Android Tablet Update

Folks in France will soon get a taste of Intel’s Medfield, Intel’s mobile chipset which could be about as powerful as Tegra 3 in many areas. The Santa Clara smartphone is heading to Orange later this spring, and thanks to German-based Caschys Blog, we now have some new benchmarks for the Medfield device. Caschy ran the Rightware and Vellamo browser benchmarks on the Santa Clara.

On the Rightware benchmark, the Santa Clara came in at 89,180, below the 98,272 score in the Galaxy Nexus, but slightly above the iPhone 4S’a 87,810.

When it came to the more well-known Qualcomm Vellamo benchmark, the Intel Medfield based Santa Clara phone truly shined. The Santa Clara scored much higher than the Galaxy Nexus, finishing slightly below the current industry-leading ASUS Transformer Prime. This is despite Medfield being a 1.6 GHz single core x86-based chipset.

This is not the first time we’ve seen Medfield being compared to the Tegra 3 chipset. Earlier this year, Medfield was clocked slightly higher than Tegra 3 in the CaffeineMark benchmarking tool, a single-threaded tool that doesn’t take advantage of the Tegra 3′s other cores. Today’s benchmark makes a bit more sense, as we’d expect the quad-core Tegra 3 to outperform the single-core Medfield, however slightly the difference may be.

While we always recommend you take benchmarks with a grain of salt, as they only tend to predict real world performance, today’s benchmarks give us good reason to get excited about what Medfield will bring to the Android table. We can’t wait to get our hands on a U.S. bound Medfield device, which could be coming as early as the next few months.

Who else is excited for Medfield? Would you consider a Medfield device over the likes of Tegra 3 and Samsung’s upcoming Exynos quad-core chips?

At Mobile World Congress, HTC proved they were returning to old form. With the HTC One series, they showed me beautiful design, top of the line specs, a stellar camera, and some great software enhancements. My daily phone hasn’t been made by HTC since the Nexus One, but the HTC One X is a device that could find a home in my pocket.

The One X has already been confirmed for AT&T and rumored for Sprint and T-Mobile, so US fans should have this device near the top of their wish list. We already covered the full specs and launch event, but we also spent some quality time with the entire One lineup. Check out our quick hands-on video to get a closer look at each device.

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Several months ago it looked like Samsung would unveil their 2012 flagship products at Mobile World Congress, but then the Korean company decided to hold off. Now Samsung has said they will announce the successor to the Galaxy S II (and maybe the rumored Galaxy Tab 11.6) sometime in the first half of the year, closer to commercial availability of the products.

For what it’s worth, I agree with Samsung’s new strategy. By avoiding the Mobile World Congress circus, consumers are still talking about the rumored Galaxy S III more than any other device that recently got announced. Using our buyer’s guides as evidence, Samsung still offers the best Android phone on every major US carrier and there is no need to rush out new devices.

When the time finally comes for the rumored Galaxy S III and Galaxy Tab 11.6, Samsung is poised to offer best in class processing and graphics performance. With their new Exynos 5250 system-on-a-chip, Samsung should be the first to utilize ARM’s new Cortex-A15 CPU core and Mali-T604 GPU. The chip goes into mass production next quarter and the CPU+GPU combination is expected to trounce anything else available at the time.

Samsung’s biggest competitor is Apple, so they are eagerly waiting on the big iPad 3 (or iPad HD?) announcement tomorrow to see how they will respond. Last year Samsung re-designed the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the span of one month to be thinner than the iPad 2, and I assume they will be trying to top Apple again.

Apple’s latest tablet is expected to feature a 9.7 inch retina display with 2048 x 1536 resolution, but Samsung also has their own next-gen display with 2560 × 1600 resolution (WXQGA).

There are all kinds of rumors about Apple’s next processor, possibly called the A6 or A5x. Speculation suggest it will either be a quad-core Cortex-A9 part, or maybe even a dual-core Cortex-A15 part. Apple has always been a leader in graphics performance using technology from Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR series, and that is expected to continue.

However, Samsung seems pretty confident in sticking with ARM-designed GPUs. In an interview with ARM blogger Katie Morgan, Samsung boasted about their upcoming Exynos processors. Massimiliano Villani, Senior Manager Mobile Marketing for Samsung, said “We benchmarked several GPUs and we found that the overall architecture of the Mali family provided by ARM is nowadays the best in class for GPU performance.”

Villani didn’t specify which ARM GPU would be used in the Exynos 5250, but we already reported from CES that Samsung is going with the Mali-T604. This GPU delivers up to 5x performance improvement over previous Mali graphics processors and is scalable up to 4 cores.

Hopefully, we will learn more details about Samsung’s upcoming products soon. Samsung just revealed some kind of special announcement for March 9th, but we think that is too soon to talk about any new flagship products.

I know I’ll be following Apple’s big event tomorrow to see what gets announced. Do you think it’s important for Samsung to try and beat Apple in GPU performance, or should they focus their efforts in other areas?

Heading into Mobile World Congress, the ASUS Padfone was one of the devices that I was most looking forward to playing with. I loved the ASUS Transformer Prime, so I figured the Padfone could be a hit too. However, what I found in Barcelona did not impress me.

The modular concept of the Padfone is a great idea on paper, but the final product might need a couple of revisions before it finds success. Where the Transformer Prime was sleek and sexy, the Padfone is fat and ugly. I found the Padfone with tablet station and keyboard dock to be extremely heavy, but most of that weight is for the batteries that can boost capacity by 9x.

The ASUS Padfone + tablet station + keyboard dock

I kind of see the appeal of expanding your smartphone view to a 10-inch display, but we will have to wait on the final pricing of the tablet station to see how practical that will become. ASUS also touted the benefits of one data plan for two devices, but I don’t know if US carriers would allow that. Back when AT&T released the Motorola Atrix, they charged extra to get mobile data on the lapdock accessory.

Overall, the Padfone will live or die based on how the carriers price the accessories and the mobile data plans. For someone like me that already uses a tablet and smartphone, there is not much desire for the Padfone as it is currently designed. Show me something new like a 13 to 14-inch laptop station for my smartphone, and then maybe I’ll be interested.

Check out the hands-on video of the Padfone below and let us know what you think. What price would you be willing to pay for the Padfone, tablet station, and keyboard dock?

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HTC easily had the best press event I attended at Mobile World Congress. Peter Chou is slowly becoming a rock star and I was on the edge of my seat during the entire 45 minute presentation, even after being awake for 40 strait hours. Thankfully HTC has uploaded the entire performance to YouTube if you want to check it out this weekend. And for those that don’t have an hour to spare, there is a condensed 5-minute version below.

While most of us were focused on all the new phones released this week at Mobile World Congress, the HTCdev team took the opportunity to release four new APIs that tie into the OpenSense SDK. Application developers can now tap into new features on HTC phones and take advantage of some of the advanced functionality available in HTC Sense.

• Beats Audio API: allows applications to take advantage of the Beats Audio sound enhancements on HTC phones that feature Beats Audio integration.
• Lockscreen API: allows applications to interact with the advanced HTC Sense lock screen, which enables application interaction without the need for unlocking the device.
• Mobile Device Management API
• HTC MediaLink HD API: allows applications freedom to wirelessly interact with the Media Link HD accessory for display on a second screen.

We’re really excited to see what developers can create with these new APIs. We hope most streaming music and video services add Beats Audio integration to their apps as quickly as possible. It would be nice to see how various apps try to integrate notifications or app controls into the HTC lockscreen.

We don’t know what the limitations are with the HTC Media Link HD API, but we’re hoping developers will be able to take advantage of the same features HTC was showing off this week. These features allow users to interact with the device while content is being streamed to a second display. If we let our imagination run wild, we could see game developers adding a custom control interface on the device while the game streams on the second screen.

Is there anything you’re hoping developers will whip up with these new HTC APIs?

Google has made the full video of Chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt’s Mobile World Congress keynote available for your viewing pleasure on its YouTube channel. I haven’t had a chance to watch the keynote for myself just yet, but Mr. Schmidt spends over an hour talking about the future of technology and how Google will play a prominent role in how that future will be shaped.

From 1Gbps and beyond fiber networks, Chrome and Android, to driverless cars to holographs and support for small businesses, it can all be found in Schmidt’s talk, which is embedded below. We’d love to hear your reactions to what Mr. Schmidt had to say in Barcelona. Be sure to drop us a note in the comments.

Andy Rubin isn’t the only one spilling his guts to reporters at Mobile World Congress this week. T-Mobile USA’s Andrew Sherrard also spent a moment talking about the future of the company he works for, confirming that once T-Mobile finishes rolling out its 42Mbps HSPA+ network, they’ll be skipping straight to LTE and abandoning all plans to deploy 84Mbps HSPA+.

T-Mobile may have been previously committed to brining their network up to speed by utilizing HSPA+ technology, but not anymore. Instead of using spectrum obtained from the botched AT&T merger to buildout an 84Mbps HSPA+ network, T-Mobile will instead use this spectrum to focus on LTE.

Magenta still faces the same problems with LTE as it would have with 84Mbps HSPA+, but as LTE has a brighter future ahead of it, they believe that’s where they should be placing energy and money. In order to successfully deploy LTE, T-Mobile is going to have to refarm spectrum, putting a strain on their 2G network. Sherrard said T-Mobile doesn’t imagine this will be a problem however, as more and more T-Mobile users are using 3G devices. T-Mobile will also stop carrying devices that don’t offer 3G access.

Plans to launch an LTE network for T-Mobile subscribers should come to fruition as soon as early 2013. By the beginning of next year, T-Mobile expects LTE to be available in the majority of the top 50 markets in the US. Abandoning the deployment of HSPA+ 84 and focusing on LTE should help the company achieve this goal.

I’ve been with T-Mobile myself for over five years now, watching my carrier of choice play catchup at every turn. If placing all of their resources on LTE means T-Mobile could finally catch up for once, I’m all for it. How about you?

Mobile World Congress is chock full of device announcements and product details, but as with any trade show, the most interesting news always comes from the CEOs and Vice President-types behind the biggest names in the industry. Google’s Andy Rubin sat down with reporters at MWC this year, the topic of the day being Google’s acquisition of Motorola. Rubin wasn’t shy when it came to sharing his feelings on the acquisition, leaving the press with a handful of quotes on how Google will manage their newly acquired company.

Andy Rubin was, and still is, a supporter of Google’s acquisition of Motorola. But now that the deal is nearing completion, he doesn’t want anything to do with the big M. Speaking with reporters at Mobile World Congress yesterday, Rubin said he “sponsored” the deal in its earlier stages, but has completely backed away at this point. In turn, Google will essentially take the same route.

With long time Googler Dennis Woodside taking control of the reigns over at Motorola, Rubin said he was “painfully aware” of doubts that Google and Motorola will still operate as two separate entities, but that Google has “literally built a firewall” between the companies. Rubin continued on to say that he has absolutely no idea what Motorola is doing hardware or software wise, saying “I don’t even know anything about their products… They’re separate from me, and I’m going to continue to do my thing.”

Of course, Google’s decision to operate the two companies apart from each other has a lot to do with fostering a competitive environment with other Android manufacturers. Fierce competition is what’s led Android to where it is now and what’s put Motorola into the position it’s in today. Rubin wrapped up his time with reporters by saying that, “Even if I was completely insane, it wouldn’t make any sense for me to think that we could get Motorola to be 90-plus percent marketshare. It just isn’t gonna happen.” Well said, Andy. Well said.

It has been a while since ASUS unveiled the its tablet/phone hybrid PadFone. But at Mobile World Congress, the manufacturer has finally put an end to the waiting, officially announcing almighty ASUS PadFone will be released come April.

Expectations have changed over time, and this device is not as powerful as we used to see it, anymore. But it offers some great functionality, combining the convenience of three form-factors in a single device. As a standalone device, the phone is a regular 4.3-inch smartphone. Its specs include a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor, a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED qHD display and Android 4.0 for your Ice Cream Sandwich fix.

What makes this device special, though, is that it functions as multiple devices. Android 4.0 has probably made this simpler to accomplish, as the platform united the tablet and smartphone ecosystems. The ASUS PadFone is able to be docked into a 10.1-inch tablet dock (which adds 5 times the battery life) and  transforms it into a full tablet.

This is all old news, but ASUS has added an extra form-factor we only recently heard of. There is a third piece to the equation, which is a keyboard dock that locks into the tablet similar to the Transformer series. So we have a phone, a tablet and a netbook, all united by a single device.

If that isn’t enough, there is also a stylus headset available. This device can be used as a stylus and easily transformed into a bluetooth headset for answering and making calls.

This should be the ultimate Transformer, right? Everything just becomes something else. Let’s wait for April to hear more details about pricing and availability, and hope that nothing delays its release this time. Take a look at some good images from our friends at The Verge, and let us know what you think. Are any of you interested in this mega-hybrid device?

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