The folks at Tizen Experts got a chance to check out an early demo of Tizen running on an ultrabook, and it looks like a pretty it offers a pretty decent desktop Linux-style user experience. But like the smartphone version of Tizen, there’s an emphasis on running web apps as well as native apps.

Tizen’s notebook/desktop environment is based on GNOME Shell 3, and it comes with the ability to run native Linux apps such as LibreOffice and the Chrome web browser.

But Tizen is developing a custom version of the home screen and app launcher called Tizen Shell, and supports installing and running web apps so that you can run them as if they were native apps downloaded and installed to your computer.

Tizen can also handle the Steam gaming platform for Linux as long as you have a computer with decent 3D graphics capabilities.

Much of what makes Tizen exciting is the operating’s system on mobile devices including phones and tablets — something that other GNU/Linux operating systems such as Ubuntu are just getting started on. But it’s interesting to see that it’ll also be available for traditional PCs.

The demo video shows the operating system running on an ultrabook with an Intel Core i7 Ivy Bridge processor, but the OS can run on devices with slower processors.

The code for the notebook/desktop version of Tizen shown off in the video will eventually be released as part of Tizen 3.0. As of mid-May 2013, the latest stable version of the operating system is Tizen 2.1.

Tizen Linux demo on an ultrabook (video) is a post from: Liliputing

The Asus VivoBook V551 is an ultrabook with a 15.6 inch display and an Intel Core i7-4500U Haswell chip and an NVIDIA graphics card. It’s expected to sell for around $1000, and several retailers are already taking orders.

Notebook Italia reports that in Europe the same laptop is expected to be called the VivoBook S551.

Detailed specs include NVIDA GeForce GT740M graphics, 8GB of RAM, a 1TB hard drive, and 24GB solid state cache disk. The notebook measures just 0.83 inches thick, but it packs a DVD burner, as well as WiFi, Bluetooth, HDMI, 3 USB ports (including 1 USB 3.0 port), and a 65 Whr battery.

It also features a touchscreen display. Unfortunately, it’s a 1366 x 768 pixel screen, which seems kind of out-of-step with what’s otherwise a pretty high-end laptop.

While the Asus VivoBook V551 is a reasonably thin laptop, it’s not particularly light. It weighs about 5.3 pounds, which isn’t surprising given the large screen, disc drive, and other components.

Asus VivoBook V551 ultrabook with Haswell CPU coming soon is a post from: Liliputing

A Google Nexus 4 with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean and the build number JWR45B was spotted at the Thailand Mobile Expo.

At this point there’s not much to report in the way of new features. But the phone does appear to have a new version of the camera app, bringing the menu buttons a little closer to the shutter button, which should make it a little easier to adjust camera settings on your phone or tablet.

While Google hasn’t officially launched the update yet, the company did recently roll out a major update to Google Play Services, as well as Google Play Games for synchronizing your data across devices and making gaming more social. Google also launched new versions of a number of core apps including Google Drive, Google Play Music, Google Play Books, Google Play Movies, and more. A Gmail app update is possibly on the way as well.

In other words, some of the biggest updates to the Android platform this year are being distributed without a major update to the operating system itself. And that’s a smart way to deal with the “fragmentation” problem that’s affected Android for the past few years.

Since Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola, and other device makers push out OS updates to phones and tablets, it can sometimes take months or years before a new version of Android makes it to those devices… if it ever does. By pushing updates to individual apps and services instead, Google can offer many improvements without updating your device’s firmware at all.

Still, a lot of folks are looking forward to the next version of Android, and it looks like Android 4.3 might be coming soon.

via Droid Life

Google Android 4.3 spotted in the wild, brings new camera app to Nexus 4 is a post from: Liliputing

The $99 tablet is notable mostly for its low price. But the $149 Hisense Sero 7 Pro looks like it’d be a pretty good tablet even if it cost substantially more. It has a 1280 x 800 pixel display, an NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core CPU, front and rear cameras, Android 4.2, an HDMI port and microSD card slot, as well as WiFi, Bluetooth and NFC.

Here are some of the day’s best deals on mobile devices.

• Hisense Sero 7 Pro 7″ tablet w/quad-core CPU for $149 - Walmart
• Hisense Sero 7 ” tablet w/dual-core CPU for $99 – Walmart
• Refurb iPad mini for $249 - Walmart
• Lenovo IdeaTab S2110 10″ Android tablet + keyboard for $329 - Lenovo (coupon: USPSE5523)
• Acer Aspire S7 11.6″ ultrabook w/Core i5 + Office for $799 – Microsoft Store (student price)
• Asus Zenbook UX32VD 13″ ultrabook w/Core i5+ NVDIA for $725 – Best Buy
• B&N NOOK Simple Touch with GlowLight for $80 – Best Buy

You can find more bargains in our daily deals section.

Deals of the Day (5-24-2013) is a post from: Liliputing

Padhz reports the VOYO A15 has an 11.6 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel IPS display, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage.

The tablet runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, features HDMI and USB 3.0, and has front and rear cameras. The company says the 11,000 mAh battery should offer up to 8.5 hours of run time.

The Exynos 5250 processor is the same chip that powers the Google Nexus 10 tablet. While it’s no longer the fastest ARM-based chip on the market (Samsung has an octa-core version, and Qualcomm and NVIDIA’s latest chips are also pretty zippy), it’s still faster than pretty much any ARM chip released prior to late 2012.

Personally, I prefer tablets with smaller screens, but the VOYO A15′s large display should make it a pretty great device for watching videos or pairing with a Bluetooth or USB keyboard for getting some work done.

There’s no word on if or when we’ll see this tablet outside of China, but it’s available in that country for 1399 yuan, or about $228 US.

VOYO A15 tablet packs an 11.6 inch screen, Exynos 5250 processor is a post from: Liliputing

That’s a bold claim, since the processor is only one of the power-hungry components in a laptops. The display, memory, storage, and other components all use electricity as well.

But by improving the efficiency of its chips, both while working at full load and while idle or in standby, Intel says laptops with Haswell processors will be able to run for much longer without recharging the battery.

Of course, the improvements won’t necessarily apply to every laptop with a Haswell chip. While the lowest-power Haswell processors will have have TDPs of 10 watts (or what Intel calls a 7W SDP, or “scenario power design”), most will actually use more energy than that.

But the point is that if you took an ultrabook today that gets around 6 hours of battery life and swapped out the Ivy Bridge CPU for a Haswell part, you should be able to squeeze a few hours of extra battery life — especially when you’re performing light-duty tasks where the computer has time to idle. Ultrabooks with the new chips could use as little as 100mW of power while idle.

We’ll also likely see some of these Haswell chips in upcoming tablets and notebook/tablet hybrids.

Device makers are expected to introduce a number of Haswell-based products at the Computex trade show in June.

via Engadget

Intel promises laptops with 50 percent more battery life (Haswell) is a post from: Liliputing

Up until now, that was a feature that was only available in the desktop version of Chrome.

It doesn’t always work perfectly on a mobile device. Sometimes you get an “oops” message letting you know the text couldn’t be translated. And when I tried translating a few pages, Chrome said it was finished, but the text was still in French.

And don’t get me started on how difficult it is to even understand what you’re reading when looking at some translations — it’s tough for a machine to translate not only the words on a page, but also the proper syntax.

Still, it’s pretty cool to be able to occasionally visit a website written in a language you don’t speak and have your mobile browser attempt to translate it for you without having to copy and paste the text or URL into a separate app. Hopefully Chrome will get even better at performing this task by the time Chrome 28 exits beta.

The latest update also adds support for full-screen mode on tablets, and support for Google’s fullscreen API.

You can download Chrome Beta from the Google Play Store.

Chrome 28 Beta for Android includes Google Translate is a post from: Liliputing

But folks who spent $1500 to get their hands on a Google Glass Explorer Edition device earlier this year have a hackable device with a bootloader that can be unlocked so users can load custom firmware. Now there’s also an unofficial version of ClockworkMod Recovery for Google Glass, which will make loading firmware easier.

Brint Kriebel has posted his unofficial build of CWM for Glass, along with instructions on installing at using it.

At this point I’m not aware of any custom ROMs for Glass, so it’s not like you’re going to be able to load CyanogenMod or Paranoid Android… at least not yet. But you can use CWM to perform a factory reset, backup or restore data, root your Glass device, or make some other changes.

One reason I like to root any new Android device and install a custom recovery as soon as I can is so that I can use the backup and restore feature. Basically ClockworkMod, TWRP, and similar tools let you create a snapshot of everything on your device so that if anything breaks you can always restore from that backup and restore your device to the exact condition it was in when you took the snapshot.

That’s a valuable feature to have… especially if you plan to make system-level changes to the software that comes on your device.

via Android Community

Google Glass gets unofficial ClockworkMod Recovery is a post from: Liliputing

But SmartCandy’s new Android TV stick really does look more like a USB flash drive than a tiny Android computer. It measures just 2.67″ x 1.14″ x 0.47″ and weighs about an ounce.

ARMDevices caught up with SmartCandy at a recent trade show and got a look at the tiny TV stick.

Under the hood it has a 1.6 GHz Rockchip ARM Cortex-A9 dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. It has a microSD card slot.

There’s a catch though — there’s no room for a WiFi or USB port in the case, so the company offers an external adapter with WiFi and USB. There’s also an optional dock with Ethernet and 3USB ports.

The company’s website also mentions a model with a Telechips processor, 512MB of RAM, and 4GB of storage.

SmartCandy Android TV stick is one of the smallest yet is a post from: Liliputing

It’s called Pidora, and you can find download links and instructions at the Pidora website.

Update: Unfortunately, the name appears to have a negative connotation in Russian. 

Pidora 18 is based on Fedora 18 and supports nearly every app that can run on Fedora. But the operating system has been compiled to support the Raspberry Pi’s ARM-based processor and Broadcom graphics core.

The operating system is also designed to be downloaded and installed on an SD card, since that’s what the Raspberry Pi uses for storage.

Pidora isn’t the only Linux-based operating system for the Raspberry Pi. It joins Raspbian, a popular Debian-based Linux distro optimized for the little computer.

Pidora is Fedora Linux for the Raspberry Pi is a post from: Liliputing

They’re also surprisingly good devices for the price. Walmart will officially offer a $99 model and a $149 model starting May 24th.

The move isn’t exactly a surprise. A Hisense tablet showed up at the FCC a month ago, and a handful of folks have been able to buy them early from some Walmart locations for the past week or so.

As expected, the star of the show is the Hisense Sero 7 Pro. It’s a 7 inch tablet with a $149 price tag and specs that beat the $199 Google Nexus 7 in almost every way.

The tablet’s features include:

• 7 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel display
• 1.3 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor
• Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
• 1GB of RAM
• 8GB of storage
• 5.0MP rear camera with auto-focus and flash
• 2MP front-facing camera
• mini HDMI, microSD card slot, micro USB port
• WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC
• 10 hour battery life

The Hisense Sero 7 LT isn’t quite as impressive… until you consider the fact that it sells for just $99. Up until recently that’s about the price you’d pay for an eReader (Amazon and B&N have driven down the starting price for those devices in the last year or so).

The Sero 7 LT features:

• 7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display
• 1.6 GHz dual-core CPU (probably a Rockchip RK3066)
• Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
• 1GB of RAM
• 4GB of storage
• Mini HDMI, micro USB, microSD
• WiFi

Both tablets are Google certified devices which come with access to the Google Play Store. They also come with VUDU, Walmart, NOOK, Pandora, and Facebook apps preloaded.

Up until now the tablets have only been available if you managed to find a Walmart location that was selling them early. But starting May 24th, they should be available in most stores, and online at Walmart.com.

Hisense officially launches Walmart-exclusive Android tablets for $99 and up is a post from: Liliputing

Today Newegg is selling a refurbished version of the Asus Q200E with a Core i5 Sandy Bridge processor for just $340.

Here are some of today’s best deals.

• Refurb Asus Q200E 11.6″ touchscreen notebook w/Core i3 for $340 – Newegg
• Lenovo IdeaPad U310 13″ ultrabook w/Core i3 for $600 – Rakuten (coupon: INTEL100)
• Pre-owned Amazon Kindle Fire HD 32GB tablet for $210 – CowBoom
• Google Nexus 7 tablet w/32GB for $229 - Rakuten
• Samsung Galaxy Camera GC100 Android camera w/HSPA for $370 – Never-MSRP (via eBay)
• ADATA 16GB USB 3.0 flash drive for $9 after rebate – Newegg (coupon: EMCXRVT38)
• Fruit Ninja for Android for free – Amazon Appstore

You can find more bargains in our daily deals section.

Deals of the Day (5-23-2013) is a post from: Liliputing

While rival HTC’s latest flagship phone isn’t moving quite as quickly, an HTC official tells the Wall Street Journal that the company has shipped about 5 million units, and that demand for the HTC One is still higher than supply.

That’s good news for HTC, which has been struggling in the Android smartphone space dominated by Samsung for a while. But whether it’s enough to pull the company out of a slump remains to be seen. Reports suggest that HTC has lost a lot of key employees recently.

That said, the HTC One has been widely praised by reviewers. While it doesn’t have some of the features that make the Galaxy S4 special (such as a removable battery, microSD card slot, or the ability to control your phone by waving your hands over it or looking at it), the One does feature excellent build quality, sleek design, an excellent display, and a speedy processor.

But HTC still faces some challenges in other areas. While the HTC One seems to be doing quite well in the market, the company has reportedly canceled plans to launch the HTC First “Facebook Phone” in the UK following poor reception in the US.

Samsung ships 10 million Galaxy S4 smartphones, HTC One hits 5 million is a post from: Liliputing

The HP ENVY Rove 20 is an all-in-one desktop/tablet that will launch in July for under $1000.

In some ways the Rove 20 looks more like a giant tablet than a desktop PC. It’s basically a big slate with a 20 inch, 1600 x 900 pixel IPS display, 3 USB ports, 802.11ac WiFi, and hybrid storage with a solid state disk and hard drive.

But at nearly 12 pounds, it’s kind of heavy for a tablet. And the built-in kickstand in the back shows what this tablet is really designed for. You can prop it up on your desk and plug in a mouse or keyboard to use it as a full-fledged PC.

Since it can run on battery power though, you can pick it up and carry it anywhere in the house. Put it on a table in the living room and you can watch videos. Carry it to the kitchen and use it to listen to internet radio while looking up recipes.

Or lay it down flat on a table and you can play multiplayer games. It comes with Monopoly and a few other titles preloaded.

HP hasn’t provided all the details about the tablet yet, but it’s expected to feature an Intel Haswell processor.

HP Envy Rove is a 20 inch desktop PC that’s also a 12 pound tablet is a post from: Liliputing

The HP Pavilion 11 TouchSmart launches June 26th for $399 and up. And for the first time, HP’s entry-level laptop will sport a touchscreen display and an AMD Temash processor.

This is still a budget notebook, so don’t expect a crazy high-resolution display. The HP Pavilion 11 TouchSmart packs a 1366. x 768 pixel screen.

But it should be faster than the Pavilion DM1 laptops it replaces thanks to the new AMD Temash processor. HP will offer models with AMD A4 dual-core or AMD A6 quad-core processors, which AMD says should offer better performance and longer battery life than the Brazos chips that powered HP’s earlier 11.6 inch laptops.

Other features include VGA and HDMI ports, 3 USB ports, an Ethernet jack and SD card reader, and a user-replaceable battery.

HP brings touch to its budget 11.6 inch notebooks with Pavilion 11 TouchSmart is a post from: Liliputing

Now HP is joining the party with the HP Envy TouchSmart 14. It’s an ultrabook with an optional 3200 x 1800 pixel display.

HP will also offer models with 1366 x 768 pixel and 1600 x 900 pixel displays and a starting price of $699 for a model with an Intel processor. I suspect you’ll have to pay a little extra for the highest resolution model.

There’s also a Sleekbook model, which is basically HP’s name for a thin and light notebook featuring an AMD processor instead of an Intel chip.

The HP Pavilion TouchSmart 14 Sleekbook will have a starting price of $480 when it launches on June 5th. Available options include AMD discrete graphics with up to 2GB of dedicated memory and up to 1TB of disk space.

If the TouchSmart name didn’t make it clear, each of these models will also feature touchscreen displays.

via The Verge and The Windows Blog

HP Envy TouchSmart 14 ultrabook packs a 3200 x 1800 pixel display is a post from: Liliputing

The tablets will begin shipping June 13th.

Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD is a 7 inch tablet with a 1280 x 800 pixel display, an Android-based operating system, and tight integration with Amazon’s digital book, magazine, music, movie, and app stores.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 has a larger 8.9 inch, 1920 x 1200 pixel display and a faster processor.

Both models are available with a choice of 16GB or 32GB of storage.

Up until now the tablets have only been available in limited markets, including the US, Japan, and some European countries. Now they’ll be available in almost every nation or territory on the planet. Amazon’s going big here.

It doesn’t look like the company has any plans to offer its entry-level Kindle Fire worldwide though. That model has a 7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display and a slightly slower processor than its peers. In the US, it sells for $159 and up, while the starting price of the Kindle Fire HD is $199
.

Amazon now offers Kindle Fire HD tablets in over 170 countries is a post from: Liliputing

It’s not like market leader Intel doesn’t already have those areas covered, but AMD thinks its new processors will offer better performance at a lower price than Intel chips.

Like Intel, AMD has been working to reduce power consumption while improving performance and stepping up graphics performance in all of its latest processors. The lowest power Temash chips have a TDP of just 3.9 watts and AMD says it could power tablets that get up to 10 or 11 hours of battery life.

AMD says we should see dozens of tablets and notebooks with its latest chips in the coming months, including models from most major PC makers.

Temash

We’ve already seen Temash chips start to hit the market in devices like the Acer Aspire V5-122 notebook. But AMD actually has 3 different Temash chips designed for tablets and small-screen notebooks with touchscreen displays.

The company is positioning these chips as low-cost competitors to Intel’s Celeron or Pentium chips which fill the space between Intel Atom and Intel Core i3.

The AMD A4-1200 is a 1 GHz dual-core processor with AMD Radeon HD 8180 graphics clocked at 225 MHz.

It has a TDP of 3.9 watts, and in that space, you shouldn’t expect any miracles from an x86 processor. This chip is primarily aimed at what Intel calls “performance tablets,” and probably won’t offer a stellar experience with more demanding Windows apps.

The A4-1200 is basically AMD’s answer to an Intel Atom chip, and while it should offer significantly better graphics than a Clover Trail processor, it’s too early to say how it will stack up against Intel’s Bay Trail chips due out later this year in terms of CPU and graphics performance.

AMD also offers the A4-1250, which is an 8W version with Radeon HD 8210 graphics at 300 MHz. This chip is aimed at notebooks with screens smaller than 13 inches, which qualify for low-cost Windows 8 licenses.

In other words, the low-cost mini-notebooks that AMD and Microsoft don’t want to call netbooks, but which basically fill the same niche.

The AMD A6-1450 should offer a bit more performance. It’s the chip used in the Acer Aspire V5-122, and it’s a 1 GHz quad-core processor with an 8W TDP, although it can also be set to run at speeds up to 1.4 GHz, and 300 MHz Radeon HD 8250 graphics which can overclock to 400 MHz.

AMD’s Temash chips feature new “Jaguar” cores which the company says offer up to twice the computing performance of the “Bobcat” cores used in the last-generation chips, code-named “Hondo” and “Brazos.”

At the same time, AMD says the new chips offer a 20 to 25 percent improvement in battery life. That’s partially because the Southbridge Controller has been integrated into the chip, making Temash processors true SoC (System on a Chip) components.

While AMD is promising better graphics performance than you’ll see in comparable Ivy Bridge or Haswell chips from Intel, AMD is also banking on price. The company thinks that we’ll tablets with Temash chips for well under $500, and notebooks that are a bit less expensive than their Intel-powered counterparts.

AMD Temash

But I think that might be a bit optimistic: You can already pick up an ASUS VivoBook X202E notebook with an 11.6 inch touchscreen display and an Intel Core i3 for less than the price of an Acer Aspire V5-122 with a Temash chip.

Kabini

If Temash chips are designed to compete with Intel’s budget processors, Kabini is designed to go head-to-head with Intel’s mid-range chips all the way up to Core i3.

AMD Kabini

These processors use a bit more power than Temash chips, with TDPs ranging from 9W to 25W, which means you’ll need a bigger battery if you want to get the same kind of all-day battery life. But AMD says the new chips are about 25 percent more efficient than last year’s Brazos chips.

That means all things being equal, you could slot a Kabini chip into a laptop that had been powered by Brazos and get 2-3 hours of additional battery life.

At the same time, AMD says Kabini graphics performance is up to 88 percent better than Brazos.

Initially there will be 5 Kabini chips, divided into 2 categories. The E-Series “Essential” chips are dual-core processors that pick up where Brazos left off, but use a little less power while offering improved performance.

The higher-end A-series quad-core chips are better suited for mid-range laptops and hybrids.

The 1 GHz dual-core AMD E1-2100 is the lightest weight of the bunch, with a TDP of 9W and Radeon HD 8210 graphics clocked at 300 MHz.

At the top end you’ll find the AMD A6-5200 25W chip which is a 2 GHz quad-core processor with Radeon HD 8400 graphicsclocked at 600 MHz.

Richland

While AMD’s new Richland chips are the most powerful notebook chips the company is rolling out this summer, it’s interesting to see that the company isn’t trying to compete with Intel’s highest-performance Core i7 processors.

Instead, AMD says its Richland chips are meant to offer CPU performance that’s on par with a Core i3 or Core i5 chip while offering better graphics, a few special features (such as AMD’s own brand of wireless display technology, which it says is faster than Intel WiDi), and lower prices.

In other words, you should be able to pick up a laptop with an AMD A10-5757M quad-core CPU for less than the cost of a similar model with an Intel Core i5 chip. At least that’s AMD’s plan — it’ll be up to individual PC makers to set actual prices.

AMD separates its Richland chips into two groups. The LV and ULV line are low-voltage chips with dual or quad-core designs and TDPs of 25 watts or less.

Intel owns the trademark on the term “ultrabook,” so technically you won’t ever see an AMD processor in a notebook that’s called an ultrabook. But Richland low voltage chips are designed to go into the same sorts of laptops with thin and light designs.

There are also more powerful A-Series chips with TDPs of 35W, clock-speeds as high as 2.9 GHz, and higher-performance graphics. Those chips will likely need a little more breathing room than you get in a notebook that’s just 0.8 inches thick, so it’s the lower-power Richland chips that are reserved for the ultrabook-like laptops.

Like Kabini and Temash, AMD has also improved energy efficiency. The company says you should get around 1-2 hours more battery life from a notebook with a Richland processor than you would have saw from a model with an AMD Trinity chip.

Software and other features

In addition to improving the performance and efficiency of its latest chips, AMD has also built-in support for some new types of software.

For instance, the Temash A6 processor and Richland A8 and A10 chips include support for AMD’s new Face login and 3D gesture-control software.

Face login uses facial recognition software to let you login to your PC simply by looking at the camera. The gesture controls use your device’s existing camera to let you move your hands or other body parts around to control your PC without investing in any special controller hardware like a Leap Motion device.

As mentioned above, Intel is also building support for wireless display technology into its chips, allowing you to stream content from your PC to a supported external display over a wireless network.

Most of those special features are designed for Windows at this point. While AMD says its new chips do support Linux-based software including Ubuntu and Android, the company isn’t currently pushing its new chips for Android tablets or Linux laptops.

ARM

AMD has announced plans to release its first chips based on ARM architecture in 2014. At this point the company is only talking about processors for servers. But it’s likely that AMD is also looking at the tablet and convertible/hybrid notebook space.

NVIDIA has already shown that it’s possible for a company primarily known for making high performance graphics chips to leverage ARM’s low-power designs to make powerful processors for mobile devices.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see AMD follow suit within the next year or two.

AMD launches next-gen chips aimed at tablets, notebooks, and hybrids is a post from: Liliputing

Heck, one of the main characters on a prime time TV show is a clockmaker.

Anyway, there’s a new smartwatch in town. It’s called the AGENT, and it syncs with your smartphone, offers long battery life, and works with a Qi wireless charging pad.

Here’s a roundup of tech news from around the web.

• AGENT Smartwatch hits Kickstarter, offers wireless charging, smartphone sync
  The makers of yet another smartwatch are turning to Kickstarter to raise funds. This one’s got a few nice features including a sunlight readable display and support for wireless charging, and it’t not bad looking, to boot. I still don’t get how it’s raised over $300k in such a short time though. It’s still a watch. That’s selling for $149 and up at the moment. [Kickstarter]
• E Ink shows off 3-color ePaper displays, coming to shopping store labels, not eBook readers
  Tired of E Ink displays that only show shades of black and white. Here’s one that shows red too. But a 3-color screen isn’t really much use for reading eBooks, so these screens are initially aimed at electronic displays at retail stores and similar applications.. [The Digital Reader]
• Here’s what it’d take to see $200 touchscreen PCs
  A thought exercise looking at how Intel could help PC makers produce $200 tablets and touchscreen notebooks. Hint: lower the prices of the chips and motherboards. Of course, dropping the price of any component would probably help. [Computer Graphics World]
• Synaptics launches ClearPad S7500 touchscreen tech for notebooks/tablets
  Synaptics is best known for making touchpads (those things that hang out below your notebook keyboard). But the company also makes touchscreen tech, and today they introduced the new ClearPad S7500 for notebooks and tablets with screens up to 15.6 inches. [PRNewsWire]
• Android TV box WiFi performance comparison
  One of the biggest problems I’ve found with many cheap Android TV sticks and boxes if flaky WiFi. CNXSoft set out to compare WiFi performance of 9 devices… with odd results that show that your router setup might be just as important as choosing a good Android device. [CNX Software]
• Earl rugged Android tablet has raised more than $215k so far toward a crowdfunding goal of $250k
  The Earl tablet is a rugged Android tablet with an outdoor viewable display and a solar panel, among other things. Right now it doesn’t actually exist yet. But the developers are getting a little closer to their fundraising goal to turn the concept into reality. [Earl]
• Report: HTC senior staff jumping ship, morale is low (as are sales)
  Back when HTC was an OEM that made phones and PDAs for big brands, the company was kind of a big deal. But since HTC has started selling phones under its own brand, the market’s been much tougher… and now it looks like the US division is “in disarray” as senior employees keep leaving. [The Verge]

You can keep up on the latest headlines by following Liliputing on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.

Lilbits (5-22-2013): Crowd-funding the AGENT smartwatch, Earl tablet is a post from: Liliputing

The same tablet has been showing up at regulatory bodies elsewhere in the world, and the folks at VR-Zone in Taiwan seem to think they have a good idea of what to expect from this tablet.

According to VR-Zone, the Asus K005 is the same tablet that up until recently we were calling the Asus MeMO Pad ME302KL.

If that’s true, then the tablet is expected to have a 10 inch, 1920 x 1200 pixel display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor, Adreno 320 graphics, 1GB of RAM, and at least 16GB of storage.

It’s said to measure 0.4 inches thick and weigh 1.3 pounds, have front and rear cameras, a 5050mAh battery, and feature WiFi, Bluetooth, and optional cellular 3G or 4G.

The last bit is in keeping with what we’ve seen from the FCC and NCC. Asus seems to be seeking WiFi, Bluetooth, and GSM/WCDMA/LTE certification for the K005 tablet.

I suspect we’ll hear more about this model once Computex begins in a few weeks.

Asus K005 tablet arrives at the FCC, could be a next-gen MeMO Pad is a post from: Liliputing