So as you may or may not know, Ralph and I went to the CTIA wireless convention in New Orleans this past week, and did some interviews with the fine people there.

Enjoy!

Liquipel – VERY cool, by the way.

Tablet Claw

Smart Sleeves

Wilson Electronics

PayPas Wallet

Huawei Media Pad 10

Clingo Bluetooth Tablet Case

Qualcomm

Cellular Repair School

Braven Bluetooth Speakers

QNX

Goal Zero

You can check out a video of C3 Technologies work here-  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHUbhgsimDs

Perhaps it’s because of my time living near Cerritos California where Visual Land is based, or their very attentive and cool presenters at CES, but ever since January, I have been waiting to get my hands on one of Visual Land’s new tablets.  And judging from the traffic on my YouTube channel, you have been too.

First some background; Visual land is a company that got their start in Personal Media Players, and it really shows in the way that they present their products.  Everything on their website has a very energetic feel to it, and they are the only company that I know of who lists the Ohms and Watts of the speakers used in their devices.

Lets get started then!

Hardware

The Prestige 7 weighs in at 298g (10.5oz), 19cm x 12cm x 1cm (7.5″ x 4.7″ x 0.4″).  It has a 7 inch, 800×480 screen (16:9 widescreen ratio), with 5 point capacitive mutli-touch.

The tablet has 8GB of onboard storage, and is expandable through a microSD slot (will support up to 32GB).  An A8 1.2GHz processor, 512 MB RAM.

It has the usual array of power button and volume rocker, along with a 3.5mm headphone jack, Mini USB (through which you can charge when connected to a computer, send data from your computer, or with the provided cable add a USB peripheral such as a flash drive), HDMI out port (you will need an HDMI C type cable), and the port for your wall charger.  A speaker on the back, and a 1.3Mp front facing camera (no back camera) finish off the tablet nicely.

Software

This little tablet runs Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich, and it is ‘vanilla’.  (No pun intended, but that is the term for an unmodified Operating System)  As such, its software really does not set it apart.  It does not have access to the Google market (play store), Perhaps in the future, that can be changed, but for the present, Amazon, GetJar, and other alternatives will have to do.

There are, at present a few hiccups with Skype.  Though the camera will produce Video Over Internet, because of some miscommunication between the camera and Skype, on the other end, it has pink and green lines running through the picture.  This is an issue which should be resolved in the next version of Skype, or so I am told.

Apart from this, all of the apps that I tried worked flawlessly.

Performance

This tablet is surprising in it power.  Having tested out a number of 7 inch tablets I have always felt like there was a noticeable decrease in performance from their 10 inch counterparts.  The Prestige 7 seems to plug along rather quickly despite its small stature.

The Average Benchmark scores for the Prestige 7 are:

• Quadrant- 1820
• Antutu- 3150

You can use these numbers to compare the Prestige 7 to other devices, and see just what I mean.

Battery Life

Two Edged Swords, that is the lesson here in tablet batteries.  Visual Land opted for a battery size that allowed for quick charging, as well as charging through not only the DC jack, but also the MicroUSB port.  That kind of decision sits well with me, because if I can just carry around a MicroUSB cable and not worry about lugging an extra cord, all the better.  Don’t misunderstand though, the wall charger for the Prestige 7 is quite small and light.

You can expect to charge the battery from naught to full in about an hour!  A bit more slowly if you leave the WiFi on when you are charging.

Here are the exact figures (all are given in percent change per hour):

• Standby -1.5%
• Netflix -45%
• YouTube -32%
• Browsing -20%
• Charge (WiFi on) +51%
• Charge (WiFi off) +82%

To be frank, the Battery life is not at all what I expected.  From our tests, you can go from full to empty in nearly two hours.  This is unfortunate, however I have heard that other reviewers have been getting much closer to the 8 hours advertised.  So it is possible, as always that my results in this regard are not typical.

The Wind Up

Here is the final score.  On the Forel-Ule scale, I would give this tablet a 17.  It gets great marks in almost everything; it can hold its own in both size and form, but the battery life leaves something to be desired.  All in all, it is a very affordable 4.0 tablet, with character in its design that sets it apart from the usual crowd.  If you are looking for a compact and light tablet on a budget, this should be near the top of your list.

  Whether or not buyers will choose an android tablet with a few more features over the popular Fire remains to be seen.  Many users seem to like the Fire and Nook Tablet for the ease of their UI, compared to the Tab’s Ice Cream Sandwich OS.

Microsoft has touted Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro as the main editions of Windows 8, running on x86 based PCs and tablets (both 32-bit and 64-bit). Windows RT is what has been previously known as WoA (Windows on ARM) and will only come pre-installed in ARM powered devices. Here are some of the main differences between the 3 editions:

Windows 8: Take this as the standard baseline edition. It will come with the  updated Windows Explorer, Task Manager, better multi-monitor support and the ability to switch languages on the fly. For China and a small set of select emerging markets, there will be a local language-only edition of Windows 8.

Windows 8 Pro: This will have a broader set of Windows 8 Technologies like features for encryption, virtualization, PC management and domain connectivity. Windows Media Center will be available as what they call an economical media pack add-on to Windows 8 Pro.

Windows RT: This is the touch and battery optimized edition of Windows 8 for ARM powered devices and will include touch-optimized desktop versions of the new Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and One Note.

Original news: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2012/04/16/announcing-the-windows-8-editions.aspx

April 22 will be the release date for this latest offering from ASUS in the US. Although pricing hasn’t been confirmed by the company, several retailers are taking preorders for $399 with 32GB storage. The 10.1″ tablet was shown at the Mobile World Congress show in late February, but no release date or prices were known. With a quad-core Tegra3 chip, and Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, this looks like a tempting tablet at a reasonable price.  The tablet display shows images at a resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels, and it also includes Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G LTE capability. The tablet has a 1.2-megapixel front camera and an 8-megapixel rear camera. It also has a micro-HDMI port so the tablet can be connected to TVs, and one microSD card reader for expanded storage.  ASUS’ previous tablets have been fairly well received, and so too will this one be, more than likely.  This tablet looks very much like the earlier versions, except for a sleeker look.  It should provide a better experience with it’s upgraded cpu and graphics.