California-based Tactus has a solution to satisfy demands for both touchscreens and physical buttons-- "morphing tactile surface" technology making real buttons appear on a touchscreen.

The technology inflates "tixels" (Tactile Pixels) at specific areas of the screen with small amounts of fluid, forming squishy, tactile buttons. Once the buttons are disabled the display returns to conventional touchscreen form.

A CES 2013 demo has the technology integrated into a 7-inch Android tablet, but Tactus Continue reading...

So the Project Fiona tablet might not be CES 2012 vapourware after all-- it makes a CES 2013 appearance as the Razer Edge, a Windows 8 tablet with a nifty peripheral selection.

By itself the Edge looks like a regular tablet. It has a 10.1-inch display, is 25% thicker than an iPad and carries either Intel Core i5 processor, Nvidia GT640M GPU, 4GB RAM and 64GB SSD or Core i7 processor, 8GB RAM and up to 256GB SSD (in the "Pro" variant), making it powerful enough to play most current PC games.

A Continue reading...

Thin and flexible displays have get the spotlight at CES 2013 with the debut of the PaperTab-- a flexible and thin tablet that looks and feels like a sheet of paper.

A collaboration between eReader maker Plastic Logic, Intel and the Queen's University Human Media Lab, the PaperTab is a 10.7-inch prototype running on a Core i5 processor with a black and white display.

While capable of running by itself, the CES prototype is designed for collaborative use-- multiple PaperTabs share a work area through Continue reading...

Microsoft might not have an official presence at CES 2013 (it has no stand and left Qualcomm with keynote duties) but it did not decline from making an announcement at the show-- the next Surface tablet, the Surface Pro.

Shown to the press in pre-production form, the Surface Pro is Surface on steroids. Display resolution is up from 1366 x 768 to 1920 x 1080, and the touchpanel handles active pen input via included stylus (which magnetically snaps on the side of the tablet when not in use).

Pen input is pressure sensitive and reportedly feels rather natural.

Hardware is somewhat rejigged from the regular Surface-- the Pro is thicker (13.5mm instead of 9.4mm) and heavier thanks to beefed up hardware (Core i5 processor, x2 fans and a 42.5Wh battery). Even the kickstand is slightly different, angling the device at 26 degrees instead of 22 degrees.

We already reported on a few Nokia Windows 8 tablet rumours over the past year-- now DigiTimes insists the company will "likely" reveal such a device in 2 months' time at Mobile World Congress 2013.

Originally meant for a Q4 2012 release, the Nokia Windows 8 tablet met delays due to the launch of Windows RT (the current supposed OS for the device) and the Microsoft Surface announcement.

A launch during MWC 2013 however makes sense-- Nokia will not have a big presence at CES 2013, making the Spanish Continue reading...

In an unusual publicity exercise Razer goes for crowdsourcing to decide on the specs for the "Project Fiona" tablet-- asking Facebook users what they actually want inside the tablet "designed for gamers by gamers."

To think we assumed the Fiona was just a fairly interesting concept design that was never to be seen or heard of again, like the Switchblade and Blade gaming laptops.

But what do the people want inside a 10-inch Windows 8 tablet? Power, mainly. Consensus demands an Intel Core i5 or Continue reading...

Will eReaders go the way of the dodo within the next few years? IHS iSuppli believes exactly that, reporting the market is "in an alarmingly precipitous decline."

That the devices will collapse soon after a fairly spectacular rise might not surprise some-- not when tablets are breaking records for both customers' hearts and wallets.

According to iSuppli 2012 eReader shipments will drop by -36% to 14.9 million units, down from 23.2m in 2011, before contracting even further by -27% (to 10.9m units) in 2013 and to just 7.1m units by 2016.

If such totals are the case, no wonder the analyst describes 2011 as the peak year for eReaders. The numbers also represent a shift from growth to collapse unprecedented even in a market as notoriously volatile as CE. The eReader took consumer space by storm on 2006, with shipments growing from 1m to 10.1m (up by a factor of 10) from 2008 to 2010.

Acer improves on the C7 Chromebook with the C710-2605-- a laptop with an 11.6-inch display following the Google model with more storage, memory and a bigger battery.

Alongside 4GB of RAM, 500GB HDD and a 5000mAh battery, the Acer Chromebook also carries a 1.1GHz Celeron processor, built-in webcam, x3USB HDMI and VGA ports.

Internet connectivity comes through either 802a/b/g wifi or ethernet LAN.

This being a Chrome OS machine Acer also throws 2 years worth 100GB of cloud-based Google Drive storage. Continue reading...