It’s entirely possible that by next year, many of us will be connecting tablets to our car radios, or installing them in the car.
To stay up to date, 12 volters may want to take a quick look at some of the new, slimmer, big brand tablets announced last week, many during the CTIA wireless show.
BlackBerry PlayBook to Run Android Apps: As we told you earlier, BlackBerry maker, Research in Motion (RIM), will offer the 7 inch PlayBook April 19 through about 20,000 storefronts, starting at $499. For 12 volters, this is one to watch because RIM has stated it wants to see its PlayBook used in aftermarket AV/navigation systems and the PlayBook uses the QNX OS which is common in many car systems including OnStar.
On Friday, the company announced the WiFi PlayBook will be able to run Android apps—a good thing because there are only about 20,000 apps in BlackBerry App World compared to about 295,000 in Android Market. Developers will have to tweak their Android apps for the PlayBook, but that is not expected to be a cumbersome process, said MacWorld.
Source: MacWorld, Geek.com Photo via Blackberrycool.com
Samsung Adds Super Slim, Low Cost Galaxy Tabs: Samsung will soon deliver two WiFi tablets that are slightly slimmer and weigh slightly less than the iPad 2. The new Galaxy Tabs also compete nicely with the iPad 2 on price.
There’s a 10.1 inch (Tab 10.1) model with a new TouchWiz feature that lets you ‘tap and drag’ to resize all the open windows on the screen. You get dual cameras plus a 1280 by 800 pixel display and a 1 GHz Tegra 2 dual core processor. They run a version of Honeycomb (Android 3.0)—the latest version of Android, and the first to be optimized for a tablet (rather than a smartphone).
The second model (Tab 8.9) has an 8.9 inch screen and similar features, including the same 8.6 mm thickness.
The Tab 10.1 will hit stores on June 8 at $499 for a 16GB version and $599 for a 32GB model. The Tab 8.9 is due in early summer at $469 and $569.
Source: Android Central
Asus Goes Super Slim with Dock Option: AsusTek will deliver this month, a super slim Honeycomb tablet with a 10.1 inch screen. When docked, the tablet becomes a laptop, hence the name EEE Pad Transformer. Asus claims the dock is lighter weight and more flexible that competing keyboard docks.
The Transformer supports Flash and should be in U.S. stores March 30. No pricing was announced, but in Taiwan, the 16 GB version without the keyboard sells for the equivalent of $500 and the keyboard version sell for $600.
Source: AP via Yahoo! News
HTC Enters Market with Flyer at Best Buy and Evo View 4G through Sprint: See earlier story here.
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