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Lofty Wishes: AT&T To Offer $700 HTC 4G Tablet
September 7, 2011 by admin
Filed under Consumer Electronics
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AT&T on Wednesday announced the new HTC Jetstream, its first LTE-ready tablet, will become available on Sept. 4 for $700 and a two-year contract.
Jetstream’s price may be too steep for many customers, even with a fast LTE plus HSPA+ connection, given expected lower prices for tablets on the horizon. Amazon is expected to unveil a 9-in. tablet soon priced at $299, while Hewlett-Packard has begun a $99 fire sale for its soon-to-be-defunct TouchPad.
The 10.1-in. Jetstream runs Android 3.1 with an expandable storage capacity of 32 GB, but at nearly $700, it would be $100 more than the 32 GB Apple iPad 2 with its 9.7-in. screen.
That premium price for the Jetstream seems to based principally on its fast LTE (Long-Term Evolution) connection and a digital pen input capability that allows for drawings and signatures on the touchscreen.
Lenovo Tablet Hits The Market
Lenovo’s business-oriented tablet, the ThinkPad Tablet, is now available for purchase and should start shipping within a week. The 10-inch Android device, which Lenovo officially announced a little more than a month ago, boasts an impressive mix of consumer and business-friendly features that might please both the user and their IT department.
Like other Android 3.1 Honeycomb tablets on the market, the ThinkPad Tablet has a 1280 x 800 multitouch display, 1GB of memory, front- and rear-facing cameras and a NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual core processor. It comes in a 16GB model for $499, a 32GB version for $569 and a 64GB option for $669. Basic specs and price-wise, the ThinkPad Tablet is on par with the competition.
What sets the ThinkPad apart, however, are the enterprise-oriented tools like remote administration in case the tablet gets lost or stolen, support for Cisco VPN, and full device encryption. Free apps included like Documents to Go, PrinterShare, and Computrace underscore the tablets professional target audience.
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TI Chip Goes 1080p On Android Devices
Texas Instruments on Tuesday said its OMAP chip had been certified to unlock full 1080p movies from Netflix for Google’s Android 2.3 based devices, which includes smartphones and tablets.
TI’s on-chip security feature, called M-Shield, will be able to decode 1080p high-definition movie streaming from Netflix, stated Fred Cohen, director of the OMAP user experience team at TI. A security layer unlocks the encoded video, which can then be viewed on smartphones and tablets or TV sets connected through an HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) port.
The purpose of having this technology is to provide end-to-end security for protected video content, Cohen said. Movie studios are making more high-definition 1080p content available and are adamant about protecting their product, which are considered premium content.
The on-chip feature minimizes the ability to copy content, as it is easy to take control of a rooted Android device, Cohen said. It’s easy for users to access memory where the stream is temporarily stored, and then write the movie to another device.
“You have to protect those devices,” Cohen said. “We have implemented a firewall.”
TI’s security technology is to provide a security layer so devices get access to high-definition movies, Cohen said.
Netflix provides different levels of security certification depending on features such as the video quality and resolution, Cohen said. Netflix did not return a request for comment on whether it was streaming 1080p video content to mobile devices, or whether chip makers required certification to unlock secure 1080p content.