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UK retailer offers 7-inch tablet with speedy Tegra 4 chip for £180
Hey, do you remember Advent? It turns out that the Dixons-owned brand has slapped its logo all over NVIDIA's Tegra Note reference design tablet in preparation for the holidays. Packing a 7-inch 1,280 x 800 display, the Advent Vega Tegra Note comes with a Tegra 4 paired with 1GB RAM, 16GB storage and Jelly Bean. 'Round back, you'll find a 5-megapixel primary camera and a 2-megapixel webcam up front, and there's micro-USB, micro-HDMI-out, Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11 b/g/n WiFi finishing off the spec list. As with the original, the slate comes with a stylus, which NVIDIA promises will be incredibly responsive thanks to its DirectStylus know-how. Pre-orders begin tomorrow, and the hardware will start hitting doorstops on November 15 for the rather reasonable sum of £180.
Advent Vega gets unofficial, GPU accelerated Android 3.2 port (video)
The surprisingly cheap, Tegra 2-powered Advent Vega just keeps getting better and better, thanks in large part to a dedicated community of developers and hackers. In May the £199 (about $329) tablet got its first taste from the Honeycomb pot, now Android 3.2 has been ported over and it's sporting full, native GPU acceleration. (Hip, hop, hooray!) There are some bugs, neither Bluetooth nor the camera are working yet, but for the most part it seems like a worthwhile hack for a slate that packs impressive hardware, but ships with a depressingly outdated OS. Check out the video of it in action after the break and hit up the source link to download the ROM.
Advent's Vega tablet gets a little sweeter with the addition of Android 3.0 (video)
There's plenty of Android tablets out there, but you could certainly do a lot worse than the Advent Vega with its Tegra 2 innards and £199 ($326) asking price. You may take issue with its outdated OS, but thankfully a couple of hackers have replaced the Vega's antiquated Android 2.2 with a heaping helping of Honeycomb. It's currently an alpha release, so while widgets and apps are working well, camera capabilities, screen rotation, web-surfing on WiFi, and most everything else is currently off limits. There's still plenty of work to be done, but seeing Advent's slate running buttery smooth Android 3.0 with aplomb (even if unofficially) makes us think it's a better bargain than ever before. Check out how the Vega looks sporting its slick new threads in the video after the break.
Advent Vega's Flash Player yanked due to missing Adobe certification
The Advent Vega was never the most polished Android tablet in the world -- after all, we had to rely on a custom ROM just to get native Android Market access -- but a reasonable price tag and NVIDIA's Tegra 2 has still made it hard to resist. For those who've managed to snag one already, you may have noticed that the Flash playback isn't exactly... awesome. That's probably because the version loaded onto already-shipped versions isn't certified by Adobe, and in order to fend off future complaints, the company's yanking Flash Player entirely from newly-shipping models for the time being. The certification process is apparently underway, and the outfit expects Vega tablets shipped "in the early part of 2011" to have a green-lit build pre-installed; as for everyone else, they'll be provided a gratis update as soon as it can be pushed out onto the interwebs. Head on past the break for the full statement.
Advent Vega nabs Android Market access courtesy of MoDaCo custom ROM
The Advent Vega seems to be gaining some serious traction overseas, but despite the low price, not having access to Google's bona fide Android Market is a huge Debbie Downer. Well, it was. The fine folks over at MoDaCo have cooked up a custom ROM for the 10-inch tablet, and if you've nothing better to do on a Black Friday than tinker with software, the v1.04 build hosted in the source link promises a "full Google experience" including Gmail, Maps with Street View, Talk, Voice Search and even Android Market access. All the steps you'll need to follow are just a click away, so allow us to ask you this: what's the holdup?
Advent Vega goes on sale in the UK, promptly sells out
No Android Market? No problem! The 10-inch Advent Vega tablet, famously boasting NVIDIA's Tegra 2 chipset, just went on sale across the pond earlier today, and after a matter of hours, the £249 device has already sold out. In a message that sounds eerily similar to that uttered by HP regarding its Slate, PC World has confessed that the first shipment "sold out nearly as quickly as 'Take That' tickets." It's hard to say just how "unprecedented" the demand was with no actual sales figures, but it looks as if this here tablet will be quite the item this holiday season. The Tickle Me Elmo of slates? Maybe, just maybe. Update: We've touched base with PC World and Currys in the UK, and both reckon that it'll be "another week or two" before stock is replenished.
Advent Vega tablet won't come with Android Market, might get it as part of Gingerbread update (video)
Lack of Google's official app store has been a thorn in the side of would-be Android tablet makers for a good long while, and it looks like the Tegra 2-powered Advent Vega will be no exception when it hits the high street tomorrow. Electricpig took the £249 device for a spin, chatting up Advent product manager Adam Lockyer the whole time, and discovered that while the 10-inch tablet will come with the 5,000-app-strong Archos AppsLib store, it won't have Android Market at launch. "The plan is that when you get to January time, there's a new release of Android and you'll be able to get the marketplace on this product," Lockyer said, suggesting that maybe -- just maybe -- the availability of Android Market itself might be one of the fragmentation issues Google intends to fix in Gingerbread. Wouldn't that be nice? Video after the break. [Thanks, Chak I.]
