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Tag: tablet

Touching Off eReader/Tablet Battle

June 3, 2011 /

Over the last few weeks, the battle front for eReaders vs tablets has gotten very interesting indeed. The news that Amazon may have a new Kindle in the works, promised that 2011 could be an interesting year for eReaders.

Kobo Touch eReader

Kobo Touch eReader

This was followed by Borders’ announcement of the new Kobo Touch eReader. An eReader with a touch sensitive E Ink screen? Just as it was looking like the back-lit LCD screen might push E Ink off the map thanks to the iPad primarily, a new twist is added to the mix. Shortly after the Kobo Touch news, Barnes & Noble announced its own new Nook Simple Touch Reader. And at $129 and $139 respectively, both of the new eReaders are competitively priced.

In addition to the infrared touch screens, both new readers tout advanced social media related functionality. It’ll be interesting to see just how usable this is given the slower refresh rate of E Ink displays relative to LCD. The new E Ink Pearl displays are reported to be faster, but will it be fast enough? I can’t wait to get my hands on one for some testing!

Nook Simple Touch Reader

Nook Simple Touch Reader

Anyway one looks at it, the Kindle just got some new competition. Amazon is not likely to take this lying down, so I hope we’ll see some news from them soon on the next Kindle. As for the iPad, these new readers are cheap enough that owning one of them plus an iPad is a viable option. Also, as touch screen devices, going from iPad to eReader won’t be as jarring an experience as it is now that we mostly expect tablet or tablet-like devices to have touch displays.

The new eReaders are scheduled to begin shipping next week, so I’ll be planning a trip to Borders and Barnes & Noble for some much anticipated hands on time.

Blackberry Playbook, Galaxy Tab Wi-Fi Come To Play

April 13, 2011 /

The dust has settled since the launch of Apple’s iPad 2 tablet and it’s pretty clear that no competing tablet computer is going to dethrone the iPad anytime soon. The Motorola Xoom had a lot of promise, but launched at too high a price and missing features like Flash support and comparable apps that could have differentiated it from the iPad. There’s still hope for the Android powered tablets and others in the future, but this round belongs to Apple.

While I don’t really expect Blackberry’s upcoming Playbook or Samsung’s new Wi-Fi only Galaxy Tab to make a dent in the iPad’s dominance, at least they are launching priced to play ball. The 16GB Playbook is priced at $499 which matches the entry level iPad. I saw a Circuit City ad for the 16GB Galaxy Tab 7″ tablet for $349, but it appears that they don’t have any available right now. Those price points suggest that Blackberry and Samsung are serious about competing head to head with Apple in the tablet sector. As the Xoom’s paltry 100K units sold has proven, tablets that cost more than the iPad that are not made by Apple will not sell.

I won’t go into their features here because all of these tablets are well spec’d and I think any of them would be a fine choice. The important thing is that now the consumer will have a choice in the sub-$500 price range, without getting locked into a data contract. The iPad has a lot of other good things going for it, like the Apple Stores, but now we’ll be able to really see if the tablet market is a passing Apple only fad, or something that is here to stay.

Update: Sadly it appears that the Blackberry Playbook is not quite ready to play afterall. This NYT review says that while the Playbook is due for release April 19th, it is shipping with a littany of missing features.

But — are you sitting down? — at the moment, BlackBerry Bridge is the only way to do e-mail, calendar, address book and BlackBerry Messenger on the PlayBook. The PlayBook does not have e-mail, calendar or address book apps of its own. You read that right. R.I.M. has just shipped a BlackBerry product that cannot do e-mail. It must be skating season in hell. (R.I.M. says that those missing apps will come this summer.)

This is absolute madness, just madness…

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