Sony Tablet S

It has taken two years for Sony to enter the tablet market, and in that time every manufacturer and their budget Taiwanese spin-off have colluded to fill the tablet market with dross.

This presents both and opportunity and a threat to Sony, and while there are many sub-standard tablets on the market, some great work has been done by a few companies, and there's now a handful of successful, great value Android tablets to choose from.

You can check out our Android Tablet round-up to see how this slate.ide from the obvious iPad 2, which is the gold standard of design and usability, Samsung has unleashed a flurry of tablets, from the excellent Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, to the imminent Galaxy Tab 7.7 which boasts a vibrant AMOLED display.

Other notable competitors also include the Motorola Xoom, which is now aggressively priced at £349, and the Asus Eee Pad Transformer, and soon-to-be-released Eee Pad Slider, which both boast full, physical QWERTY keyboards.

To launch into this crowded marketplace, Sony had to release something different, and with the Sony Tablet S and the forthcoming Tablet P, that's exactly what its done.

The Sony Tablet S is a curvaceous, wedge-shaped tablet, which looks as if it has been folded out of a single piece of textured black plastic. It's thicker at one side, with a rounded edge, as if you'd taken a thin paper back, and folded the cover back on itself to really get stuck into the story.

Aside from making it look different to every other tablet on the market, the Sony Tablet S's unique appearance isn't purely aesthetic. The design means that typing is comfortable when laid flat on a table or desk, which is a flaw in most flat tablets.

Future Gadgets and technologies By HP

               HP (Hewlett-Packard) has showcased future technology of mobile communications at the HP Mobile Innovations Tour in India.The concept design presented and showcased are a vision for the year 2012 which will provide a “always connected” experience to the users.
“True creativity lies in making the complicated simple” said Phil Devlin from HP ,while showcasing the future technologies at the Mobile Innovations event.

        The show unveiled a smart looking digital wallet (above) which will keep track of all your transactions and is like a tablet device which is ultra thin and provides pen device for input other than touch screen.

iMac future design ..

It's freezing in here ... it  is a future iMac concept design by UK-based illustrator and designer Adam Benton.
Fully wireless, the iFreeze features a 30" LCD screen that becomes transparent when not in use. The keyboard is also transparent and uses light-sensitive illuminated keys. The whole machine will packed with a 5TB hard drive / Picture: kromeka

The new HP TouchPad....

The webOS-powered HP TouchPad was released in the beginning of July and after spending over 15 minutes with one at Best Buy I was planning to skip this tablet. HP then had some crazy deals where you could find the 16GB model for $300 and a Twitter buddy found a deal on Craigslist so I jumped on one for $325. After spending the weekend using the TouchPad for several hours, I have to say it is better than the RIM BlackBerry PlayBook, but even at just over $300 I still can’t recommend this tablet to anyone and the iPad is all I can tell people to buy when they ask about 10 inch tablets.

      FYI, this TouchPad I purchased does have the latest OS update so my issues below are not due to an old firmware. Just this morning I sat there for about a minute with the Wall Street Journal app open and no taps or swipes registering as the TouchPad just sat there being unresponsive. Pressing the button did take it to the home screen, but there was no display responses when touching the screen within an app.
     

Hardware

               The HP TouchPad is not an elegant tablet and is a chunky beast with a super glossy back.It makes up for some of my hardware concerns with the rounded corners, decent stereo speakers, and very slick Touchstone charging dock. The iPad and iPad 2, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, and even the Motorola Xoom are all better hardware. I don’t understand why HP couldn’t have released a tablet with a slimmer profile, especially after they saw the first generation iPad and knew another would be coming soon. The TouchPad is 0.54 of an inch thick while the iPad 2 is 0.34 and the original iPad is 0.5. The TouchPad also weighs in at 1.6 pounds compared to the iPad 2 at 1.3 pounds. I am not too bothered by the weight since a 10 inch tablet is going to have some heft to it, but the thickness bothers me when compared to my sleek iPad 2.

Operating system

                  webOS is a very slick UI with a great multi-tasking design through the cards and I do like it on the HP TouchPad, but even with just a few apps loaded up I have been seeing “too many cards open” errors and am beginning to think that Apple and Microsoft may have multi-tasking better designed for today’s mobile devices. iOS and Windows Phone 7 multi-tasking essentially freezes the background apps when you go elsewhere and I find double-tapping and selecting an open app on the bottom row of my iPad to be a much more efficient means of jumping between apps.

Finalist Sky News

          Sky’s array of mobile apps have always been at the cutting edge, but the massive new Sky News app for iPad is its best yet.

          The beautifully designed, video-heavy app allows you to cherry pick the hottest news from the day, just like you can while using the red button functionality on your TV. The timeline enables you to catch up if you’ve missed breaking developments.           

   
            While the on-demand service is constantly updated there’s also a live video feed from the channel which you can pause and rewind à la Sky Plus.

         If that’s not enough there’s also a host of galleries and text-based stories from the Sky News website. Best of all it’s free, at least so far.
          
Read more: Finalist Sky News

Samsung BD-D7500

             More than just a bit of eye-candy, Samsung’s new flagship Blu-ray player holds a number of impressive party tricks. As well as 3D and 2D to 3D upscaling, the device is web-connected for accessing Samsung Apps.

If only all bread-and-butter AV kit had this much thought put into it…


Read more: Samsung BD-D7500

Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air

                   Doing away with the need for cables and wires or the a docked iPod/iPhone, AirPlay allows you to wirelessly stream content from your iOS devices direct to the unit.
                Designed for equally beautiful audio, the Zeppelin has five driver units driven by dedicated, audiophile Class D amps.
                      With distinctive rugby-ball lines and highly desirable premium finish, the refreshed and curvaceous Zeppelin Air could be the ultimate envy-inspiring dock.

Read more: Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air

Bang & Olufsen BeoSound 8

                         Standing out from all other docks on the market, the B&O BeoSound 8 offers connectivity for everything from the sixth-generation iPod Nano all the way up to the iPad 2. In the process it matches the design excellence of the Apple devices - a feat achieved by few.

                Appealing to multiple senses, the conical speakers not only looks great, but their funnelled shape reduce standing waves (vibrations), filling the entire room with luxuriously rich sounds. A switch lets you optimise sound for placement in the middle, corner or side of your room.

              With wall-mountable or desktop presentation options and a feast of classily-hued colour schemes to choose from Bang & Olufsen’s latest is a dock to savour.

Read more: Bang & Olufsen BeoSound 8