The past few weeks have seen Indian users literally being deluged by tablets. After a relatively quiet start (there were only two major tabs in the legit market – the OlivePad and the Samsung Galaxy Tab – at the end of 2010), the Indian tablet market seems to have finally taken off. In the last two weeks itself, we have seen the arrival of the likes of the Motorola Xoom, the HTC Flyer, and the BlackBerry PlayBook, and are bracing ourselves for the 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab to descend any day now. You wo...

As promised, Motorola has released its Xoom tablet in the Indian market. The tablet, which was officially the first to run Android 3.0 (Honeycomb, the flavour of Android Google had specially brewed for tablets), arrives in two variants – a Wi-Fi one for Rs 32,990 (MRP: Rs 34,490) and a 3G one for Rs 39,990 (MRP: Rs 41,490). Both have 32 GB storage (no other storage variants, as of now), pack in a powerful 1 GHz dual core processor, 1 GB RAM, 10.1 inch displays, and battery lives that are expected to ran...

During the Computex trade show in Taipei on Monday, ViewSonic officially took the wraps off of its ViewPad 7x Android tablet. We had heard mumblings of the device earlier this month, but now we know all of the ins and outs of the tablet: it runs Android 3.0.1 Honeycomb, is powered by a dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, has HSPA+ connectivity, an HDMI-out port, rear and front facing cameras, and a 7-inch LED display with a 1024 x 600 resolution. We hope ViewSonic has plans to update the 7x to Google’s ...

The BGR team picked up the new and improved Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 from Google’s I/O conference earlier this week, and I have been using it non-stop for the past few days. There’s a lot to discuss here: the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the third Android Honeycomb-powered tablet launched by a major OEM in the United States, and Samsung went to great lengths to revise the design and slice off the extra bulk. The unit I have measures just 0.33-inches thick, which makes it the thinnest tablet available...

Google on Tuesday announced its first major update to the Honeycomb OS. Key feature additions in Honeycomb 3.1 include resizable home screen widgets, added support for new input devices like enhanced keyboards, mice, trackpads and even dedicated gaming controllers. Another key addition is enhanced multitasking support for more fluid transitions and reduced crashes. In addition, Honeycomb will be coming to Google TV in version 3.1 via an automatic OTA update. Among the notable Google TV-specific features is ...

Pocketnow has gotten its hands on a leaked press image of the HTC Puccini, a supposed 10-inch tablet that will likely run Android Honeycomb. The device looks similar to the HTC Flyer, known as the View 4G on Sprint, but with a slightly larger screen. It’s rumored that the Puccini could ship next month with support for AT&T’s 4G LTE network, although that’s a hard pill to swallow given that AT&T’s LTE network isn’t yet live. Other specs on the device are slim, but we hope ...

According to a recent filing with the SEC, Barnes and Noble is planning to launch a new eReader later this month. During a meeting with analysts and investors, the big-box and online bookstore said “it expects to make an announcement on May 24, 2011 regarding the launch of a new eReader device.” It’s unclear if the new eReader will carry the NOOK moniker, but if Barnes & Noble is reworking the Nook Color – already powered by Android – we suspect it will have more powerful hardware an...

According to a new report from industry watcher DigiTimes on Tuesday, Amazon has placed orders with manufacturers to build its first tablet PC. The report claims Taiwan-based Quanta Computer has received orders for between 700,000 and 800,000 tablets from Amazon, and the finished devices should begin shipping in the second half of this year. Earlier rumors suggested an Amazon tablet would launch this summer, so the timing of this new report further supports those claims. Amazon has built several successful de...

Sony today announced its much-awaited Android tablets, which were leaked earlier in February this year. Both the S1 and S2 (temporary names, we learn) run on Android 3.0 and come with dual cameras and Nvidia Tegra 2 chipsets. The S1 has a 9.4-inch display with a off-center of gravity design, which we find very similar to Notion Ink’s Adam. The S2, on the other hand, features a clamshell design with two 5.4-inch displays that can either be used as a single screen for videos or as individual screens for m...

Amazon is said to be prepping a new tablet device that may launch as early as this summer. According to a report from gadget site gdgt, Amazon has chosen Samsung to help design and build the tablet, which may run Honeycomb or even a custom operating system based on Google’s Android platform. Rumors of an Amazon tablet have been around for quite some time, and Android was always expected to be Amazon’s OS of choice. News that the company may be building its own OS on top of Android suggests it may ...

In case you haven’t heard, Android is kind of a big deal. Some research firms say it’s already the world’s top smartphone operating system, having recently passed Symbian’s quarterly sales pace for the first time, and just about every firm on the planet is predicting that Android’s market share will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. And it’s not just hot air — Google on Thursday during its first-quarter earnings call revealed that daily Android activations ha...

The debate surrounding Android fragmentation continues to draw attention, and the issue resurfaced on Monday following the results of a recent survey. According to Baird analyst William Powers, roughly 87% of Android developers believe that fragmentation is a problem for the Android platform. 57% feel Android’s fragmentation problem is either “huge” or “meaningful,” and about 30% agree that it is a problem to a lesser degree. Google said this past November that the overwhelming m...