Ricoh eQuill ePaper business tablet hits the FCC

• Email

At first glance the Ricoh eQill looks like just another eReader with an E Ink display. But it’s actually an enterprise tablet designed to fit into a paperless (or at least paper-less) office. The idea is that the eQuill connects to your server over WiFi or 3G and lets you read and sign documents without wasting any paper.

It’s not a device that you’re likely to pick up to read the latest Dan Brown novel, but is instead aimed at health care, police, insurance, and other industries where mobile access to documents is important.

The device has a 9.7 inch, 1280 x 825 pixel E Ink display and 8GB of storage, which Ricoh says is enough storage space for about 25,000 pages worth of content. It gets up to 20 hours of battery life and includes a stylus for text input, a camera, and a voice recorder, as well as a software keyboard.

The device has a TI OMAP 3621 processor, 256MB of RAM, and a 5MP camra. It measures 7.4″ x 9.7″ x 0.4″ and weighs about 1.1 pounds.

Ricoh introduced the eQuill earlier this summer, promising it would launch soon with a starting price of $500 or less. While there’s still no word on the official launch date or price, the eQuill showed up at the FCC this week, which is a pretty good sign it’s inching closer to release.

Posted on Saturday, September 10th, 2011, 9:36 am by Brad Linder

http://liliputing.com/2011/09/ricoh-equill-epaper-business-tablet-hits-the-fcc.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Liliputing+%28Liliputing%29

Freescale i.MX515 tablet shows up at the FCC

Apparently someone forgot to name this Android tablet, because it showed up at the FCC website this week with a user manual describing it simply as a Freescale IMX515 PC. Since Freescale is a chip designer that just happens to have a mobile processor called the i.MX515, I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that’s not the final name for this tablet. It’s just a placeholder name.

Anyway, the tablet was submitted to the FCC by a Chinese company called Shaoxing Longxin Electronics. I have no idea if it will ever go on sale in the US.

It has a kind of boxy design, a 1.3MP front-facing camera, a mic, memory card slot, mini-USB port, and a few buttons on the front for navigating the Android operating system. This tablet is designed to run Google Android 2.x and not the new tablet-friendly Android 3.x Honeycomb which is designed for device without buttons.

In fact, there are a few other buttons missing from this tablet as well — it doesn’t have volume buttons on the case. Instead you have to tap the volume up and volume down icons that appear in the status bar. That means you can’t adjust the volume when the display is off or when you’re using a full-screen app which covers the status bar.

Aside from the processor, ports, and buttons, there aren’t any specs available for this tablet. My guess is that it has a 7 inch display, but I can’t say whether it uses a capacitive or resistive touch panel or what kind of display resolution it has.

Update: It looks like this could be the SkyPad Alpha — or another tablet based on the same design.

Posted on Thursday, July 28th, 2011, 8:58 am by Brad Linder

http://liliputing.com/2011/07/freescale-i-mx515-tablet-shows-up-at-the-fcc.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Liliputing+%28Liliputing%29

Pandigital SuperNova: 8 inch Android tablet and eReader

• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 2

Pandigital has a long record of releasing Android tablets and calling them eBook Readers to keep your expectations low.The company’s latest device made a stop at the FCC this week, and brought some photos and a user manual along for the ride. It’s called the Pandigital SuperNova, and it’s described as a Tablet eReader, so it looks like Pandigital is embracing its Android side.

The SuperNova ships with the Barnes & Noble NOOK eBook app and store preloaded. But as a general purpose Android tablet there’s nothing stopping you from installing any eReader app you like.

The tablet features an 8 inch, 600 x 800 pixel capacitive touchscreen display and runs Google Android 2.3 Gingerbread. It has 4GB of storage, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, HDMI output, a built-in mic and stereo speakers, and a mini USB port. There’s a front-facing 0.3MP camera and a rear 3MP camera. It measures 6.25″ x 8.5″ and features a 12.6 Whr battery.

It appears the tablet is powered by an ARM Cortex-A8 chip from Samsung called the S5PV210AH-80.

The user manual also suggests you can connect a keyboard, mouse or other USB peripheral to the Pandigital SuperNova — which is odd, because that’s a feature that’s built into Google Android 3.1 Honeycomb, but I wasn’t aware that it was available in Gingerbread. I suppose it’s possible that Pandigital developed its own software to support USB accessories.

You won’t find any information about the price or launch date, but given the specs I suspect the Pandigital SuperNova will be rather cheap for an Android tablet, but kind of expensive for an eBook reader.

Posted on Thursday, July 28th, 2011, 3:50 pm by Brad Linder

http://liliputing.com/2011/07/pandigital-supernova-8-inch-android-tablet-and-ereader.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Liliputing+%28Liliputing%29

Chinese tablet with HDMI, Android 2.3 hits the FCC

• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 2

It seems like every day another tablet running Google Android hits the market in China. Every now and again these Chinese tablets from manufacturers you’ve never heard from also make it to the US where they typically sell for very low prices. And on even more rare occasions, the tablets actually feature halfway decent specifications.

A new tablet labeled as M722HC from Shenzhen Yifang Digital Technology showed up at the FCC this week. It runs Google Android 2.3 Gingerbread and has a 7 inch, 800 x 480 pixel capacitive touchscreen display.

If you can get over the relatively low screen resolution the rest of the specs look pretty decent, including a 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor, 512MB of RAM, and support for 1080p HD video playback in a variety of formats including H.264, DiVX, Xvid, and MPEG1 or MPEG 2. The tablet also features an HDMI port for sending HD video to an external display.

It also supports a range of audio formats including MP3, AAC, WAV, OGG, and FLAC.

According to the user manual the M722HC should get about 6 hours of battery life when watching videos or surfing the web over WiFi. It supports 802.11b/g/n WiFi and has a USB port, microSD card port, and headset jack. The tablet has a g-sensor for automatic screen rotation and comes with between 2GB and 16GB of storage space.

There’s no word on how much the tablet will cost or where it will be available. In fact, it may never actually appear on store shelves in the US. But before any device with a wireless radio can be sold in the US it has to go through the FCC, so the fact that the M722HC has already passed that step is a good indication that someone’s at least hoping to sell it in the States.

Posted on Wednesday, July 27th, 2011, 4:25 pm by Brad Linder