The Iconia Tab A200 Android tablet

Acer has been a little busy these last few weeks of 2011. They've put out the word that they remain committed to more Android tablets with the Tegra 3 processor in 2012. We've also seen a video pop out before an announcement of a new Iconia Tab in a very feel good 'Apple-esc' style of marketing. Now, Acer has put out an official Press Release for the all new ICONIA TAB A200 Android tablet.

The Acer ICONIA TAB A200, is running Android 3.2 Honeycomb, with an Android 4.0 ICS available upgrade in January 2012. It has a couple of tricks up its sleeve on why you would want this tablet over the currently released A500 or A501 tablets in stores. We'll get to those reasons in just a minute. The ICONIA TAB A200 comes with 8GB or 16GB sizes, a choice of Titanium Grey or Metallic Red color panels, 10.1 inch capacitive multitouch screen with 1280 x 800 resolution, 1GB RAM, 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor and a front facing 2 megapixel camera. It has an approximate 8 hours of battery life as well as the usual Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 and USB.

Kindle Fire No. 2 tablet While iPad still Number 1

The Kindle Fire, just out since Nov. 15, is destined to become the second-best selling tablet worldwide this quarter, according to one research firm.
"Just two weeks after its introduction, Amazon’s Kindle Fire already is shaking up the market, with the device expected to surpass all other iPad rivals to take second place in the global media tablet business in the fourth quarter," says analysis provider IHS.
What's also interesting is that there will be a huge gap between second and third place. By the end of the year, 3.9 million of Amazon's flagship Kindle will ship, garnering a 13.8 percent share of global media tablet shipments, "exceeding the 4.8 percent held by No. 3 Samsung, and second only to Apple’s commanding 65.6 percent portion of the market," IHS says.
“Nearly two years after Apple Inc. rolled out the iPad, a competitor has finally developed an alternative which looks like it might have enough of Apple’s secret sauce to succeed,” said Rhoda Alexander, senior manager, tablet and monitor research for IHS, in a release.
Amazon's secret sauce is what's helping it to such quick stardom: First, the tablet priced at $199, a bargain compared to most other tablets, including Apple's, that start at $499. Second is Amazon's huge content library and built-in base of customers.

Samsung Transform Ultra

The Samsung Transform Ultra has a 3.5-inch HVGA touch screen and 1GHz processor

The good: Like its twin on Boost Mobile, the Samsung Transform Ultra has an uncluttered Android Gingerbread interface, a front-facing camera, and a fair price tag.

The bad: The keyboard on the Samsung Transform Ultra could rise a little higher, and camera quality could be improved.

The bottom line: Folks looking for a phone with a QWERTY keyboard will find in the Samsung Transform Ultra a reliable midtier device, though $20 more could nab you an even better phone.

It's rare for parent carrier Sprint to show a handset after one of its MVNOs, but that's exactly the order of arrival for the Samsung Transform Ultra, which first debuted on Boost Mobile in early October, about three weeks before the handset became available on Sprint.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus review

We've already established that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a great tablet. Then, just recently, we summarily found that the 1.2-inch smaller Galaxy Tab 8.9 is an even better tablet -- at least for anyone who wants to take their slate places. So, following that logic, the even more petite Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus should be the best of the three, right?

Not so fast. We've been here before, and things weren't exactly great. The original Galaxy Tab was, of course, a 7-incher and wasn't universally well received thanks to a number of problems -- the first being a $600 MSRP. Another issue was an Android 2.2 build that tried its best but was ultimately ill-suited for tablet duties. This new 7-inch installment packs a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, a tablet-friendlier build of Android 3.2 Honeycomb and a somewhat more palatable $400 price tag.

So, it's clearly better equipped than its predecessor, but that one shipped a whopping 12 months ago. How does the newer, fancier Tab compete in this newer, fancier present? Read on to find out.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus review

Hardware
Samsung's last tablet really did look like a slate that was run through the wrong washing cycle and came out a size 8.9 rather than the 10.1 it started as. The 7.0 Plus, however, is a rather different beast, slotting in somewhere between the 8.9 and the Galaxy Note both in terms of styling and, of course, size.

Lenovo 10.1-inch Ice Cream Sandwich tablet with 1.6GHz Tegra 3 by year's end

You wouldn't think a giant like Lenovo would stop at just three (or four) Android tablets now, would you? In fact, a little birdie has informed us that said Chinese company will release a new 10.1-inch tablet by the end of the year, and unsurprisingly, Ice Cream Sandwich along with NVIDIA's Tegra 3 T33 are on the menu. Other features include 2GB of speedy 1,600MHz DDR3 RAM, a standard USB host socket (covered by a not-so-elegant pop-out flap), a back-facing camera of unknown resolution, a "Special Fusion-Skin Body" and, most interestingly, a fingerprint scanner that apparently doubles as an optical joystick on the seemingly flat backside -- only time will tell whether this layout makes sense. Our source hasn't spilled any info on the dimensions and weight, but judging by the photos in our gallery, this 1.6GHz quad-core slate should be significantly thinner than the IdeaPad K1 or LePad sitting underneath. As always, you'll hear from us as soon as we find out more.

Android Tablet Wars? The Evolving Tablet Spectrum

Android tablet devices are still struggling to define themselves in the marketplace. Unlike Apple's iPad, which has established a niche based on strong brand identity, its Android rivals are still a generic blur. Will they be distinguished by design specs or by the online stores they are associated with?

Android's tablet-form evolution is not purely a consumer-market issue. How this marketplace develops will have a major impact on Android use in the workplace. This in turn will help shape how IT at small and midsized businesses (SMBs) respond to tablet devices, mobility, and "the consumerization of IT."

Android Wars and Stores
Triggering the debate is the debut of the Nook Tablet. As noted by columnist M.G. Siegler at TechCrunch, this release coincides with early reviews of the Kindle Fire. What these devices have in common is not just that they are inexpensive Android tablets, they also both aim to leverage their association with bookstores--that is to say, with large-scale content providers.

This double development comes amid the ongoing struggle of Android tablet devices in general to gain a firm identity in the marketplace. Another TechCrunch columnist, Matt Burns, characterizes the current trend as the "PC-ification" of the Android tablet segment.

Tests Show Free Android Antivirus Programs Don't Work

A report from AV-Test, a well-known security software testing lab in Germany, says that free antivirus products for Android don't work well. In the lab's tests, many didn't find a single malware file scanned by them.
AV-Test gathered seven free products: Creative Apps Antivirus Free, GuardX Antivirus, Kinetoo Malware Scan, LabMSF Antivirus beta, Privateer Lite, and Zoner AntiVirus Free. Compared to two commercial Android AV products tested, F-Secure Mobile Security and Kaspersky Mobile Security, the free products were dismal failures.

The products had big differences in scanning capability. Some could only scan built-in storage, not SD cards. This isn't necessarily a problem because code can't execute directly off removable storage. In static scans of 83 Android installation packages (APK) and 89 Dalvik binaries (DEX), none of them more than five months old, only Zoner AntiVirus Free found more than 10% of the malware--32% to be specific. Four of the products found none at all. Zoner did much better in detection of malware at install time, finding 80%, or 8 out of 10. Three of the other six products found 10% or one in 10, and the other three found none at all. F-Secure and Kaspersky found all threats.

Some of these products are extremely popular. The Market website says one of them, Creative Apps Antivirus Free, has millions of installations. Many free antivirus products on the PC have excellent reputations and protect well, but these come from established AV companies that are using the free versions to sell pay versions with extra features. The free Android AV products might not have that advantage.

iPhone is New King Of The Enterprise

Recent survey shows that the iPhone has dethroned the long-reigning king of the enterprise, RIM's BlackBerry, for business use. Quickly catching up to the Blackberry is Google's Android OS.

Enterprise mobility provider iPass polled over 2,300 enterprise workers for its quarterly Mobile Workforce Report, and found that the iPhone now makes up 45% of phones used by mobile workers. This is up from 31% in 2010.

The BlackBerry, which was for years the preferred handset of the enterprise user, has fallen to second place. It now makes up 32.2% of the mobile worker market, down from 34.5%. According to iPass, this doesn't necessarily mean that the BlackBerry is losing its place in the sector, rather it's a testament to just how quickly its rivals are growing in popularity.

LG DoublePlay: Twice Your Android Smartphone Fun?

Android smartphones come in all shapes and sizes. But in most other ways they're very similar. Therefore bigger screens, higher-resolution cameras, and faster processors tend to be the hardware tweaks that manufacturers use to try to differentiate their newest model from both their competitors' and their own smartphones. LG's Android-powered DoublePlay takes another tack. Its unique hardware signature is dual touch displays.

The LG DoublePlay ships with Android 2.3.4 (a.k.a. Gingerbread). It is not clear if an upgrade path to Android’s latest OS, 4.0--dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich--will be available. T-Mobile’s official response is a vague "we are actively working with OEM partners to ensure that a number of eligible T-Mobile devices are upgraded to Android 4.0 in the coming months." Upgraded OS or not, the LG DoublePlay's modest screen size, display resolution, and single-core 1-GHz processor should not deter you from considering it as a combination work and play smartphone. The device combines several features, including a few unique ones, to make it an appealing choice for just about anyone.