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Augen Android tablet bonanza: Espresso Doppio dual boots Ubuntu, Firma packs magical pen powers
Whoa there Augen, you may want to slow down on the artificial sweeteners. Stealing a page from Archos, the company that brought us that unforgettable $150 Kmart tablet is prepping six (yes, half a dozen!) Android 2.2 "Espresso" / "Latte" tablets to launch before the end of the year, and while some are your run-of-the-mill pads at this point, the Espresso Doppio and the Espresso Firma are all sorts of mind blowing. The $599.99 10.2-inch Doppio has a 1024x768-resolution capacitive touchscreen, an accelerometer, 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 CPU, and a 3 megapixel front facing cam, but most interestingly, it'll dual boot Android and some version of Ubuntu. But it gets even zanier -- it comes with a dock that has a backlit keyboard, multitouch trackpad, and a 160GB hard drive. And apparently both components contain separate 6000mAh batteries, which should bring the runtime up to 15 hours. Bold, indeed. The Firma, on the other hand, is priced at $349.99, but seems like a science project at this point. According to the company, it will come with a "magical wand" or ink pen that'll be able to write on regular paper, but instantly bring that handwriting to the 7-inch resistive tablet. It's evidently using RF technology with some sort of proprietary software. To say we're intrigued would be an understatement, but, of course, with the company's history we'd say we're somewhat skeptical. Obviously, Augen's got more affordable and realistic options scattered throughout the lines. There's the $199 7-inch resistive touch Latte, which in all honesty doesn't sound all that different from the original Gentouch 78, though there is an included stylus and 2GB of storage. However, the $249.99 Latte Grande steps it up with an 800MHz CPU, 7-inch capacitive touchscreen, accelerometer and an ambient light sensor. The rest of the Espresso line is a lot stronger (pun sadly intended!) -- each have 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 / A9 processors, capacitive screens and accelerometers. The entry level $349.99 7-inch Espresso will have a Cortex A9 processor, 8GB of memory, and a 3 megapixel front facing camera, while the $429.99 10.2-inch Espresso Dolce gets a larger 1024x768-resolution screen, but drops down to an A8 CPU. We understand that it's a lot to digest, but there's always the press release and renders below to help you make more sense of this highly caffeinated company.%Gallery-104532%
Augen's Kmart tablet and smartbook won't have Google-branded apps from now on
The future for Augen's $150 tablet and $100 smartbook isn't looking good -- not only do the blue-light specials have slow processors and resistive touchscreens, but their official Google app privileges have just been revoked. To be fair, Android Market actually wasn't working on either device from the get-go, but Augen just sent us a statement confirming that the entire proprietary suite (including Market, Gmail and more) was preloaded on the devices without Google's permission, and won't appear on new batches that make it to store shelves. Augen says it's working with Google to secure rights to these apps for new products further down the road, but if you want a dirt-cheap mass market Android device with these apps preinstalled, you'd best head on down to Kmart... assuming they're finally in stock, of course. Press release after the break.
Augen Gentouch 78 preview
It's taken quite a bit of chasing (and Kmart stalking) this week to score Augen's $150 Gentouch Android tablet, but lo' and behold, the gadget is now in its rightful home... our home! We don't need to tell you that we ferociously ripped open the box to finally see how the Android 2.1 tablet performs, test out its touchscreen and see if it actually has access to app stores (unlike Augen's smartbook which we toyed with earlier this week). We're assuming you're just as eager to find out the answers to those questions, so hit that read more button for some early impressions as well as a hands-on video. %Gallery-98571%
