Notion Ink's Adam Android Tablet Said To Ship This Week

junaidslife86 writes with news that the Notion Ink Android tablet has gotten the regulatory go-ahead from US authorities, and should soon be shipping. From the article: "That's right, after several delays the tiny startup will finally condense its occassionally vapory molecules into a solid slab of shipping tablet starting 'around Wednesday' after the hardware receives its FCC tattoo. A tablet good enough to earn a Best of CES 2011 honorable mention at an event absolutely flooded with tablets from a who's who of consumer electronics companies. While our first impressions of the production unit were positive, we're holding off on making a final judgement until we've had the chance to perform a full review." The Notion Ink feature that grabs the most attention seems to be the optional Pixel Qi screen; Brad Linder of Liliputing has a hands-on video with the device from CES which (despite the bad lighting conditions) shows that screen in action.

Comments

Confusing summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this thing made by from new process from vapor molecules?

Re:Confusing summary

[WrongSizeGlass]

Is this thing made by from new process from vapor molecules?

The tablet is real, as was the pun ... the laughs, however, were vaporware.

Ok, beta testers, start your fingers!

[ColdWetDog]

Cool - we go from vaporware to beta testing. Keep us posted, guys.

I was really excited about the adam

[Hungus]

Till they started with the massive customization of the UI (named eve). So much so that it now seems kludgy. Now I am waiting on a Mirasol product instead.

Re:I was really excited about the adam

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'll be interested to see how much, if any, Tivoization they attempted, and how much hackery and/or bodging of proprietary driver blobs is required to get one's own firmware working.

Assuming they didn't pull any bullshit tricks to keep you on their firmware, a device with that flavor of screen is a compelling thing(it was already good on the XO-1, and is said to be improved since then). If, for some perverse reason, they've decided that you will take, and like, whatever dubious decisions they make on the firmware front, then the hell with it...

Re:I was really excited about the adam

[PopeRatzo]

Now I am waiting on a Mirasol product instead.

"Mirasol" sounds like a feminine hygiene product.

Re:I was really excited about the adam

[Hungus]

I agree the hardware is nice. It will be interesting to see just what it takes to get a generic install on it and what functionality is lost in doing so.

Re:I was really excited about the adam

[shutdown -p now]

Completely agreed. The demos of the UI were very off-telling. The final nail in that coffin is that they won't have Market on the device (though you can still install APKs as usual, so you could purchase them from another device and transfer).

However... they also mentioned that tabled is fully capable of running Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) when that is released in terms of hardware, and that it is a priority for them to put it there ASAP. Now this gets interesting, because one of the bullet points of Honeycomb was that Google will significantly constrain OEM customizations of the UI to fight fragmentation in user experience. If true, this would hopefully mean vanilla Honeycomb on Adam also. Oh, and there will be Market for tables in Honeycomb, so it'll get to Adam as well.

At this point, I'm very much tempted to wait until 3.0 comes out and gets ported to Adam, and then buying that. The hardware they're using is great, and in general in terms of hardware design it's the single most well thought-out tablet out there (at least judging by what we've seen). I don't mean just the Pixel Qi screen here, but the fact that it also has HDMI-out, is a USB host, has that nice swivel camera, and even its shape in general looks like it's much more comfortable to hold with one hand compared to iPad (which has a shape that's horrible for usability - curved and slippery!).

On the other hand, waiting for that would also mean seeing iPad 2 released, and then I might be sorely tempted to get that. Especially if the rumored 1600x1200 screen materializes.

Re:I was really excited about the adam

[MichaelSmith]

Slightly OT but I was in a store here in Melbourne yesterday and noticed a little netbook (ACER, I think) running Android with the stock shell. Looked very nice. The strange thing was that it had a "Windows 7 Starter" sticker beside the keyboard.

Re:I was really excited about the adam

[michaelbuddy]

I read Mirasol can't achieve certain screen sizes due to some inherent limitation. So you wouldn't get an iPad size tablet with Mirasol maybe not even a 7". Not sure if that means short term or long term or ever. Mirasol looks great, but I'm not going to wait. My Adam pre-order shipment is on it's way! I've waited for a lot of years for a decent touch screen device like this... Adam fits and Android 3.0 will go on it soon enough too. I think the triple panel UI will be very useful. more so than widgets on normal desktop. They are also working to speed up the UI by going open GL all the way. Supposedly Android Honeycomb is imminent, but there's no guarantees. People saying they don't like custom UI, I've seen stock android looks pretty ugly on tablets too. When 3.0 rolls out, on Adam you'll have the choice between both. I think the UI is cool. I also think if it's not to my liking later on it's probably changeable, color, fonts, etc. I fully understand the logic behind creating it and it might lend itself to a better experience for certain applications and I'm not even thinking to hard about it. For example, Im thinking general computing, but in certain fields it might help for multi-tasking beyond what widgets will do.

Re:I was really excited about the adam

[michaelbuddy]

the UI is Eden. Eve I think is still a mystery at this point.

Re:I was really excited about the adam

[michaelbuddy]

There is a dedicated market for it "Genesis" and once Honeycomb hits you'll get the Android market. The market is just an .apk anyway. The reason there's not Android Market right now is that tablet apps aren't on the market. So YMMV with those apps. Honestly with a full browser, most of the apps I use on mobile I don't need if I have a full browser. Exception being maybe Astrid, Shazam and maybe a few more that have special notifications fancy features or non-web uses. Depends on the user.

Re:I was really excited about the adam

[Hungus]

Thank you for the correction, you are correct eden is the UI eve is the mystery device/ sensor whatever that Rhohan keeps hinting at I think.

Re:I was really excited about the adam

[Hungus]

Pocketbooks ereader is 7" so that limitation must be a thing of the past. I have a rooted nookcolor and a modbook(waste of money) now that will keep me busy for a bit. If adam lives up to the hype, well I have the cash already set aside for it but not till Android 3 is on it and the kinks are worked out. I stopped reading Rohan's blog a couple of weeks ago have you seen anything to lead you to infer that the UI will be customizable? Because, quite frankly what drove me away was the UI being so proprietary and the 3 panel implementation.

Re:I was really excited about the adam

[Anonymous Coward]

They are giving you the option to switch to stock Android UI if you dont like their customization.
Watch the engadget handson video of Adam at CES by Joanna Stern.

Re:I was really excited about the adam

[tlhIngan]

Completely agreed. The demos of the UI were very off-telling. The final nail in that coffin is that they won't have Market on the device (though you can still install APKs as usual, so you could purchase them from another device and transfer).

You do realize that the Android Open-Source Project has little in relation (other than code) to Android the OS, right? An Android phone, at least the ones by the big guys like HTC, Samsung, LG, and Motorola get their Android drops from the OHA directly, which is how they can launch a phone and Android simultaneously.

As part of that, Google licenses those guys the Google apps (the "with Google" thing you see on Android phones), which include the Marketplace, Gmail, YouTube, Maps, and other utilities. These are NOT in AOSP at all, and unless you meet Google's requirements (OHA member, it's a phone, big enough company), Google won't license the apps to you.

That's the whole reason for "Android" and "Android with Google". Android is the new hotness, and people are dumping lots of money into putting it as the Linux distribution of choice (because it provides a standard API set and everything's pretty much done once you get it working, and apps are easily written and cross-platform).

Re:I was really excited about the adam

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck using that outdoors. There's no way if they use that resolution it will be a QI screen, rendering it largely unusable in an outdoor environment (which IMHO, is the whole point of a tablet: mobile computing on a big screen ANYWHERE).

Re:Odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Adblock Plus seems to be malfunctioning. Anyone able to recommend an alternative?

Same here. It's blocked whatever the story should be and let the ad through instead.

stop messing with the Android UI

[t2t10]

I have yet to see anybody who didn't screw up badly while messing with the Android UI. Furthermore, those "enhancements" mean support, update, and documentation headaches.

The specific changes on that device looked questionable, and their claims that you can't interact with widgets are out of date. In effect, they have duplicated work on the main branch of Android and come up with an incompatible solution.

No wonder that they are shipping late; they should have shipped a minimal adaptation of Android earlier and taken any spare time fixing bugs in their drivers and hardware.

I won't buy a heavily customized Android device, and I recommend against it. Android gives manufacturers the freedom to do this, but as customers, we don't have to buy the stuff.

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[afidel]

Yeah my biggest worry is that they will take forever to port their customizations to Honeycomb which will be a much better tablet OS then their hacked up version of 2. They claim its coming but personally I'd wait till it's actually available for download =)

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[lennier1]

and their claims that you can't interact with widgets are out of date

That would be seriously out of date. Even my old Archos 5 tablet, whose stock firmware came with Android 1.6 supported widgets which worked as a remote for the Last.fm background process and other stuff.

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize that they've gotten most of Gingerbread in there already, right?

Yes, in less in a month, they've practically gotten most of Gingerbread working on there. They would have probably ported the whole thing, but with Honeycomb right around the corner, I can't blame them =P

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[t2t10]

I think--although they didn't say it clearly--they meant more than just pushing buttons; things like scrolling widgets, which let you use widgets as mini apps or windows.

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[atengyuer]

yes,i think so

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried a bunch of different Android tablets (shipping and pre-production) and the all seem to have the same flaw: slow touch response time.

It's usually subtle, but consistent.

Even in the video in TFA, watch when he starts to move or drag, there is a small delay. Note, I am not talking about the "hold to select" delay, but the difference between when he starts to drag something (say, his "desktop" or whatever they call it) and when it actually starts to move.

To me, it's like watching a video whose audio is offset by some small, but perceptible, amount (.1 or .2 seconds).

I'm perfectly willing to admit "it's just me", but it is something that keeps me away from Android tablets in their current form.

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[bemymonkey]

Do you notice this with phones too? I notice it a little myself on older devices (haven't had the chance to play with a Nexus S yet), but nothing horrible or even annoying, to be honest. The tablets do seem a bit laggy in many videos, but it's difficult to tell without actually using the device. As you've probably had a chance to compare - worse than the phones? Or the same?

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest, I've only tried two Android phones just to see what they were like and, yes, the delay was there, too.

I didn't go to in depth with them since I currently have no interest in a smartphone (I don't use my cell phone very much, so I carry a $5 POS from AT&T).

I realize this is going to make everyone yell "Fanboi!", but I carry around an iPod Touch (3rd Gen) since it seemed to have the least response delay and is able to fulfill the requirements of web browsing, email, and Angry Birds.

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[Anonymous Coward]

Why aren't there any open source mod projects to create better UIs for Android?
I see all these Android root mods, but no big projects to really enhance the UI separately.

I think there is no denying that the Android UI could be improved to be easier to use for normal users.
Heck, even an iPhone UI emulator that does as much as possible to completely clone the iPhone experience would be good.

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually HTC Sense is better than stock Android.. and yes, I've used both extensively

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[bemymonkey]

I may be a huge Android fan, but I have no problem admitting that iOS's UI performance/smoothness/responsiveness is still quite a bit better. Android is catching up slowly, but it's all software accelerated, whereas iOS seems to use actual hardware acceleration for the UI... until Android makes the jump to hardware acceleration, that gap will always be there. :)

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[Anonymous Coward]

I think one really would need to do a controlled experiment to see whether there are any delays; it's easy to imagine these things.

(Some low-end Android hardware and some badly written software may, of course, have delays, but you get what you pay for. Even with a bit of a delay, the software is still usable.)

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[t2t10]

To be honest, I've only tried two Android phones just to see what they were like and, yes, the delay was there, too.

There is no delay at all on an HTC Desire. Its home screen scrolling is as zippy and responsive as the latest iPhone/iPod.

I realize this is going to make everyone yell "Fanboi!", but I carry around an iPod Touch (3rd Gen)

The iPod Touch has massive delays when opening home screen folders and when organizing apps. Organizing apps, the entire UI often freezes for several seconds when switching modes; that's a major usability issue.

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[shutdown -p now]

I notice this with phones. I have had a Nexus One for about a year, and recently switched to iPhone 4. The difference isn't immediately apparent when you just pick the latter up to play, but after using it for a while, it pains me to pick up the other phone and tries to use it - small but constant stutter while scrolling things becomes so annoying when you're used to butter smooth scrolling on iOS devices.

In some cases this is actually a matter of different design. E.g. Android browser, when scrolling, will only let you scroll as fast as it can render. The result is that it might not occasionally respond at all to the scrolling gesture. On iOS, flicking the finger will always scroll; if the browser cannot catch up, you will see a checkered pattern representing unrendered part of the page until it catches up. But, on the other hand, this always maintains consistent mapping between the amount your finger moves, and the amount the page scrolls. Overall I found iOS behavior more usable.

But it's not all like that. In many cases - e.g. scrolling app icons, or the Market app - Android version simply feels slower than iOS with no obvious reason as to why.

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[bemymonkey]

Yup, a lot of it has to do with the design philosophy as well, and the default web browser is a very good example of that. If you install Opera, for instance, you'll get that same iPhone-smooth web page scrolling, but at the cost of checkering.

Some of the cases you mention (lists & market) are cases of not precaching the whole list into memory. Since Gingerbread, for instance, the "Manage apps" dialog has precached lists, making scrolling buttery smooth at the cost of taking two seconds or so to load the dialog... in Froyo and previous builds, the app icons and names in this dialog were pulled up as you scrolled down, but the list itself showed up instantly.

In the market, of course, the problem is that the lists are also pulled in just a bit at a time, with only minimal precaching - great for bandwidth, horrible for scrolling smoothness. The app only seems to load the next 10 apps (or rather icons and names) or so, while a single flick can take you past 50. Geez, just pull in the next 200 or so and cache 'em, especially if you're on WiFi...

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[JohnnyBGod]

Actually, my phone* actually has a customization I love. In the notification pulldown menu, there's a "System" tab, and from there you can see network, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS status. Tapping any of those takes you directly to the corresponding settings menu. It's pretty useful when you're in an application and need to turn on GPS location, for instance. But you're right: these things do require support, and I hope this is not why there isn't even an official FroYo ROM.

* A Commtiva Z71 variant.

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[j_col]

What you are highlighting with regard to the UI changes is one of the symptoms of fragmentation that many commentators are criticizing Android over, with some justification.

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[MichaelSmith]

I have noticed that iphone users find the resistive touch screen on my LG android phone to be a bit insensitive.

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[drolli]

Yes. The biggest problem is that if the Product line does not make it for some reason their motivation for updates will be zero and since they would break the look and feel they imposed upon themselves by upgrading to the next standard version of android they even would not take the small cost of updating to the next android version (because the outcry of the customers would not be smaller).

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[mcbiondi]

I have a touch and I've never noticed this behavior. The only time I've seen it slow down is when you are installing / updating.

Re:stop messing with the Android UI

[t2t10]

It may depend on the number of apps you have installed; I have a lot of apps installed.

US Regulatory Approval Required - WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why was US regulatory approval required to sell a computer? Is it dangerous?

Re:US Regulatory Approval Required - WTF?

[CannonballHead]

network devices, I believe, are what need approval.

Re:US Regulatory Approval Required - WTF?

[afidel]

FCC class certification, required for any electronics and more stringent for anything that contains an intentional radiator aka radio.

Re:US Regulatory Approval Required - WTF?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

FCC: Pretty much all high-frequency digital logic has a nontrivial chance of interfering with licenced blocks of spectrum, unless correctly designed and/or shielded.

Devices with wifi, bluetooth, and/or one of the various flavors of cellular are, of course, explicitly designed to emit RF, and also present potential interference issues.

Level of enforcement varies; but you'll find that virtually all jurisdictions have some sort of RF-spectrum allocation, and some sort of procedure for keeping interference with reserved bands to a minimum.

Re:US Regulatory Approval Required - WTF?

[gmuslera]

A hot device surrounded by vapor that is meant to be touched by your bare fingers? Of course is dangerous. You don't want to get burnt using it.

Re:US Regulatory Approval Required - WTF?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The FCC doesn't actually do much to stop genuinely bad actors(unless they are flagrant and high-powered enough to be worth triangulating and busting). They do a reasonably decent job of making sure that devices in the legitimate supply chain do more or less what they say on the tin, in terms of RF havoc.

They don't do much at all about super-dodgy Chinese video-blasters, or dumb kids who manage to get the 1Kw magnetron and drive circuit out of a microwave without electrocuting themselves(incidentally, unless you know exactly what you are doing. Don't.)

Re:US Regulatory Approval Required - WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

The FCC doesn't actually do much to stop genuinely bad actors(unless they are flagrant and high-powered enough to be worth triangulating and busting). They do a reasonably decent job of making sure that devices in the legitimate supply chain do more or less what they say on the tin, in terms of RF havoc.
 

Cripes it was only a joke you guys.....

I am the AC that posted the poke at how funny wifi unleashed everywhere has made just going to sit down and have a cup of joe has become.

Didn't mean to offend....what I failed to say is as more and more tablets come into the picture at Starbucks you can forget about even getting online there very soon. Let alone enjoying your morning coffee in peace! Must have been modded by the Apple evangelism crowd...

I am very much in favor of tablets and do appreciate that most Apple Laptop users in University are Science, Arts, Literature majors, which is my leaning, whereas the majority of PC laptop users are Business, CS, or poor and cannot afford a Mac.

Android based tablets might just change this and make all of these fields much more accessible to students on a limited budget. The amount of great open source software that will become available for tablets is astonishing. Programs like MuseScore, Latext based science interfaces. Study, planning, composition, layout and presentation in HTML or PDF format is really easy if you are a composer. I currently use free software that can do fully scored for orchestra and principles html with pdf presentations of my compositions for the musical stage with nothing but a Linux laptop. Heck I can even record 24/96 snippets of my work to cross reference in my score when I feel like it.

So therefore I am really looking forward to the day when modified Android tablets can do things that a Windows or Mac laptop can only dream of if you are on a tight budget and are hooked on proprietary software, believing there is no other option out there!

No portrait mode?

[Jane Q. Public]

Interesting -- and disturbing -- that they did not once show it in portrait orientation. If all it has is landscape, I'll pass.

Re:No portrait mode?

[Radish03]

There are several videos of it in portrait mode on the Notion Ink blog: http://notionink.wordpress.com/

Re:No portrait mode?

[shutdown -p now]

Actually, portrait is the mode in which it's intended to be used most often. Notice that rounded side, with speakers and swivel camera? It doubles for convenient holding, and it houses the batteries, so that overall weight of the tablet is shifted towards that side (and therefore closer to your fingers, rather than hanging off far from them).

Pretty

[Aerynvala]

I'm not rushing out to buy, but it looks functional enough to me.

Screen Res

[chill]

One thing I discovered quickly with a netbook is that a 600 pixel high screen resolution sucks. The MINIMUM vertical screen res needs to be 768. There are too many websites and applications to where anything smaller than that causes overlap and scrolling.

1024 x 600 is a pain to use for any length of time for any app not specifically customized to the smaller screen size.

Re:Screen Res

[h4rr4r]

You realize you can turn it the other way, right?

Re:Screen Res

[chill]

Well, I think the Notion Ink doesn't do portrait mode, so no -- you can't.

And that also doesn't work with a netbook, I've tried.

And for a tablet, that small of a horizontal resolution really isn't going to work, either.

Re:Screen Res

[ScytheBlade1]

http://notionink.wordpress.com/2011/01/01/more-in-portrait/

Definitely an option. So yes, you can.

Re:Screen Res

[julesh]

The MINIMUM vertical screen res needs to be 768. There are too many websites and applications to where anything smaller than that causes overlap and scrolling.

The android web browser is very good at scaling content to fit what would ordinarily need 1024x768 or higher into much lower resolutions (I tried 800x480, and the results are reasonable). And no android application is going to be written to need a 768 pixel tall screen, because devices that could run such an application are extremely rare (this is the only one I've ever seen, although I assume there are others).

The problem you had is you were presumably using a netbook with an operating system that was designed for more traditional systems. Get an operating system that's intended for use on low resolution displays and you won't have as much trouble.

Re:Odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Dont worry the video wasnt really good. The guy has a serious Indian accent and was hard, at least for me, to understand.

Bootloader locked or not?

[comm2k]

The only thing I'm interested in is: will the bootloader only accept signed images? If yes I'll pass.
For a device to ship with such heavy customization I doubt anyone will care (or even have to resources) to keep it updated. Even the big names don't do it - since they rather you buy a new device next year. I also doubt people will line up to make extra versions of their apps for just this (Android) tablet (sorry but you do not have the Apple RDF).

Re:Bootloader locked or not?

[Anonymous Coward]

This would not be a problem if every device had a secret key, shipped on a card with the tablet, that allowed the Owner (gasp!) to create and sign apps for his own device that would only work on that device!

HOLY SHIT DID I JUST SOLVE A LOT OF PROBLEMS? This deserves a lunch break.

Best of CES 2011 honorable mention

[John Hasler]

That must have been expensive.

Turning doesn't increase screen resolution

[SuperKendall]

600 pixels either up or side, is still the same 600 pixels and basically has the same issues with text clarity. I wouldn't call it a show-stopper though.

Looks good, too bad not all apps can be panels

[SuperKendall]

I kind of liked the panel idea, but I thought it was too bad that not all applications could be used as panels - even applications that didn't support generation of a custom panel, it seems like you could present the application name, icon and a shrunken screen shot of last used apperance (though if it didn't launch in that state I guess that could get confusing).

The biggest dissapointment to me though was the QI screen battery savings with backlight off - did I hear right (repeated twice in the CES video) that t only saved 1-2%?? I think that was savings with the automatic switching on/off, and that he didn't understand the person asking wanted a figure that assumed you were sitting for hours with the backlight off.

Honeycomb

[GrievousMistake]

Will this be upgradeable to Honeycomb?
I've been thinking for buying a tablet for general surfing and reading, but it looked like a bad time to buy anything, with most next-gen tablets available in March-April at earliest.

This thing seems to have the specs, so I'd be very interested in knowing if it's rootable, if it will run unsigned images, and if there's official plans to provide an upgrade to Android 3.0 at a later time.

Re:Honeycomb

[PopeRatzo]

it looked like a bad time to buy anything, with most next-gen tablets available in March-April at earliest.

"Next-gen" tablets will always be three months away.

Re:Honeycomb

[shutdown -p now]

Will this be upgradeable to Honeycomb?

They have repeatedly said on the blog that the hardware is specifically selected so that it's Honeycomb-ready.

Re:Honeycomb

[Miseph]

Next-Gen *anything* is always 3 months away... but with something like tablets where they are really just coming into their own as a viable, meaningful product, the next-gen is going to be a far more substantial improvement over the last than, say, with a desktop video card.

If my mobo blows tomorrow, I'll just get whatever is current and call, it a day, because frankly I don't care what minuscule incremental improvements they'll have for the next generation... I'd rather have a working computer now than one which is only hypothetically better in a few months. If waiting a few months brought about an exponential improvement, however, I'd at least have to consider holding out a bit longer and maybe visiting the library or whatever in the mean time.

not too sure now

[grapeape]

They had me until I saw an interview last week where the rep mentioned it had 2.2 and not really needing 2.3 because they have their own solution for voip...then when asked about honeycomb the reply was that most of that stuff they had their own solution as well...then android marketplace was mentioned and the reply was that they would have their own marketplace. Now i've gone from a must buy to a must watch....it just dont trust that the company is going to support it very well when upgrades roll around...the Xoom is starting to look like the better option for now.

Re:not too sure now

[michaelbuddy]

I have to get away from the LCD screen for part of the day and this is a good option for me. I have the OLPC so I'm very familiar with it's screen look and how it differs from other LCDs. So this is the right tablet for me. What they have is 2.2. with libraries from 2.3. Don't know if that means VOIP included. But whatever. I'm not all that concerned about that at the moment.They also said they are skipping 2.3 for Honeycomb. That's a good idea. Why go to the next mobile phone OS when the tablet OS is on the horizon and you already have part of 2.3 in your system? Xoom looks awesome. I may buy that one too. Definitely recommending it. BUT let's not forget that the Xoom could easily be a bastardized version of Honeycomb too, if it's locked to a carrier. It is also a "must watch" until I know how others like it.

Pixel Qi screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that the tech that was developed using funds people thought were going to help third world children, but instead was used for R&D that could be spun off into a for profit business?

Re:Pixel Qi screen

[Belial6]

I don't know why that posted anonymously, I was logged in when I posted it...

Re:Pixel Qi screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you could describe it that way if you were bizarrely hostile to the OLPC project and determined to present it in a terrible light.

A more accurate way to put it is that it is a for-profit business spun off from tech that was developed in order to help third-world children.

It's not like the R&D did not also go into the product that has been used to help third-world children in accordance with the project's stated goals. The fact that it has also been commercialised does not suddenly make the whole thing into a giant evil deception. It is OK to make money out of things, you know.

Re:Odd

[filthpickle]

hehe...I had the speakers off because it is late here, and just hearing it thru the headphones laying off to the side I thought the guy wasn't speaking English. Once I heard the guy ask him a question in English I put the headphones on and could understand him. I have to speak to Indians at work a lot...I have developed an ear for it...but he is speaking pretty quickly and does have a thick accent.

bullshit

[t2t10]

What you are highlighting with regard to the UI changes is one of the symptoms of fragmentation that many commentators are criticizing Android over, with some justification.

Even customized devices run standard Android apps. You can even run home screen apps and keyboards, like those that have more standard behavior than the customization. The problem with those customizations is that they delay releases and degrade the out-of-box experience; they do not "fragment" the platform.

"Android fragmentation" is a meme created by Apple's marketing department and repeated by Apple fanboys. It has no basis in reality.