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More than Meets the Eye Alongside the original iPad, Apple sold a keyboard dock for users who wanted to do a lot of typing on their new tablet. The keyboard dock turned the iPad into a mini iMac running iOS. What the iPad keyboard dock lacked however was a pointing device—all navigation still had to be done via the touch screen. As Apple has correctly pointed out in the past, the notebook usage model doesn't work very well if you have to keep reaching across your keyboard to touch the screen. ASUS expands on the idea of a keyboard dock...

Takeaway: The Nook Color is a $250 e-reader powered by Android. Learn how to hack it into a powerful and fully functional Android tablet. The Android Honeycomb 3.0 operating system and the first fleet of tablets that are going to run it are all looking mighty impressive. Unfortunately, it’s also looking like most of them will be even more expensive than the Apple iPad, which starts at $500. If you’re tempted for an Android tablet but don’t want to spend a small fortune, then you may want to try the Barnes & Noble Nook Color (right). Out of the box,...

I have been reporting on Microsoft all my journalistic life, and believe me, that's quite some time. To give you an idea how far I go back with Microsoft, let's just say I remember the occasion when I was given a personal demo of a hot new product that Microsoft was about to launch – a graphical spreadsheet for the Macintosh, later known as Excel. I was particularly impressed by the evident passion of the person demonstrating the beta code – he clearly really enjoyed his job. But perhaps that wasn't so surprising, since his name was Bill Gates.Of course,...

A broad sample of millions of website visitors detailed by Google Analytics indicates that the entire Android ecosystem combined, while slightly ahead of Apple's iPhone 4, continues to be outpaced by Apple's iOS, largely due to the rapid growth of iPad. This mirrors additional data that underlines Apple's lead in both mobile browsing and app sales, refuting recent reports that claim Android is displacing iOS. Despite regular reports that Google's Android platform has passed iPhone 4 in both installed base and growth, Jeff Tribble of SEO firm ROI365 notes that the firm's analytics data covering 4 million unique visitors across...

I am thinking about buying a tablet to replace my old laptop, but am confused about which is better, Ipad or Android based tablets. Any help from computer geeks to busybodies would be appreciated.

Google's Android OS has gained an astonishing 7 points of market share in the US smartphone market in the past three months, Comscore says. RIM's market share over the same period collapsed, dropping almost 5 points. Apple's share increased slightly, but is dead in the water and has now fallen way behind Android. Android now has a third of the US market (33%). RIM's share has plummeted to 29%. Apple is holding at 25%. In the "also ran" category, Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 did nothing to stop its decline, which fell from 9% to 7.7%. And Palm, which is barely...

Every few months Google embraces another CE company. It began with HTC and G1, giving that manufacturer resources and manpower enough to produce a powerful entrant in the smartphone race. It continued with Motorola for the Droid and has cycled through to Samsung for a brief period. This bear hug essentially gives the manufacturer access to Google’s engineers and pre-release code and leaves everyone else out in the street, waiting for a software update. Now Google has set its sights on LG and, if rumor is correct, it means a Nexus S tablet is on its way from LG...

Human Blood Simplifies Cyborg Circuitry Could electronic components made from human blood be the key to creating cyborg interfaces?... Circuitry that links human tissues and nerve cells directly to an electronic device, such as a robotic limb or artificial eye might one day be possible thanks to the development of biological components. Writing in the International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics, a team in India describes how a "memristor" can be made using human blood. Memristors were a theoretical electronic component first suggested in 1971 by Berkeley electrical engineer Leon Chua and finally developed in the laboratory by scientists...

Now confirmed, but will not make launch We have been telling you about the possibility that the upcoming release of the RIM BlackBerry PlayBook will be able to run Android applications. At first, this was just a rumor and some idle talk. Later, we started hearing more whispers about it and it looked like a real possibility. Now, RIM has confirmed that it is real and Android 2.3 applications will be able to be run on the PlayBook.

Two of the most important players in the mobile industry, Verizon and Motorola, have essentially called Windows Phone 7 a failure, with a Verizon exec going so far as ... This is clearly not what Microsoft hoped for when it launched Windows Phone 7 to great fanfare late last year. The statements from both executives were surprisingly blunt. ... I do want a strong third OS out there. ... But I still have doubts whether Microsoft will get the traction they are hoping for with Windows Phone 7. Melone was equally unimpressed with the Nokia-Microsoft deal, explaining: If you look...

From the results of the Pwn2Own hacking competition, it looks like Android and Windows Phone 7 are tough nuts to crack. It took only two days for hackers to crack into the Apple and Blackberry operating systems during the three-day Pwn2Own tournament last week, while Android and Windows Phone 7 models were abandoned and left unhacked by the end of the contest. Is this because their operating systems are more secure? Yes and no. "The survival of a target does not automatically declare it safer than a target that went down," last year's Internet Explorer Pwn2Own winner Peter Vreugdenhil cautions....

Android phones vs. iPhones - it's the smart phone equivalent of the Boston Red Sox vs. the New York Yankees.Switch to Google Apps - Save your business time, money, and hassles. Contact us today! - www.google.com/apps/business And two recent studies on which has the speedier web browser - two studies that contradict each other - are providing more fuel to the fanboy/girl fire. According to a new study released Friday from Blaze Software, web pages load 52 percent quicker on the Samsung Nexus S running Google's Android 2.3, also known as Android Gingerbread, than the Apple iPhone 4 running iOS...

Another shoe has dropped in Android's apparently still unfolding IP crisis, an issue over and above Oracle's controversial Java patent infringement suit, which is now just one of many. Google supposedly put Linux code into Android in a legally questionable way that likely infringes the GPL, the license that governs Linux, according to what IP litigator Edward Naughton said on the Huffington Post Wednesday in a story entitled "Google's Android Contains Legal Landmines for Developers and Device Manufacturers" that patent watcher Florian Mueller picked up on. Naughton - and Professor Ray Nimmer, a copyright expert, before him - raise doubts...

Do seconds really count? In the smartphone business they do, according to Blaze Software, Inc., based in Ottawa. Blaze’s test results showed that Apple’s iPhone worked slower loading websites 84 percent of the time than phones using Google Inc.’s Android operating system. The iPhone 4 went against Google’s Samsung Nexus S smartphone over the same WiFi connection, so any differences in mobile-carrier speeds didn’t affect the outcome, Blaze said in releasing the research. The Android phone operated 52 percent faster on average after more than 45,000 page loads from 1,000 websites, they said. The Asbury Park Press reports web pages...

Last time we checked in with ComScore's report on smartphone platform market share among US subscribers three months ago, Android was doing a little happy dance as it overtook iOS for the number two spot overall. Well, the cuddly green bots have self-replicated yet again, enough to overtake RIM this time thanks in part to a 5.4 percent decline on BlackBerry's part (down to 30.4 percent in January) coupled with a 7.7 percent boost on the Android side, moving up to 31.2 percent. We imagine ComScore's next report -- covering the period through March -- will see a little boost...

So, I was thinking yesterday (A dangerous hobby, I know) and the though occured to me: Why not develop a Freerepublic app for smartphones? I mean, sure, the site displays fine and all, but a couple of other sites have apps that update and show you recent posting activity, so why not here? Ideally, it would be cross-platform, and allow you to choose which forums to display the recent activity from. I know it would only appeal to a niche audience of Freepers, but I don't see any reason it couln't be done. Any coders out there with some spar...

Android is becoming a popular target for writers of mobile malware Continue reading the main storyAnalysis suggests that the booby-trapped apps may have been downloaded up to 200,000 times. The malicious apps were copies of existing applications, such as games, that had been repackaged to include the virus code. All the apps found to contain the malicious code have now been removed from the Android Marketplace. Remove and recallThe virus-laden apps were discovered by a Reddit user called Lompolo who realised that one program was listed under the name of a publisher he knew had not written it. He found...

There is no working prototype. No video. No proof that it exists Yet NoteSlate -- a digital drawing pad, or at least the idea of one -- is burning a hole in the blogosphere. A few weeks ago, descriptions and mockups appeared online at technology news and gossip sites around the globe have written about it n at least half a dozen languages, heralding the imminent arrival of a $99 e-ink digital tablet that mimics the simplicity of old-fashioned pen and paper. NoteSlate's homepage opens with a question, handwritten in sloppy capital letters on a graphica rendering of the tablet:...

Boy oh boy, HTC is entering the tablet arena with quite a bang. The company has just taken the wraps off its brand new 7-inch Flyer Android tablet, which touts a 1.5GHz single-core CPU, 1GB of RAM plus 32GB of flash storage, an aluminum unibody construction, 1024 x 600 resolution, a tablet-optimized version of Sense, and... what's this, a pressure-sensitive stylus! The HTC Scribe trademark we saw floating around in legal waters turned out not to be the branding for a tablet, it's actually the name HTC gives to the technology enabling what it calls a "groundbreaking pen experience." Other...

Note to Readers: Saumitra is one of the newest members of our smartphone team. He has contributed to articles in the past but we'd like to formally welcome him to the AnandTech team. Saumitra will be focusing on everything Android and iOS. Welcome Saumitra! The tablet market today is a far more interesting place than it was just over a year ago. Since the launch of the iPad, there hasn’t been a real competitor to iOS in the tablet space. We’ve seen customized versions of Android for larger devices like the Galaxy Tab, but they’ve all had their fair share...