Acer has recently announced the addition of a MeeGo based tablet, the M500 to its Iconia tablet range at Computex 2011.

Judging from the available pictures and videos of the Iconia M500 [tracking page], it bears a striking physical resemblance to it’s Android stable-mate, the A500, and has the same 10.1 inch 1280×800 resolution screen.

The key difference is that it has a Intel based Moorestown processor under the hood.

There is no information on the M500’s battery life at the moment — I will be interested to how good the battery life will be running MeeGo on a Moorestown processor.  Chippy’s written a interesting article on battery life advantages of MeeGo and Android running on the Moorestown platform that’s a good read.

The M500 offers a MeeGo driven user interface which Acer is calling a ‘snackable UI’.  This is essentially a circular shape launcher widget (pictured above) that can be used to access and operate applications such as a browser or a music player.  What I find unique is that the user touches the screen using five fingers in a circular shape (see picture below) in order to invoke the widget.

The M500 uses a widget based homepage and the eye candy offering is live widgets meaning that each widget will present its content when activated, allowing the user to view multiple live widgets content at a glance. Some notable widgets that were showcased during the Computex demos were for photo, video, calendar, social network feeds and time.

Acer has yet to announced a firm date for M500’s release and likewise, pricing is not known.  Let’s hope that it will not be too far off the sub $500 mark of the A500.

The Notion Ink Adam [tracking page] may have wow-ed most at the CES 2011 but the proof is always in the pudding once the tablet is truly unleashed for general consumption in the consumer market.

It took a little while, but Engadget’s Sean Hollister managed to get his hands on a unit and wrote a good review on the Adam. From the review feedback, the Adam may not have lived up to expectations as being a perfect technology marriage of form and functionality.

Let’s explore the Adam, shall we?

The Adam has a unique form factor which differentiates it from most uniformly slim-line tablets it has a rather rounded bulky rear (pictured below).

Some may find this rather unsightly but from an ergonomic’s perspective, I think this is a good design as it may allow a good one handed grip when using the Adam in a portrait mode. This is especially important as the Adam weighs in at rather hefty 1.6 pounds and therefore having a good grip whilst single-handedly using it is a must.  Sean mentions the cylindrical rear holding a pair of stereo speakers as well as three-cell battery which makes me wonder if the unit may be possibly top heavy (or bottom depending on which direction you hold it!) when held in a landscape position.

The reviewer wasn’t impressed with the four capacitive touch buttons (pictured above) which are neither backlit or possess haptic feedback.

One thing the Adam has going for it is the plethora of ports, from two full-sized USB ports as well as a HDMI slot that is capable of 1080p display mirroring.  I feel that this is a key feature that distinguishes the Adam as a tablet meant as a serious productivity workhorse or mobile home-theater from a tablet meant soley as a sofa surfing device. I cannot tell you how many times I have been frustrated when someone at work hands me a USB thumb drive and I am unable to transfer files via USB to my Dell Streak 5 inch nor my Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 inch!

Another feature which had us all eagerly anticipating the arrival of the Adam is the famed Pixel Qi display.  Unfortunately, the reviewer found that the Adam’s 1024×600 resolution Pixel Qi display was not good, describing the display’s viewing angles as “terrible inch with the colors being “a bit washed out inch. A saving grace is that the reviewer found the Adam’s Pixel Qi’s reflective mode working well and once the screen backlit is switched off, the screen is viewable even outdoors and conserved hours of battery life.

The reviewer also found the 3.2MP camera’s picture taking capabilities to be unimpressive, describing issues with the autofocus as well as over exposed pictures. Note that the camera is able to swivel front to rear, vice versa.

Under the hood, the Adam sports a dual-core 1Ghz Tegra 250 and the reviewer has found no issues with general performance of the device.

From an operating system perspective, the Adam runs Android 2.2 aka “Froyo inch but Notion Ink designed its own user interface known as the Eden UI that provides an innovative-looking PanelView (pictured above) that allows the multiple applications to be open and active on the same homescreen.

Though the hardware issues can’t be fixed through a software update, Notion Ink will be releasing a significant update to the Adam’s software. The update will contain the following:

• a new e-book client
• a new Browser (the name of the book client and browser will be released in a separate blog next week)
• updated Kernel
• optimally over-clocked Tegra
• Gingerbread 2.3
• lots of usability Issues resolved
• new multi-tasking environment (easier way to manage all tabs and applications)
• Chords Music Library and Player (Simple and straight Music Player)
• Video Library and Player
• DSP support, so now equalizer will work in better way. Soon we are adding more bass boost in the speakers as well (not a part of this update).
• Flash pre-installed
• and more

Readers may wonder why the update to Android Gingerbread 2.3 instead of Honeycomb 3.0, the reason being that Google only releases the Honeycomb source code to a selected few partners at this point and Notion Ink isn’t one of them.

The release date of the update is still unannounced at this stage.

Notion has certainly challenged the tablet manufacturer’s norm by designing a tablet that has the capability of replacing a desktop thanks to USB peripheral support. I certainly hope that it is able to rectify the hardware quality issues and deliver the software update in a timely manner.

Here’s Notion Ink Adam Picture Gallery thanks to Engadget!

A leaked Dell Tablet roadmap has revealed three new touchscreen devices may be released this year starting with an Android 10 inch tablet in June.

The leak mentions the Android based 10 inch Dell Streak Pro, a third generation convertible XT tablet (Windows based, and not so portable given that it will probably weigh is excess of 2 KG’s), and the Latitude ST which will run an Intel Oak Trail processor and Windows 7.

According to the leak the new Streak Pro will run a Tegra T25 dual-core A9 (1.2GHz) chip which is a newer version than the Tegra we know from Tablets like the Xoom. I currently use a Viewsonic G-Tab and Motorola Atrix 4G (both with the current Tegra 2) and I’ve been very happy with the performance of both, although the roadmap indicates an overly on top of Android called Dell Stage 1.5 which hopefully won’t detract from the performance of the device. There’s also mention of USB host support (allowing it to access external drives via USB) which is a great feature as having support for this makes life with an Android device much easier.

In my opinion the original Streak [product page] occupied a difficult place in between devices as it was too big to be a phone but too small to be a tablet.  At 10 inches the Streak Pro is obviously positioned to compete with the iPad 2 [product page] and that’s a very hard market to compete in. If Dell can get the hardware, software, and features right it will make life a whole lot easier when it goes up against the current king of the 10 inch tablets.

Our good friends at Viliv gave as some quality time with all their 3 new devices this morning. This video is from the X10, a 10 inch 1024×600 Android device with an excellent (bright, great viewing angle) screen and a big, 31wh battery. The Samsung s5pc110 has the Power VR 540 graphics core in it too so the graphics performance is very smooth indeed.

Viliv are going through the process of Google Android authorisation and are working on an Android 2.3 upgrade. As for Honeycomb, it’s not certain yet if that will run on the single core CPU. [Anyone know the minimum specs for Honeycomb?]

This is planned for launch after the Viliv X7 Android Tablet. (expect April-May) No pricing was given.

Here’s my hands-on video.

Acer announced a set of Android tablets this afternoon that are sure to make people pause before they put an order in for the holiday season. The 7” Tablet looks like a belter and you can be sure that Acer will compete heavily on price.

The 7” model on the left (neither model has a name yet) will come with a dual-core 1.2Ghz Snapdragon CPU,  a 1280×800 resolution screen, 3G, Wi-FI  and we hear, Android 2.2 with Flash 10.1. With front and rear cameras it looks like it will be suitable for Google application certification so we should see the Market and Google applications on this.

The 10”er on the right above, looks to be aimed at the home market and will also be a dual-core device. HDMI-out, dual-cams and ten-point multitouch, indicate a high-end experience. Interestingly, reports are saying that this one has a dual-core Tegra 2 CPU at 1Ghz. Maybe there’s a gaming slant here.

There’s also a 4.8” super-wide-screen device with 1024×480 on the cards. The strange resolution might be very good for landscape browsing.

Without full specs and pricing it’s difficult to position the devices but it looks like Acer is taking the tablet market seriously because Windows Tablets were announced too. I can’t believe all these devices are going to make it to the same markets but CeBIT in March will certainly be interesting!

News via Netbooknews.com and Engadget.