tablet

BARCELONA, Spain--Fear spills and splashes damaging your smartphone no longer. Startup company DryWired believes it has the technology to easily and effectively armor your handset against water and other liquids.

According to the Los Angeles, Calif. based firm, the DryWired technique uses a nano scale monomer material that, when heated forms a gas, then cools to become a water-tight sealant.

A special machine applies the DryWired material to phones and tablets that have been partially disassembled, the idea being that a device's internal components are protected, not only its exterior.

Indeed DryWired claims that after an ordinary phone has … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Not content with dual- or even quad-core CPUs, Samsung has upped the ante with its Exynos 5 Octa. Announced at CES 2013, the Octa is the latest iteration of the Exynos line and will likely begin powering Samsung's tablets in the next few months.

The Nexus 10 seats the current most powerful Samsung CPU, the Exynos 5 Dual. That chip houses two CPU cores and was made using the A15 fab process. The Octa powers eight CPU cores (four A7s and four A15s).

At its booth ARM had the CPU running canned benchmarks, demonstrating the relative core-by-core stress. … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Video Discovery is Samsung's new TV guide app that stretches beyond the capabilities of the Smart Remote app Samsung's been including in each of its tablets since it started building them with IR blasters.

Samsung demoed Video Discovery on its new Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet this week at Mobile World Congress. The app includes the type of functionality you'd expect, like universal remote support, social sharing options, and local TV listings, but goes beyond most apps of this type with its powerful and useful search.

Searching for a particular piece of video content returns results … Read more

Razer's PR sends word that its versatile Windows 8 gaming tablet is due for a first-quarter launch as promised. Preorders being March 1, and the company says the units will ship out to customers "later that month."

As announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, the Razer Edge is due to ship with two configurations, the vanilla Edge, with an Intel Core i5 CPU and a 64GB solid-state drive (SSD) for $999, and a higher-end Razer Edge Pro with a Core i7 chip and a 128GB ($1,299) or 256GB SSD ($1,449).… Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--After a rocky start, Samsung Electronics is finally seeing the light when it comes to the tablet business.

The Korean consumer electronics giant, already the world's largest handset manufacturer, plans to double its tablet sales from a year ago, according to Y.H. Lee, executive vice president of the company's mobile unit.

That would peg its sales to about 40 million units in 2013, although Samsung's hasn't officially disclosed its full-year 2012 unit sales yet.

"We expect to be very aggressive," Lee said in an interview with CNET.

The bullish expectation further underscores … Read more

Looking for a big tablet? The iPad famously (or infamously) starts at $499. The Google Nexus 10: $399. Even the comparatively affordable Kindle Fire 8.9 will set you back $299.

For a limited time, and while supplies last, Acer (via Ebay) is selling the refurbished Iconia Tab A210 10.1-inch Android tablet for $199.99 shipped. Deal? More like steal.

The Iconia A210 features a 1.2GHz Tegra 3 processor, 16GB of storage (expandable via microSD cards), the aforementioned 10.1-inch screen (running at a competitive, if not spectacular, 1,280x800), and Android 4.0. Acer will push out … Read more

With Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and a 1.2GHz processor, this 7-inch tablet is entering a very crowded marketplace. There's 16GB of storage on-board, front-facing speakers and it's available in black or white.

These days, I can't help but be disappointed when a 7-incher features anything less than a 1,280x800 screen resolution. Call me spoiled, but recent entries in the 7-inch market have simply raised my expectations and this doesn't leave much room for the A1000's 1,024x600 7-inch screen to impress. Text was noticeably blurry, there was visible warping whenever I tapped … Read more

When the iPad first came on the scene back in 2010, most people bought them without having much idea how they'd use them. It was more out of curiosity, to see if a tablet would indeed meld with modern life.

Fast-forward three years. Now we all know exactly what tablets are good for and what they're not. We buy different sizes to accommodate different needs and purposes. Heck, some of us are already moving on to our second or even third tablet.

But why? What drove you to buy one, and what's your primary use for it … Read more

Mobile World Congress is generally all about phones, but this year there are a fair number of tablets out and about. Feeling like you're losing track? Check out the roundup below, covering the biggest hits (HP Slate 7 and Samung Galaxy Note 8) and a few unknowns (ZTE, anyone?).