inch Droid Xyboard will retail for $430 and $530, respectively, with a two-year Verizon contract. Both can be bumped to 32GB models, while only the bigger tab will get the 64GB option.

The post Motorola Follows Xoom With Droid Xyboard Tablet With Verizon 4G LTE appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The upgrade is done over-the-air through the use of 3G, and is part of a rollout strategy from HTC that begins with the 32GB WIFI/3G model.

The WIFI-only model will also receive an upgrade (eventually), although the specific launching date for this model’s update has yet to be unveiled.

While the update to 3.2 is certainly a welcome feature, we’d be even more impressed and excited if it was Android ICS that was arriving on the Flyer instead.

I also don’t know how I feel about the more expensive model getting the upgrade treatment first, since it isn’t nearly as popular sales-wise.

In the end though, it is still nice to finally see Honeycomb on the Flyer instead of the smartphone-focused Android 2.3.

The post HTC Flyer Gets Honeycomb 3.2 Update appeared first on Mobile Magazine.