I wish I was at CES. Get ready for a ton of new devices!
It’s probably every gadget freak’s dream to go CES in Las Vegas. Last year I “happened” to be in Vegas as a tourist during CES and so obviously I also visited the Consumer Electronics Show. While last year was mostly about 3D and Internet connected TVs this year we’ll see a whole range of new tablets being introduced. Some analysts are even saying that no less than 70 new tablets will see the daylight at CES.
We already saw teasers from Motorola and Vizio. Various techblogs are reporting on rumors about new tablets from Toshiba, LG, HTC, HP, Samsung, and more… You can already feel the buzz, can’t you?
Now wouldn’t it be cool if there was this one technology that could work on all those different tablets? Well… As it turns out, there is! No no… I’m not actually confirming anything here. I’m just saying that there is a technology out there that does run on multiple devices. You’ll have to wait and see which new devices will support the Flash Platform… That said… You do know that just about everyone is part of the Open Screen Project, right?
It’s going to be a great year for Flash developers! Flash on!
Multi-screen excellence: Giroflex
This has to be the one of the best multi-screen apps I’ve seen to date. It is absolutely gorgeous and the story behind it is even more impressive. Thanks to the Flash Platform they were able to build an application that runs on multiple devices in record time.
Giroflex is a leading manufacturer of ergonomically designed office furniture. They asked Publicis Modem to create an application for the Orgatec trade fair taking place in Cologne next week. The application needed to be built for multi-screen purposes. The client wanted a microsite, a multitouch application to run on the HP TouchSmart 600, and the application needed to run on the Samsung Tab. In their booth visitors can experience the new chair in a dynamic modern way on the TouchSmart PCs, representing the company’s spirit. The Giroflex sales executives will all have a Samsung Galaxy Tab at hand to show the same app to their customers. The choice for the Flash Platform was an obvious one.
Thanks to the Flash Platform the team at Publicis Modem led by Marcel Vogt and Tiago Dias was able to produce an application that runs as a microsite in the browser and as a standalone application on the TouchSmart PCs, the Samsung Galaxy Tab’s, and even any other Android device. In just 2.5 weeks they created a multi-language, rich, easy to use and intuitive application with AS3 and utilizing AIR’s local SQLite database and multi-touch features.
They started out with the microsite which is built based on their own AS3 framework. The entire UI is customizable via XML files. They finished the microsite in just 1.5 weeks. When the microsite was done they only needed to add multi-touch capabilities and update the graphics and layout so it would fit on the Galaxy Tab and the TouchSmart PCs. It only took them an additional 6 days to “port” the app to the Galaxy Tab and the TouchSmart PCs. As a little extra they also wanted to see how long it would take them to port this app to an HTC Desire. It only took 2 hours!
I’m also really happy that I was able to help them a bit. They used my Package Assistant application to create the APKs ;-)
This is a great example of the power of the Flash Platform and how easy it is to build multi-screen applications using it!
Here’s application running on a Samsung Galaxy Tab:
The application running on the HP TouchSmart PC:
And on the HTC Desire:
Marcel and Tiago will be at MAX next week so if you see them around make sure you ask for a demo! Great work guys!
Now that’s a tablet!
Powerful CPU? Check! 1.6GHz Intel Atom.
Capable of HD video? Check! 1080p!
Camera? Check! 1 front, 1 back.
Flash Player 10.1? Check!
Adobe AIR 2? Check!
HDMI-out? Check!
USB port? Check!
Expandable storage? Check! SDHC card slot.
Pen/digitizer support? Check! Perfect for your finer art/graphics projects.
I can install whatever I like? Check! Runs Windows 7 Home Premium.
Multi-tasking? Check!
Easy to use touch UI? Check! HP built their own touch enabled layer on top of Win7.
Cheaper than Apple’s tablet? Check! $549 for 32GB model vs $599 for Apple’s 32GB model
Available now? Not yet… but I can wait! I want this one soooooo bad! :D
The leaked specs also mention that it comes with a 5-hour battery. While that may seem a lot less than the 10-hour battery Apple promises, we all know that you have to take Apple’s battery promises with a grain of salt. My MBP is supposed to be able to give me 8 hours but I’ve never gotten more than 4 out of it. Perhaps if you switch off WIFI, turn down the brightness to 1 and don’t do anything you get the 10 hours they promise but you can hardly call that usable… 5 hours sounds decent and honest enough.
Update: As pointed out in the comments, some reviewers are posting some good reviews about the battery life of Apple’s tablet. However, keeping my experience with my MBP in mind, I think it’s only fair that I am a bit skeptical about that.
Now this is a tablet I can get excited about!
Number 1 on my wishlist: HP’s slate device
I already blogged about how excited I was about HP’s slate device a few weeks ago. These two new videos make me want it even more!
The first one is a teaser ad from HP but make sure you watch the second video! Adobe’s Alan Tam shows the device in action! No CGI tricks here! Alan shows Adobe AIR and Flash in action on the device: Video playback from MTV.com; A Spongebob Squarepants game (most casual games on the Web run in Flash); photo editing at Photoshop.com and reading the digital version of the New York Times. Now that is the web experience I want on a slate device! I’m ordering this the minute it becomes available!
HP’s CTO talks about the HP slate. Can I have one now please?
As I already mentioned before, I won’t be standing in line to get an Apple tablet. If it was running the full OS X, I probably would have but the limited OS they’re putting on the device is just too restricted and not flexible enough.
I recently bought an HP TouchSmart TX2 tablet/notebook to replace my EEE PC netbook. I wanted something small (-ish) to browse the web and watch video on while being on vacation or traveling. While Windows 7 does take some getting used to (especially after using a Mac for the last 7 years or so) I am really impressed by the performance and even more by the price. A lot of people seem to like the pricing of Apple’s tablet but I wonder if these people looked at what is out there today? I paid around $800 for the HP TX2. So the price is similar to Apple’s 64GB 3G/WIFI tablet but my HP has a 12’1 inch screen, 320GB 7200 RPM hard drive, 4GB RAM, DVD drive, 3 USB ports, 1 4 cell and 1 8 cell battery and an AMD chipset powerful enough to even do hardware accelerated Flash Video up to 1080p! And since the TX2 has Windows 7 on it, I can also install every single app and/or plugin I want. I can run my Twitter client when I’m watching a video and most of all I’m not tied to one single store to buy my music, apps and video content. The only problem is its form factor. It’s still a bit bulky but that’s just a minor issue.
Enter the HP slate. While there’s no news yet on how much memory it’ll have, how fast the processor is or how much disk space it’ll have, it does run a full Windows 7! In the video below, HP’s CTO Phil McKinney talks about their slate device. The video also shows the New York Times Reader AIR application (as shown in the screenshot above) and HD video on YouTube using Flash Player. Now that’s a real magical experience! Can I have one now please?
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