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Weekly Roundup: Peripheral Vision, Samsung's rumored Galaxy Gear, Nexus 4 price drop, and more!
You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Editor's Letter: Color commentary
In each issue of Distro, Executive Editor Marc Perton publishes a wrap-up of the week in news. There's a very good chance you're reading this on a tablet. Distro is, after all, first and foremost, a tablet magazine. There's also a reasonable chance you're reading this on a computer. Distro works on Windows 8; we have a platform-neutral PDF version; and most of what we publish in Distro also appears on Engadget. There is, however, almost no chance that you're reading this on a color e-book reader (no, not a color tablet; an e-paper reader). And that's too bad. In this week's Distro, Sean Buckley tells the story of color e-paper, a once-promising technology that simply couldn't make it in a tablet-centric world. Despite years of development work and the tantalizing promise of high-resolution, daylight-readable, low-power displays, color e-paper was rendered an also-ran once the iPad began gaining popularity and low-cost Android tablets followed suit. Major e-reader makers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo, all released their own color tablets -- at prices below their $300-plus color e-ink competitors. That strategy wasn't without its fallout; B&N eventually got out of the tablet market, and Kobo continues to struggle to gain market share in the US. But color e-book readers fared even more poorly, and color e-paper's future is now tied to other devices, such as smartwatches.
OLPC XO Tablet review
In late 2007, One Laptop Per Child launched its "Give 1 Get 1" program. While the do-gooder organization had originally shrugged off suggestions that it should offer its XO Laptop as a commercial product, OLPC finally gave in, letting consumers get their own device for a $399 donation (that price also paid to send one to a child in a developing nation). Unveiled back at CES, the Android-powered XO Tablet marks OLPC's first proper foray into the consumer space, with the device available for $149 at major retailers like Walmart and Target. So is it any good?%Gallery-195835%
OLPC's XO Tablet gets July 16th Walmart launch date, more retailers following soon
June has come and gone with nary a sign of One Laptop Per Child's first consumer-facing device. Granted, we spent some time with the final version of the XO Tablet during an Engadget Show shoot back in mid-May, so it seems like the Vivitar-designed slate may not be too far off, after all. Yesterday, the company quietly announced that the slate will get a July 16th Walmart-exclusive launch -- a date that will find the device available through the mega-retailer's site. As for the delay, the company told us, "optimal dates are determined by multiple factors, and we're working with retailers and our partners to ensure the XO launches in a timely and appropriate summer window." According to the post, more retailers in Europe and North and South America will follow "soon." As for specifics of additional availability, the company says, "there will be a formal, detailed announcement on the launch from OLPC and its partners within the next several days." Lilliputing dug out the above little piece of news from a much larger post aimed at refuting a report that things are "fall[ing] apart at the company," due in part to the loss of some key employees. OLPC's post titled, bluntly, "Response to Inaccurate Information Recently Posted About OLPC," suggests that such reports are "contextually inaccurate" and that recent developments at the company mean that, "necessary adjustments in the composition of the OLPC team were required."
OLPC XO Tablet final version hands-on (video)
The XO Tablet that One Laptop Per Child was shuttling around the floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center at CES back in January wasn't quite the final version of the company's first consumer-facing device. Now, a few weeks out from its official June 1st online availability, OLPC's finally got its hands on the shipping product. It's designed by Vivitar, a price-conscious manufacturer hand-picked by retail partner Walmart, marking the first time that the educational company didn't have a direct hand in the creation of its hardware, a big change from the custom components that have traditionally gone into its XO line. OLPC's made some tweaks to the software, which runs atop of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, taking more advantage of the swipe functionality while navigating through its "I Want to Be An..." UI, which builds the child's experience around dream jobs like astronaut, artist and doctor. It's a super simplified interface built with an even younger target audience in mind than its XO laptops (ages 3 and up, according to the company). The tablet will come pre-loaded with 200 apps (100 in English and 100 in Spanish) and 200 books (also 100 English, 100 Spanish), including selections from content partners like Sesame Street and Oxford University Press. The idea is to offer up enough content so the child can be sufficiently entertained / educated even when not online.%Gallery-188527%
Hands-on with the 7-inch XO Tablet, OLPC's first consumer device (video)
It appears the XO Touch (aka 4.0) wasn't the only new device OLPC brought to CES 2013. Interestingly, the company is moving into the consumer market this year, and it's releasing a 7-inch slate (1,024 x 600 resolution) in the US called, funnily enough, the "XO Tablet." So let's run through the specs. It's got a 1.6 GHz dual-core processor, 1 GB of RAM, 8 gigs of flash storage (expandable by microSD), WiFi, HDMI-out, a 3,800 mAh battery, and 2- and 1.3-megapixel shooters at the back and front, respectively. While the tablet runs stock Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, it boots into a heavily skinned, child-friendly UI with the choice of three profiles. After selecting the profile, the home screen shows the child various "dreams," which are based on professions like mathematician, astronaut, artist, chef, etc. Under these different categories, there are educational apps related to the theme of the currently selected dream. As well as what's on that main home screen, there's a stack of pre-loaded books, a curated app store and loads more to be found within the menus. What the little ones have access to is carefully chosen by the 'rents, as there as loads of parental control options, and monitoring apps which show how they use the tablets and thus, what their interests are. The child-targeted UI is extremely colorful and engaging, and is designed by Yves Béhar of OUYA fame and previous OLPC hardware. It's very slick, responsive, and full of features sure to keep kids interested. When the kids have gone to bed, however, adults can flick it back to stock Android. It looks and feels like a 7-inch tablet, so nothing much to report there, and Jelly Bean is very much a known quantity by now. It's important to note that while we did look at the finished hardware, a dead battery meant that we saw the custom UI running on a Nexus 7. To be honest, the finished hardware looked almost identical to a Nexus 7, anyway, apart from the back camera being top-center when held in landscape orientation. The tablet will be hitting US stores in March, but the only pricing info we have so far is that it'll be "competitive." We wonder what that means? Check out the gallery below for a closer look; video coming soon. Update: We've just added a video, so head on past the break to catch the OLPC XO Tablet in action. Follow all the latest CES 2013 news at our event hub.
