The Mobile Web Tablet

March 2: iPad 2 is coming?

Posted on 3/1/2011 by Erik Starck

Looks like Steve Jobs might show up. Let’s hope he does, that would at least quell the rumours that he’s dying.

The star of the show will of course be the iPad 2. Some are saying that it will hit the stores almost immediately, something that all the Android 3.0 tablets are failing to do even months after their first appearance.

I’m quite happy with my iPad, even though I’m not using it as a note taking tool as I first thought, I’m not sure what would make me want to upgrade. A camera? Perhaps. That’s at least one of the features I’m almost sure to see tomorrow.

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Motorola Xoom Tablet Reviews

Posted on 2/20/2011 by Erik Starck

Been looking around for some reviews of the Motorola Xoom, the first Android 3.0 web tablet with a 10.1 inch screen with a 1280×800 resolution and 1080p HD support. So far, all I can find are “previews” badly dressed up as reviews. No one seems to have actually used the device.

So, all we can do is drool over videos such as this one, taken at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week:

Updated: Engadget has a review. I like this:

The Honeycomb look and feel certainly has the work of a single mind written all over it — while we know this is very much a team effort (something we discussed with Matias in our interview at CES), it’s also clear that someone is steering the ship with far more resolve than ever before witnessed in this OS. From a purely visual standpoint, Android 3.0 comes together in a far more cohesive manner than any previous iteration of the software, and the changes aren’t just cosmetic.

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Chromium (Chrome) OS vs Android 3.0

Posted on 1/26/2011 by Erik Starck

Will Google keep developing two operating systems both doing sort of the same thing?

I doubt it.

Chromium OS was a good idea – a browser based “OS for the cloud”, but Android can be used in basically the same way and has far greater momentum.

OK, so Chrome OS is mainly for netbooks? But, seriously, the only difference between a netbook and a web tablet is that the former has a keyboard and no touch display. Oh, one more thing: the netbook usually runs Windows…

Google has tried building a Chrome Store for buying web apps – but on one is using it. They even have problems with the Android Market. Should they be running two different stores at all? Not the best way to use your resources, I would say.

Chrome OS supposedly boots very fast. So what? I never turn my iPad off and not my Android phone either. They’re not supposed to be rebooted – only sleeping.

If Chrome OS came out two years ago, when netbooks ruled the world, it would have been a great competitor to Windows. But today, no – let it go, Google. Focus your energy on making Android the best it can be.

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Motorola Xoom Web Tablet

Posted on 1/25/2011 by Erik Starck

When it comes to features it’s hard to beat the Motorola Xoom tablet. With the NVIDIA Tegra 2 Dual Core processor and 1280×800 resolution it’s sure to be a stunning gaming and video machine. 4G (LTE) is coming to make sure you can stream videos fast enough.

But there’s more than just muscles. It’s the first device with Android 3.0. Google Books comes included. A mysterious music sync feature is reported to be included.

The big question is if Google can keep backwards compatibility together or if we will see fragmentation on Android as we’ve seen in so many other mobile OSes in the past.

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That’s not how you build a mobile phone: what Apple did “wrong”

Posted on 1/21/2011 by Erik Starck

Over on one of my other blogs, I wrote a piece about all the things Apple did “wrong” with the iPhone. They certainly broke a lot of the industry rules for doing things and it has paid off: they are now number one in the world based on value.

Some things they did “wrong”:

The name. You’re not supposed to give your phone a name. It’s supposed to be called a letter and a number. Yeah, the RAZR was cool, but that was it.

One device. You’re not supposed to have only one device. That’s madness! You should cover every possible segment of the market with various flavours of the same platform. In fact, you should use many platforms and OSes just to be “safe”.

Full post here.