Update: The session is complete and the live videos and notes are now available here.

Honeycomb tablets are starting to filter-in so naturally, I need a permanent device to test upgrades and new applications with. There are three models available in Europe (my location) at the moment.

The Motorola Xoom is a tablet that I’m personally not that impressed with. At 580 Euros for the Wifi version that doesn’t have a working microSD card slot yet I think it’s way too expensive. Prices will come down fast of course, (MRRP is 629 here so discounting has already started) but today, it’s not the device I would choose.

I had an order in for the Asus Eee Pad Transformer which I think is one of the more interesting options. At 422 it’s offering much the same as the Xoom for a much more realistic price. Unfortunately, stock is limited and my order got pushed out into June. I cancelled.

The third device on the market is the Acer Iconia Tab A500. It has been available for a few weeks in various geographic locations and when I saw it available for 499 Euros and with 24hr delivery (32GB version) I jumped at the chance.

Details on the Acer Iconia Tab A500 are available through our product page. (click right) and we’re please to see DLNA and 32GB of storage.

Live, Open Review Friday 6th May 2100 (Berlin)

Update: The session is complete and the live videos and notes are now available here.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a Friday night live review but it looks like we’ll have quite a few coming over the next months. Let’s start the ‘open season’ with the A500 and a light beer.

We’ll run a couple of hours of live video for you with chat and people are welcome to steer the review and encouraged to ask questions. The action will take place here at 2100 Berlin time (See here for your timezone.) It’s casual, bring a friend!

[Note: Amazon have guaranteed a delivery on the 6th but things do occasionally go wrong. Follow Chippy on Twitter for the latest]

Over the coming weeks I’ll be talking productivity with Honeycomb over at UMPCPortal.com

The days of highly priced, unaffordable tablets may well and  truly be numbered. The Acer Iconica Tab A500 has landed in the US market with prices starting at $450 for the WiFi model running Android 3.0 exclusively through BestBuy online.  This affordable price makes it more attractive to the budget conscious tablet buyer who may be looking at alternatives to the more expensive Motorola Xoom (WiFi only model) which has the equivalent hardware specifications.

Sean Hollister from Engadget has written up a comprehensive review of the Icon Tab A500 and provided a picture gallery.  He likes the brushed aluminum casing which gave the Acer a stylish edge over those tablets with plastic casings but was disappointed at some build quality issues such as the back creaking when squeezed with his fingers.

Listen to our Acer Iconia A500 hands-on podcast here.

Hollister seemed happy with the HDMI video connection and described it as “performing a full, responsive display mirroring at 720p resolution, albeit suffering from a bit of overscan. (Acer says 1080p video-out will be supported in a Q2 update) inch. He found the stereo speakers to be acceptable, the 10.1 inch, 1280×800 TFT LCD display surprisingly good and the capacitive touchscreen to be very responsive.  I think this a very encouraging trait in the A500 as more affordably priced tablets that I have used and reviewed has disappointed in both screen quality and responsiveness.

The reviewer seem pleased with performance of the A500’s Tegra 2 with 1GB of DDR3 RAM when it performed slightly faster than the Motorola Xoom during his benchmark testing.

What appeared to be the biggest disappointment of the A500 to the reviewer was the battery life.  Hollister describes the battery life as the shortest (6hr 55 mins using Engadget’s standard battery drain test) of all of the Android Honeycomb tablets Engadget has reviewed.  I am equally surprised as the Acer spots a pair of 3260mAh batteries, which puts it on par with other tablets such as the iPad and Xoom in terms of battery life.

From a pricing perspective, I feel that Acer has drawn first blood in launching an affordable Android 3.0 tablet with decent specifications that rivals the popular Motorola Xoom.  The A500 will certainly face stiff competition from Asus eeePad Transformer which is cheaper at $400 and features an innovative design with its optional keyboard dock.

Remember that Asus Eee Pad Transformer live session we were going to have next Friday? Amazon just sent me an update on the estimated delivery date.

“Asus EeePad Transformer TF101 10.1 inch Tablet PC (nVidia Tegra2 1GHz, 1Gb, 16Gb eMMC, WLAN, BT, Android 3.0) with docking station and keyboard Estimated arrival date: June 01 2011”

June!

It could be that Amazon UK are getting less stock than originaly intended and that some orders will go out, but not mine. If that’s the case though, why is the next shipment going to take 6 weeks?

I’ll be cancelling the order for the time being. If anyone sees the Transformer, with dock, available in the UK in the next week, let me know!

Posted from WordPress for Android with the Galaxy Tab

I’m a smartbook fan. I want to see the netbook form factor extended right down into the mobile operating space by including always-on, location services, sharing, dynamic user interfaces, a huge app store and access to music, video and books as well as apps.

I also want to see the applications on the mobile operating systems mature to the point where I can run my business on them and right now, one of the most interesting mobile operating systems, and one that has made more progress than any other crossing the chasm into productivity and desktop worlds is iOS. The problem is, I don’t like the restrictive nature of iOS products for productivity work so I’m personally very excited about where Honeycomb is going.

I’ve tested Android 1.x on the clamshell Compaq Airlife 100 and 2.x on the Toshiba AC100 so to follow-on I’ve ordered an Asus Eee Pad Transformer which is running 3.x. Not only will this be a great smartbook test, it will also be the first 10 inch ARM-based tablet that I’ve owned. With the Galaxy Tab so woven into my daily life, it will be interesting to see if the Transformer has any impact there.

Through my social circle I see that there’s quite some interest in the Transformer. I think we all know it’s NOT going to be a business device from day one but the point is, it’s an important device to test and one that could mature well through 2011.

I’m unlikely to be one of the first to get one as high-street availability has already been confirmed in the UK and I won’t be picking mine up until next week when I visit my folks in the UK.

Naturally I’ll be setting up a LIVE REVIEW for when I get back home and this is provisionally planned for Friday 22nd April at 2100 Berlin time. We’ll go over the device and run through some Honeycomb tests, video playback tests, battery life tests and a whole suite of application tests including some productivity applications. I’m also interested to see how the USB host functionality is implemented.

I paid 429 UK Pounds for the 16GB version with docking station that should start to ship on the 18th. That’s not cheap compared to the Toshiba AC100 but it’s a  reasonable start price. You’ll see this for 25% less in a very short period of time I’m sure. There’s no 3G though so it means I’ll be carrying my MiFi or, strangely, the Galaxy Tab as a 3G hotspot.

16hrs battery life in 1KG is a stunning runtime figure but if the OS and applications can’t deliver, those 10 extra hours are worth nothing!

Stay with me, here on Carrypad, for testing next week.

Update: Unboxing below.

The Acer Iconia Tab A500 (not the AMD/Windows based W500) looks like its taken second place in the race to get Honeycomb tablets to the streets. There’s no more waiting in Taiwan because our friends Sascha and Nicole from netbooknews (German site) have already bought one!  Sascha wrote in his german site this morning that he’s on his way to get one for the equivalent of 429 Euro and in a recent tweet he says “Erste Eindruecke vom Acer Iconia Tab A500: Absolutes Schnaeppchen und einer der zukuenftigen Android 3.0 Bestseller! inch which means his first impressions are that it’s an absolute bargain and a future best seller. Strong words Sascha. JKK and I will be questioning you about it in this weeks MeetMobility podcast (Live Friday, 11am Berlin time)

We’ll update with the unboxing video from the netbooknews team after it airs, we suspect, later today. What we already know though is at that price, Acer is once again doing a great job of shaking up pricing. European availability is expected in a week or two in the 399-430 Euro range.

Unboxing is here (Via netbooknews)

Friday is turning out to be a good day. The iPad 2 launches in Europe (although I still don’t see any official pricing in Germany) and it’s my Birthday. Now, I hear that the Eee Pad Transformer is launching too. Decisions decisions!

The Eee Pad Transformer is an interesting product because it takes the idea of the smartbook one step further. It uses the Honeycomb operating system (which could enable a far superior laptoping experience than 2.x ever did) and it uses a keyboard mechanism that can be un-docked to allow tablet-only usage.

I tested the Transformer out at mobile world congress in February (video below) and wasn’t too impressed with the weight but full USB ports made me wonder if ASUS are building some nice USB hosting capabilities. The weight with the dock also seems a little over the top. With connectors and an additional battery in the keyboard unit, I’m expecting the total weight to tip 1KG. The unit I tested wasn’t running Honeycomb.

Pricing has me a little worried. The price for the tablet seems OK at 399 Euro although confirmation is still needed on storage and 3G capability. 32GB and 3G included is what I’m assuming at this stage. The price of the dock could add 120 Euro to that. The price isn’t too bad when compared with high-end tablets but when compared with the Tegra-2 based Toshiba AC100 smartbook (under 300 Euro with 3G) you get the idea that there’s a huge margin being added here and that the price should come down by at least 100 Euros over time.

The March 25th launch is for Taiwan only at this stage and will only include pre-order. Actual availability around the world is still unknown but we’ll probably hear more on Friday.

VIa Netbooknews

I was invited to join iPad experts Nick Robinson (@ratkat) and Kevin Wright (@kevwright) for a chat about the iPad2 on their Tech Talk UK podcast (formerly the iPad Chat Show) a few days ago and although I was still reeling from the ‘Jobs Attitude,’ I enjoyed it and come out of the podcast thinking I really should get an iPad 2 for further testing (and music, movie making etc. etc.) We discuss it in the light of early Xoom and Honeycomb reviews, talk about apps and the the ‘post-PC’ era.

You can listen and subscribe to the podcast over at the TTUK site.

MSI have the Tegra powered Windpad behind glass here at CEBIT.

The images above show full sd card slot, mini-hdmi, mini-USB, one full-sized USB port and the same optical mouse as seen on the Windows-based Windpad 110w.

MSI say that this will be available in the Q2 timeframe and MSI are aiming for the Honeycomb OS.

Posted from WordPress for Android with the Galaxy Tab