Pixel Qi, an American company that designs low-power laptop screens, showcased a tablet powered by a small solar panel at Computex Taipei 2011 in Taiwan this week. The panel generates 1W of energy, which is enough to power both the screen and the motherboard on a low-power tablet specially designed by Pixel Qi.

The solar array costs a whopping $3, and thanks to a specially designed tablet that requires less power, the tablet could run for days or even weeks without needing to be plugged in. If you leave it in the sun for just three hours you use it for more than three hours at night. It would be a saviour for those moments when you swore your phone was in the yellow with plenty of bars, but suddenly you look down to see you’re in the red. As long as it’s a sunny day, you could charge your phone just by keeping it outside to soak up those rays.

The panel can also be modified and installed in the bezel of a tablet. Although this is still a concept, we might one day see tablets powered by solar cells in the same way pocket calculators are powered by the sun. Eventually, maybe we could get rid of pesky chords all together and seriously reduce the amount of e-waste floating around in developing countries.

The post Pixel Qi Tablet Concept Is Powered by $3 Solar Panel appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

But, how well does it actually perform? How is that Tegra2 processor holding up? Has Notion Ink fixed up some of the quirks that plagued earlier builds of the tablet? Well, Greg of NotionInkFan has posted several video walkthroughs with the device. He looks at Flash updates, UI concerns, GPS bugs, and all sorts of other things that you might want to know.

In addition to the two vids by Greg, there are two additional videos from other people in the Notion Ink community. What do you think? Will you choose Adam over, say, the $800 Motorola XOOM?

[NotionInkFan]

The post Extensive hands-on videos with Notion Ink Adam tablet appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

As you may recall, one of the biggest selling points of the Adam is that it makes use of the Pixel Qi “transflective” display. It also comes with a whole bunch of ports and inputs that you won’t find on the current iPad. The real kicker in this silent demo video is the multitasking performance.

Without exaggeration, the demo has the Notion Ink Adam running no fewer than nine apps all at the same time. This includes the “Sniffer” file browser app that has indexed the internal memory, USB drive, and SD card. It also includes a PDF file open in the Office Suite, the email client, and ebook reader. Over the course of the video they also open the weather app and a few new tabs in the browser.

All in all, it looks like Adam has no trouble keeping all the balls in the air, juggling a very impressive number of apps with swiping launches and quick switches. The UI isn’t silky smooth when things get a little more complex, but it looks like it’s able to hold its own. Good stuff. Now they just have to release the bloody thing and send us a unit to play with.

[Giz via Android Police, Notion Ink]

The post Real world videos of Notion Ink Adam tablet: Insane multitasking in action appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Adam Android tablet

Good news was announced by Notion Ink on their blog yesterday, the Adam tablet may finally be graduating from just an idea – to a real life physical product.  Although, there is a small hitch, the rumored launch window has us waiting until early 2011.

The Adam tablet will run on Google Android, so it may be worth the wait.  It’ll be powered by an ultra-fast Tegra dual-core processor.  And don’t expect just one choice, four different flavours are slated for release. This is what Apple is doing with the iPad, giving the option of an entry-level device, while those wanting a bit “more” can pay for it.

The low end Adam Android tablet has an entry-level LCD, Wi-Fi only, and will chime in at $399. Tack on 3G and it goes up to $449.  The real appeal is opting in for the Pixel Qi display for an extra $50.

As for apps, we expect the Android Market to be teeming with tablet apps by then. Of course, it’ll come preloaded with something called Genesis.  Notion Ink’s version of iTunes for eBooks, music, movies, and apps.

As it stands, the FCC submission won’t happen until November or December, that’s an apparent result of some Tegra 2 delays. Based on all that, we think a release won’t be happening until February 2011, at best.

Inception: Adam Notion Ink Android Tablet [Notion Ink Blog]
Android-Running Adam Tablet from Notion Ink to Cost from $399? [Gizmodo]

The post Multi-core slinging Adam Android tablet now set for 2011? appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

It’s just one screen with multiple modes -  a bright full color LCD, reflective E-Ink black and white quality, and transflective LCD mode. That’s pretty damn amazing if you ask me.

The Pixel Qi screen while in eReader mode has a lot of pluses -  Black and white with 64 shades of grayscale.  It’s reflective so it works in sunshine.  It uses very little battery power in black and white mode.  The full-color mode of Pixel Qi screens is like an LCD screen.  It even does what no other e-Ink display can, plays videos and full color photos.  You get everything you get with a regular LCD screen, just the lower power and higher-resolution of an e-Ink display. Pixel Qi won’t reveal yet how many nits when running at full brightness, and although it won’t win any illumination awards, it’s plenty bright. How it handled motion was a bit harder to gauge, when turned, it immediately switched to the electrophoretic reflective mode—where backlighting is replaced by ambient light reflecting off the back of the screen. In that mode, it is just as crisp as the Kindle for reading text. You can watch video in this mode too, though it’s not exactly pretty (the point being you don’t have to wait forever for the screen to refresh when you turn a page). They wouldn’t speculate on how much battery life improves when you turn off the backlight, simply stating that it saves you 2 watts of power.

They’ll be able to produce different sizes, for different form factor devices, meaning we should see them in a lot of different things over the next year or so.

Source:   Gizmodo

The post Pixel Qi’s Transflective LCD kills e-Ink appeared first on Mobile Magazine.