Tablets

The iPad Mini will get a refresh in the third quarter with a Retina display, NPD DisplaySearch predicted.  “We see two refreshes coming. One in the second half of this year, then one in Q1 [first quarter] of 2014,” analyst Richard Shim told CNET.  “The Q1 [2014] device will have a Retina display plus an Continue Reading →

In Apple’s seemingly endless quest to make its products lighter and thinner, the company may have come up with a clever way to save space in future versions of the iPhone and iPad: by using curved batteries that nestle more comfortably into its devices’ contours. AppleInsider has found a pair of Apple patent filings that Continue Reading →

Barnes & Noble’s refusal to open its ecosystem has long been one of our primary complaints about the company’s tablet offerings. The Nook HD and HD+ are extremely nice pieces of hardware that have been held back by their own walled software offerings — having a fast device with a nice screen only gets you Continue Reading →

The United States Department of Defense will reportedly grant security approval to Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones and Apple’s iPhone and iPad running iOS 6 for use by Pentagon officials, according to The Wall Street Journal. Both companies have been pressing officials to grant them clearance and allow Defense employees to switch from outdated BlackBerry devices. The Continue Reading →

That chomping sound you hear is the iPad mini eating into the sales of its older sibling. Unnamed sources have told Digitimes that Apple shipped 12.5 million iPad minis last quarter that accounted for roughly 64% of all iPads shipped. The reported iPad mini shipment numbers would give Apple’s 8-inch tablet a significant edge over the Continue Reading →

Amazon announced a number of new features for its Kindle for iOS app that aim to make it easier to use for blind and visually impaired users. Wednesday’s update, Amazon says, will make it easier for these users to use features like “X-Ray, End Actions, sharing, highlighting and bookmarking.” Amazon says these new features are Continue Reading →

As BlackBerry launches its keyboard-equipped Q10 smartphone, CEO Thorsten Heins is once again downplaying the importance of tablets in the mobile market. “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,” Heins told Bloomberg in an interview. “Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as Continue Reading →

Samsung is announcing on Monday a 7-inch tablet running Android 4.1 called the Galaxy Tab 3, but to our eyes, it doesn’t look much different from the current 7-inch Tab 2. The previous Tab’s 1 GHz dual-core processor gets upgraded to a 1.2GHz chip, and the newer tablet offers 16GB of internal storage as an Continue Reading →

Say what you like about Windows 8, but before it arrived Microsoft’s presence in the tablet sphere was as small as it was stagnant. By the reckoning of number-crunchers at Strategy Analytics, just 400,000 Windows-running slates were shipped globally in Q3 of last year — a figure that was largely unchanged from the year before Continue Reading →

The number of device installs for free apps in the Google Play store is over ten times bigger than the Amazon Appstore in the United States, according to new research conducted by Distimo. The mobile app store analytics company found that the top 200 free apps in the Amazon Appstore were downloaded 16 million times Continue Reading →