xoom

Testing tablets can sometimes be a time-consuming endeavor, especially when a tablet like the iPad 2 can last for well over 10 hours on one charge while running video. To make matters worse, the iPad 2 has no loop option for video. This means that when running a movie like "Toy Story 3" to drain the battery, every 1 hour and 40 minutes, I am required to be standing in front of this thing to restart the movie.

I have to basically plan my entire day around testing: when I take lunch, bathroom visits, meetings, Starcraft II matches, etc. It also means I have to be at work for more than 12 hours on the days the iPad is battery-tested.

Being able to loop the video until the battery dies would be the obvious, desired solution, but unfortunately, there is no way (that I know of) to loop iTunes-downloaded video on the iPad. There are a few apps out there that claim to loop video, but I had little luck with them. Sure, one was able to loop video recorded by the iPad 2, but again, not with video downloaded from iTunes.

Below you'll find new results for video battery life of the iPad 2 and gaming battery life on all three tablets featured here. Also, if you're privy to a workaround that allows iTunes downloaded video to loop on the iPad 2, do not hesitate to pass it along. You'll save me from some very long workdays.… Read more

Readers had a lot to say about the Motorola Xoom, the Apple iPad, and their respective degrees of success in response to an April 2 post last titled "Why no one lines up for the Motorola Xoom."

To repeat the premise. The success of Apple's iPad is ratcheting up the pressure on executive boards at PC and device makers. Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci was, by all appearances, pushed out because, among other reasons, he believed Acer wasn't responding quickly enough to the tablet phenomenon. A perspective at odds apparently with Acer's chairman, J.T. Wang. (… Read more

Verizon Wireless has rolled out a beefy update for owners of Samsung's Galaxy Tab.

Now being launched as a mandatory system update dubbed EC02, the 35MB package offers a variety of fixes and enhancements for the Tab.

Verizon and Samsung are promising better speed and performance for the built-in browser and less drain on the battery when searching for Wi-Fi hot spots. The e-mail and message apps have been enhanced as well. Tab users can now access hyperlinks within e-mail messages, manage and download attached Word 2000 and 2003 documents, and open video attachments 5MB in size. Adobe Flash … Read more

Retailers are unwittingly positioning the Motorola Xoom as a me-too tablet, as if competing against the Apple brand isn't hard enough already.

This week it was reported that Motorola sold an estimated 100,000 Xoom tablets. Not an impressive number when compared with the iPad 2, which sold about 500,000 units in its first weekend of sales.

And retailers seem to be abetting this trend, however unintentional that may be. It's become quickly apparent at retailers that Motorola and other tablet makers like Samsung are falling into the me-too category. Best Buy's Web site makes this … Read more

Motorola has sold around 100,000 Xooms since launching the new tablet in late February, says a Deutsche Bank research report released yesterday.

Based on the percentage of Android 3.0 Honeycomb devices showing up on the Android Developer Web Site, Deutsche Bank estimated the total Android installed base at around 50 million units. Of those, only 0.2 percent are running Honeycomb. That points to a figure of 100,000, give or take, for the Xoom as the only known Android tablet so far outfitted with Honeycomb.

The research firm had initially estimated sales of 50,000 Xooms during the first quarter and 150,000 for the second quarter.

In comparison, Apple may have sold 500,000 iPad 2 tablets in the first weekend it was available last month, said Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, though some analysts believe the figure could be as high as a million, according to Reuters. The original iPad sold to the tune of 300,000 units in its initial weekend a year ago.

Neither Motorola nor Apple has disclosed sales figures for the respective tablets.

Though the Xoom's sales may seem paltry compared with the iPad, Deutsche Bank called 100,000 units after only a short time on the market "a decent start."… Read more

Netflix reportedly will pay about $100 million to stream every episode of Mad Men: chump change, if predictions of an $800 million streaming TV market turn out to be true. Also, it seems that everyone wants to get in on the tablet market, but given reported XOOM sales of only about 100,000, it's possible the only tablet market there is is for iPads. Plus, AT&T iPhones and their dropped calls, and Obama goes to Facebook. -- Molly

A couple of prominent chief executives were shown the door recently because of their take on the tablet market. But the executive boards doing the firing should be careful what they wish for.

This week Acer's CEO, Gianfranco Lanci, was let go because, among other reasons, he believed Acer wasn't responding quickly enough to the tablet phenomenon. And earlier this year the CEO of Advanced Micro Devices resigned because, conversely, he was too unenthusiastic about the tablet market.

"This market is about growth," Richard Shim, an analyst at market researcher DisplaySearch, said in a phone interview, … Read more

It seems Best Buy has completed the first two parts of its tablet magic trick. According to a post at Engadget today, Asus' EE Pad Transformer appeared on BestBuy.com for $400 and was subsequently pulled from the site a short time later.

Back at CES 2011 in January, Asus announced that the Android 3.0-enabled EE Pad Transformer would debut some time in the spring for a price ranging from $400 to $700, depending on the storage capacity of the version purchased.

If this price holds true, this would place the Transformer a full $100 cheaper than the iPad 2 … Read more

What a difference a trade show makes. Though Motorola dominated CES back in January, it didn't even whimper at CTIA 2011 last week. Indeed, the company announced no new phones and its small booth was way at the back of the show floor. I had to look on the map to find it, actually, and once there I found just a small table showing its latest phones and tablets.

Moto's small CTIA presence was surprising, particularly for a company that had stormed into 2011 with a gallery of high-profile devices like the Atrix 4G, the Droid Bionic, and … Read more