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The next iPad competitor?

Dell, with some help from Amazon and Google, may be releasing an iPad competitor called the Dell Streak. The Streak will be a tablet that will have access to all of the e-books in Amazon’s Kindle store and everything in Amazon’s MP3 download store, which includes songs as well as TV shows and movies. This is a comparable to what the iTunes store offers.

The Streak allegedly will have a five-inch screen, which would put it between the iPhone and iPad in size. It is supposed to offer access to the Kindle store through 3G with no extra fees. This is an advantage over the iPad, which requires a data plan for 3G access. The Streak is supposed to be Android-based.

Both Amazon and Dell refused to confirm if this rumor is true or not. No one has speculated about the ship date or price of this unannounced product. A tablet processor manufacturer has said that it expects over fifty iPad competitors to be released this year.

Via Wired, image via Wired.

A recent news story about Sony published in the Wall Street Journal has caused a lot of speculation about Sony’s plans for mobile devices. Though Sony is not officially confirming anything, it is thought to be developing products and services to compete with Apple.

Sony is reportedly ready to launch an online media platform called “Sony Online Services” that is intended to compete with iTunes. It is also releasing a mobile phone with the Android operating system soon. The phone is going to be called Xperia X10. Currently, Sony makes an e-reader that is a competitor to Amazon’s Kindle.

If Sony is intending to directly compete with Apple, it may want to prepare itself for potential lawsuits. Apple is currently engaged in a lawsuit against HTC for patent infringement relating to the iPhone, which many people are interpreting as an indirect against Google.

Via Digital East Asia.

Apple’s legal action against HTC, the first manufacturer to use Android in its phones, could have larger implications for other companies using Android on their phones. In the case, Apple alleges 20 patent infringements, and this case could be the first of many.

Apple hasn’t specifically named Google in the lawsuit, but many of the patents relate to operating system processes. Google has declared its support for HTC. Due to the increase in competition between Google and Apple, some analysts have speculated that Apple is attacking Google indirectly through this lawsuit. Therefore, the lawsuit could have implications for other companies later.

Apple asserts that HTC has infringed on 20 patents owned by Apple that are used in the iPhone. Apple wants an injunction that would bar HTC from selling phones that use the patents in the United States.

Via BBC News, image via BBC News.

Android’s beauty as an open-source operating system is that it allows any random manufacturer to develop a product and slap Android on top of it.  This does, however, allow for some issues in terms of legitimacy of manufacturers.  Case and point: The Haleron iLet Mini HAL.

If you want a tablet with groundbreaking features or earthshaking specifications, look elsewhere.  If you want a quaint little tablet that does its job, stick around but don’t buy this.  Why? I’ll tell you in a bit.  Here come the somewhat interesting specs:

• VIA ARM Processor 600 MHz
• 7” TFT LCD Touch Screen w/ 800×480 Resolution
• 128 MB RAM
• 2 GB Flash Memory
• Up to 32 GB SDHC
• 16 Hour Active Battery
• Android 1.6, Upgradable to “Windows CE 6.0”

Amazing? Far from it.  But still it’s not a bad tablet per se. And it is a pretty sweet deal given the $200 price tag and March 1st shipping date.  So why did I warn against buying this?  Quite simple. It’s a scam.

Indeed, since the news hit the internet there was some wariness in trusting this random French company named Haleron. One commenter over at Pocketables did some research and couldn’t find much to back up their image as some sort of legitimate tablet maker.  The only picture of the iLet Mini HAL is a render found at some other French forum, and they clearly stated they did not license the design to Haleron.  Other attempts to find copyright information and company registration have ended up dry.  Unless we get any reports stating otherwise, then we will have to assume it is fake.  So  stay safe, and do your research when purchasing.

Via Gizmodo.

The iPad has yet to hit shelves, and yet it has already become clear that a tablet war will likely consume much consumer attention in 2010.  Apple, to much applause, has announced its champion, and Windows will likely respond with an arsenal of 3rd party devices. But who will carry the open source community’s banner into the fray?  Joojoo Tablet has fallen from favor once it became clear it would run a browser-based OS, and the other Android tablets have failed to garner much attention.

Notion Ink’s ADAM appears to be standing ready to fill this hole. It’s a Linux-based tablet that already has set its eye on defeating the iPad, and the spec list does not seem to betray it in that regard:

• 10″ Transflective LCD, Pixel Qi Screen 1024 x 600 with low power mode
• Multitouch capacitive screen
• Dual Core ARM Cortex A9 with NVidia Tegra 2
• HDMI 1080p Out
• 3 USB Ports
• Battery life: 160 hours backlight off, 16 hours video playback
• Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth
• Multitasking
• Rear trackpad
• Adobe Flash Support
• Camera
• SD Card Slot

The truly revolutionary component on this tablet is its screen, which incorporates Pixel Qi technology to give a similar experience as e-Ink when the backlight is off. This gives the tablet its godly battery life,  and allows it to directly challenge the reading experience of eReaders.  It is a powerful tablet, and the device’s multitasking with Flash support is undoubtedly a response to the iPad’s inability to do either.

Still, this thing comes with some weird quirks. It is unclear what the OS shall be on this tablet, as three are listed in the spec sheet (Android, Ubuntu, Chromium). Pricing is  highly variable, $327-800, but still easily competitive with Apple.  All that remains is to see how well Notion Ink will market this and get public support behind it.  For now, it seems like Linux’s best shot to take the mainstream.

Via Gizmodo, image via Notion Ink.

HP’s Compaq Airlife 100, the company’s first smartbook that was announced on Friday, combines the portability and design of a netbook with the hardware and software often seen in smartphones. The Airlife has a battery life of up to 12 hours, longer than what most netbooks can offer. While the Airlife and iPad are very different in terms of design, they share many similar features such as simplified software interfaces, touch-screens, and ARM processors (most netbooks use Intel processors). The two devices also both make it easy to quickly access the Internet and browse online content.

Here is a quick comparison of the differences between the smartbook and tablet:

Airlife:
10.1 in touch screen
Wi-fi b/g (optional 3G wireless broadband connectivity)
2.2 lbs
Qualcomm Snapdragon processor (1 GHz)
16 GB internal storage
512 MB flash storage
Android OS
Supports Flash
Folded design

iPad:
9.7 in touch screen
802.11n Wi-fi (optional 3G/Bluetooth)
1.5 lbs
Apple A4 chip (1 GHz)
16, 32, or 64 GB of storage
No Flash support
720p HD video support
On-screen keyboard only

HP is not distributing the Airlife in the US just yet, while the iPad is roughly 50 days away from becoming available worldwide. The company also has not yet released pricing information for the new device.

Via PCWorld image via CNET

Google’s smartphone, the Nexus One, has not really lived up to its expectations. Many analysts had high hopes for the phone before it was released, but such hopes were dashed when consumers began to complain about it. The phone is the first one sold by Google itself and runs Android, the open-source mobile OS.

The Nexus One has had problems with the 3G network. It has unreliable connectivity and will switch to the slower EDGE network. Users are annoyed with this, as well as Google’s poor customer service. Luckily, there may be a solution to the 3G problem. Google has said it is going to release a patch soon that will fix 3G connectivity in most cases. The patch should be available within the next week or so.

Via Wired, image via Google.

Google’s Android OS is becoming so successful that it is stealing the spotlight from Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS. There is strong evidence that the next major release of Microsoft’s OS, Windows Mobile 7, has been delayed yet again. Windows Mobile 7 was supposed to be released this year, but now analysts are saying that there is evidence that it has been delayed until 2011 due to Android’s increasingly popularity with manufacturers. Android is open-source and free to use – a stark contrast to Windows Mobile.

Steve Ballmer’s keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) did not mention anything about Windows Mobile 7. Only the current version of the OS was mentioned. Microsoft may offer more details at the Mobile World Congress next month in Barcelona, but no one is certain if this will happen.

Windows Mobile 7 has already been delayed. It was originally supposed to come out in 2009, but then the release date was pushed to 2010 because Microsoft was allegedly working on some big changes. If Microsoft delays Windows Mobile 7 again, users and manufacturers could become frustrated, if they aren’t already. Still, let’s not get ahead of ourselves – at this point, Microsoft has not confirmed any delay.

Via PC World.

As promised, Mobinnova revealed its new Android netbook at CES 2010 – an 8.9-inch machine powered by the Nvidia Tegra and supporting AT&T 3G. It has a 1024 x 600 pixel screen, 512 MB of RAM, and 512 MB of NAND to store the operating system.

This may be a pretty meager space allowance, but luckily the new netbook allows drive expansion of up to 64 GB with an SD card.

The netbook has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Etherned, HDMI out and USB ports for accessories. It runs a 1 GHz ARM Cortex A9 CPU. Pricing and availability is unknown for now, but we’ll be on it as soon as the info’s available.

Via I4U.

There is a popular saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Unfortunately for Google, its new smartphone, the Nexus One, is not perceived as beautiful–and neither is the company itself.

The Nexus One is meant to compete with Apple’s iPhone, but there are certain areas in which it is lacking. Let’s consider aesthetics alone: the iPhone is a much more personalized phone. It responds to you personally when you touch it. When you put it to your ear to talk, the screen turns off to save battery. And then there’s the App Store, offering hundreds of thousands of apps so that each user can customize their phone to their heart’s content, making it truly theirs.

Simply put, the iPhone makes people feel good. Interacting with it makes us happy. Even when it has problems, solving them is not so much of a hassle because of Apple’s excellent customer service (and I say this as someone who has used Apple Care extensively for Mac products).

Contrast this to the Nexus One. In the words of Joe Wilcox, it looks like it was designed by Dell (no offense to anyone who owns a Dell computer, but their products are just plain ugly). The Nexus One, though it has many great features, lacks humanity. It is not highly personal the way iPhone (and many of Apple’s products) is. The customer service cannot compare to Apple’s, either.

This may sound silly, but it’s an important point. People are highly influenced feelings. From a completely analytical standpoint, the Nexus One may be a better phone than the iPhone. But if using Nexus One is not as personal an experience as using an iPhone, Nexus One will not be the iPhone killer it’s meant to be. An iPhone competitor will have to not only offer all the iPhone’s features and more, but will have to present them in such a way that is comparable to the iPhone’s presentation–and that’s no easy feat.

It’s true that I am a diehard Apple fan and have not seen the Nexus One in person. But to compete with Apple, Google does need to take a more human and personal approach and not rely solely on analytics.

Via Betanews, image via Google.

The latest innovation from Google has arrived. It is the Nexus One smartphone, and analysts are already speculating that its introduction may be as revolutionary as the iPhone’s introduction in June 2007. The official website for the phone is up, though I’m not really impressed by it at the moment – the site does not integrate well with Firefox, at least at the time of this writing.

The most astounding and important feature of the Nexus One is its voice capabilities. A user can speak a search term, such as the name of a restaurant, and Nexus One will use GPS to find the nearest location and then give spoken directions on how to get there. The Nexus One is to speech what the iPhone is to touch.

The Nexus One could offer substantial competition to Apple’s iPhone. A recent survey said that the number of people planning to buy an Android smartphone in the next three months has risen to 21 percent from 6 percent. By contrast, the number of people planning to buy an iPhone dropped from 32 percent to 28 percent. Google is also not emphasizing apps as much as Apple does, preferring to rely on cloud services, which could appeal to some users. But only time will tell if apps or cloud services are preferred by the majority of smartphone owners.

Steve Jobs had better watch out. As amazing as the iPhone is, Nexus One has some very appealing features, especially its voice-to-text capabilities. It would not surprise me at all if Apple made some drastic improvements to their next iPhone in response.

Via Betanews, image via Google.

Google is due to announce their new smartphone, the Nexus One, this coming Tuesday. It will be designed to run Google’s Android operating system. Android, which was released over a year ago, was supposed to be revolutionary because it is an open OS that companies can use for free.

Android was meant to compete with the iPhone’s OS in some respects, though that plan hasn’t exactly come to fruition. The iPhone is still enormously popular, likely because of Apple’s continual innovation and risk-taking.  The iPhone is a perfect example: it has taken years for competitors to offer something even half as good. The App Store was a revolutionary innovation that has helped secure the iPhone’s dominance.

The only way to offer strong competition to Apple in the smartphone market is to design a phone comparable to the iPhone, but cheaper or  with a revolutionary new design. Google could do the latter (the former is unlikely, as their profit margins may already be slim), especially if it designed a smartphone that directly used the Internet for transmission instead of traditional cellular carriers.

We may be disappointed, however. Early reports suggest that Nexus One will be just like the average smartphone, and even if Nexus One is truly new and innovative, it is likely to be overshadowed by Apple’s impending announcement at the end of January.

Via ABC, image via Gizmodo.

I posted earlier about the popularity of the iPhone in Japan. Now analysts have said that the iPhone is the second most-used smartphone in America. Research in Motion’s Blackberry is the most popular, with about 15 million users saying that they use a Blackberry as their primary phone, followed by 9 million Americans saying that the iPhone is their primary phone. Phones with Microsoft’s Windows Mobile are used by about 7.1 million Americans.

These studies are not a measure of sales velocity, accounting instead for the installed base of phone users. The iPhone has been outselling Windows Mobile phones for some time now.

Things are not looking good for Windows Mobile phones. According to a report, prospective smartphone buyers are more leaning towards the iPhone or Android-based phones.

Via Computerworld.

A study by investment firm Morgan Stanley has said that mobile Internet is growing very quickly, and within five years there could be more users going online with mobile devices than with laptops or desktops.

This news really isn’t surprising, considering how ubiquitous Apple’s iPhone has become, as well as smartphones with Internet capabilities. We also should not neglect Amazon’s popular wireless reading device, Kindle.

The study also says that this is worldwide phenomenon, not confined to the developed world. Yet, the leaders in this phenomenon are American companies such as Apple, Google, and Amazon.

There are five key trends that are converging to encourage the growth of the mobile Internet, including 3G (and upcoming 4G) broadband, the popularity of social networking, online video, VOIP services, and mobile devices (like the iPhone) that do things that could previously only be done with desktops or laptops.

The reports predicts that the next two years will be good for Apple. But after that, Google’s Android and future competing products could pose a threat to Apple.

The report may be speculative, but so far the evidence backs it up. Just think about how far mobile Internet has come since the iPhone’s introduction in June 2007–it’s come a long way in a very short period of time.

Via PC World.

For many years, Apple and Google have complemented each other: Apple made computers, an OS, and software, and also acquired quite a presence in the music industry, while Google stuck to the world of search engines. But recently, the two companies have each been branching out into each other’s territories, bringing them into direct competition.

It’s not that the two companies did not have any ties earlier: they did, sharing two directors, which caused a bit of a legal tussle culminating in the resignation from Apple’s board of Eric Schmidt.

More recently, Google has attempted to break into the music industry where Apple rules with iTunes. In one example,Google considered buying Lala.com until Apple elbowed them aside, acquiring Lala for $85 million.

Google has recently launched a music search and listening service that it says will integrate with its forthcoming operating system, Chrome OS.

Operating systems and software is another traditionally Apple-dominated area that Google is trying to push into. Google is going to release an operating system, Chrome OS, sometime in 2010. It also has a web browser, Chrome, which has just recently been made available for Mac. (Of course, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still dominates the web browser scene.)

Mobile phones are another area in which Apple and Google will compete. Apple itself is relatively new to the mobile phone scene, releasing the iPhone in June 2007. Google has released a phone OS called Android and plans to release its own cell phone to consumers next year.

Despite the headaches it must be causing in Apple and Google board rooms, this kind of competition tends to be great for us consumers. Both companies will have to continually improve their products to stay competitive, which should mean lots of great, high-quality products for us in the future.

Via the Wall Street Journal.

ASUS is planning on launching a smartbook in Q1 of 2010. This smartbook is described as a low-powered, 3G-enabled ultraportable laptop with an ARM-based processor. It’s rumored to have a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor as well as GPS, 3G, and Wi-Fi capabilities.

It’s currently uncertain what operating system ASUS’ new smartbook would run on, but the claim is that it will run on the Google Android OS. Pricing for the smartbook is rumored to be set around $180 each.

Via TomsHardware.

A number of industry sources have confirmed that Google may be prepping a new Android phone and netbook combination. Northeast Securities analyst Ashok Kumar, in particular, claimed in a research note that Google’s phone will be available by the end of the year, with a netbook following suit by early 2010.

The smartphone will use an unnamed Qualcomm chipset, but the netbook will use Qualcomm’s much-touted Snapdragon processor. Both machines will run Android 2.0.

Google has, naturally, neither confirmed nor denied the report. While a number of Android phones out there are branded as being ‘with’ Google, the new device will supposedly be co-designed with Google taking a more powerful role than it has historically.

A Google Android phone will ramp up competition with Apple, from whose board Google leader Eric Schmidt resigned in order to avoid a conflict of interest following the announcement of the Chrome OS.

Via Electronista.

The long-expected Android Acer Aspire One has been making big strides in recent weeks, today finally going up for pre-order on Amazon. The netbook costs $349.99 and dual-boots both Google Android and Windows XP.

The 10.1-inch netbook is the Acer AOD250-1613 model, and comes with a 1.66 GHz Intel N280 CPU, 1 GB of RAM, a 160 GB HDD, Intel GMA950 graphics and a 6-cell battery lasting, supposedly, up to 9 hours on one charge.

If you buy one now, you don’t pay shipping when the netbook is released. Get on it!

Via SlashGear.

We haven’t seen a Verizon device running Android just yet, but word has it the wireless carrier intends to join the club quite soon.

Google came forward with Verizon today, announcing a new “family of [Android] devices” for the consumer market. The selection will include two smartphones powered by Android, and while there was no mention of a netbook just yet, it seems like a possibility considering other Verizon offerings.

A number of manufacturers are already petitioning Verizon to have their devices offered with Android, including some netbook manufacturers.

Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam dropped a comment that might be construed as a quip about Apple, saying that Google Voice will work on the Android phones because “you are either open, or you are not.”

Via IntoMobile.