MobileViews Blog

On March 1, 2011 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took the stage of the conference center in Bellevue, Washington to address a bunch of Microsoft MVPs (enthusiasts). At one point he held up the tablet you see in the photo above and made some comments about it. I, quite honestly, can’t remember what he said that day. And, if I did, the information might still be covered by an NDA. So, instead, I will reimagine that day and theorize what may have been going through Mr. Ballmer’s mind as he addressed a gathering of Microsoft MVPs (enthusiasts).
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Archos is a funny company. I remember seeing a number of mobile multimedia devices from them years ago. But, I’ve never seen any of the many Android tablet models they announce year after year. Here’s another one I’ll probably never see. At $130 it may be the least expensive Ice Cream Sandwich based tablet available. And, you get an Alvin and the Chipmunks theme too.

Child Pad

Its specs look pretty good for a $130 device. They exceed the more expensive Kindle Fire and Nook Color.

7-inch display
800×480 pixel resolution
WiFi
380 grams
1GB system memory
4GB flash memory
microSD slot
Front facing camera with microphone

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 has only been available in the U.S. for two weeks. However, it already has a software update available. I woke up this morning to see this notice on my device after powering on its display. It is not clear what the update brings. However, Samsung’s notice states: Software and Stability improvements included. The Tab 2 7.0 has not had any issues in the 9 days I’ve been using it. So, I’m not sure what stability issues it addresses. I should note that the device’s apparent stability is a welcome change from the Honeycomb based Tab 10.1 which saw either an Android subsystem (like the windows manager) or apps crash several times a day.

You can find my review of this tablet at BYTE. Samsung Galaxy Tab 2: The First Must-Have Android Tablet

You can see other screen photos of today’s Tab 2 7.0 update process below.
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The new Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is a great little tablet for a very reasonable price ($249). However, the price of that price is having only 8GB of internal flash storage. And, only 4.6GB of that space is actually usable for end-user storage. Fortunately, the Tab 2 7.0 has a microSD slot for storage expansion. So, I bought the SanDisk microSDHC 32GB Flash Memory Card for $22. I inserted it and copied a couple of files from my notebook to check its storage. It is working fine so far.

You can find my review and photos of this new Android tablet over on BYTE:

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2: The First Must-Have Android Tablet

My Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 running Ice Cream Sandwich (Android OS 4.0) arrived. Look for a review and thoughts about tablets with smaller-than-10-inch displays in BYTE soon.

The recently released Instagram for Android got an update that adds support for tablets and the ability to install the app on SD cards. The app worked on a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. However, it seemed to me that it did not provide a cursor to indicate text positioning in some situations (caption box to enter text). The app posted fine to Facebook in my test.

I just bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Android tablet and needed a way to stand it up when using it with a Bluetooth keyboard. Instead of looking for something like the iPad’s folding smartcover or buying an expensive stand, I found that the simple business card holder seen in the photos here does a good job as a stand when the tablet is in a landscape orientation. I don’t remember what I paid for it. But, I would be surprised if I paid more than $3 for it. It was originally purchased to hold a smartphone while charging.

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I always find it interesting to look at future history – that is what people imagined the future would look like years ago. The two screenshots here came from Star Trek Deep Space 9 season 6 episode 9 (Statistical Probabilities) which first aired on November 24, 1997. In 1997, the touch screen Newton was on the wane while the Palm Pilot and Windows CE Handheld PCs were on their way up. Apple’s Newton was probably the closets thing we had to a tablet device.
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