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Archos Arnova 8 G2 tablet makes FCC appearance, gets friendly with metal yardsticks
What's the summer without a sequel or two? Archos's latest entry in the eight-inch Android tablet game hit the FCC this week, sporting Gingerbread, 4GB of storage, an SD slot, and a 1GHz processor. The slate should be available later this month, carrying a price tag of between $180 and $200 -- that's a price bump over its insanely affordable predecessor, but hey, sequels always cost more, right?%Gallery-130035%
Fusion Garage's Grid 10 tablet clears the FCC, begs us not to call it the 'JooJoo 2'
If at first you don't succeed, discontinue your product, carry on a lawsuit, and then try again. That's the story thus far for Fusion Garage, the company behind the failed JooJoo tablet, an overpriced, hard-to-use slate that proudly omitted all the things people like about tablets -- you know, like apps. After the underwhelming sales figures started rolling in, Chandrashekar Rathakrishnan, the company's founder, admitted that perhaps some people might sometimes be interested in doing things other than surf the web. That was the end of JooJoo, though he promised, ominously, that we hadn't seen the last of Fusion Garage. Well, here we are: the troubled company just sent another tablet through the FCC, and no, it's not called the "JooJoo 2." Rather, this one's dubbed the "Grid 10" -- a likely attempt on Fusion Garage's part to distance itself as much as possible from its embarrassing (and messy) entrance into the tablet market. For now, though, that's near-impossible, especially given that this FCC report contains precious few details about what this thing will be capable of. No word either on when the JooJoo will rise from the grave as an Android-running zombie, but our guess is that apocalyptic day is nigh.
Taiji sneaks a Bluetooth keyboard in and out of its tablet prototype, reminds us of our drug mule days
Just kidding, we were never drug mules. Still, we once watched a film that mentioned drug mules, and boy does this Taiji tablet prototype remind us of that formative experience. Taiji is bringing this 10-inch tablet to Computex (which starts tomorrow), with a VIA C7 M processor and 1GB of RAM under the hood, which looks relatively uninspired until you flip it around and discover the pop-off keyboard around back. The tablet even has its own stand, converting from a slate form to a rather amenable "desktop" computer with no trouble. Sure, you might end up with a thinner tablet if you just buy a keyboard free model and toss a Bluetooth keyboard in your bag with it, but we've gotta hand it to Taiji for ingenuity. Check out a quick demo of it after the break.
BT prepping a tablet with combined home phone and web slate duties
Of course, every time you call it an "iPad killer," a BT-branded, slate tablet-shaped fairy dies. Still, while it's a bit silly for the UK provider to so rigorously avoid the comparisons, it's true that this forthcoming tablet might have something slightly different to offer. The tablet, which will measure slightly smaller diagonally than the iPad, can be used with a Bluetooth headset as a post-2010 take on the home phone, with abilities to manage email, SMS, voicemail and so forth straight from the screen. This is augmented with widgets and the requisite web browsing, which sounds pretty intriguing. Sure, you could set up an iPad to do most of this, but getting it all in one package from a home phone provider is an interesting slant. Unfortunately, we don't know who will be building this, or what it looks like, but if we get lucky maybe it'll have something to do with that Moorestown-powered OpenTablet 7 we spied at CTIA.
Fusion Garage JooJoo review
We're not sure what's harder to believe: the fact that after months and months of the soap-opera-like drama that the JooJoo (formerly known as the CrunchPad) has finally landed in our hands, or that within just a few days there are now two capacitive touchscreen, browsing-heavy slate tablets on the market. Sure, it's probably not the best timing for a tablet start-up, but that doesn't diminish our interest in the 12-inch, Flash-playing JooJoo. The JooJoo is meant to be a browser-based tablet for surfing the web on your couch or while traveling, but with little previous hands-on time, we're still wondering how well it'll really work. And, obviously, whether or not it's a $499 experience on par or superior to Apple's iPad. Fear not, we'll tell you all you want to know in our magical review after the break. %Gallery-89792%
Sinchun's 8.9-inch UMPC-891A holds onto the past with XP
Sinchun got the price right: 2999 Yuan (about $439 US), and the netbook-style specs make a lot of sense for this form factor. Unfortunately, Windows XP does not. Paired up against a stylus-driven 1024 x 600 touchscreen, Atom processor, 1GB of RAM and a variety of smallish SSD options, there's plenty of room for 7's touch enhancements to shine on the UMPC-891A -- but not enough expanse for them to choke up. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from slapping it on yourself. The biggest point of caution here is the 2 hour quoted battery life -- let's hope the Archos 9pctablet brings us a truly helpful amount of battery life in the UMPC space. [Via Cloned In China]
