Samsung might have already started rolling out the third generation of Galaxy Tabs with the Tab 3 7.0, but that doesn’t mean it has forgotten all about the aging members of the family introduced back in 2011 and 2012. In fact, one of those, the Galaxy Tab 7.7, is reported to be receiving some much awaited and at one point highly unlikely love in the form of beans. Jelly Beans, to be somewhat specific. Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, to be fully specific. The 4.1.2 update is slowly but surely making its way through Asia, being expected in Europe and North America in the...

Everybody’s coming out with tablet gift buyers’ guides this time of year (including us in not too long). I thought it might be a good idea to come out with more of a thinking guide, something to suggest ideas for you to consider while you read those guides—a “buyers’ guide guide” if you will. These are the primary considerations I think a tablet buyer should be keeping in mind. 1) Walled garden or the open road? Many of the most popular tablets this year are locked up in someone’s walled garden. The iPad and iPad Mini are no-brainers...

Best Buy Canada has recently listed another tablet, although this one is not yet available. Nonetheless, it's an interesting product listing because it does offer a potential release date for the Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet. And on top of that, the tablet is priced at $499.99 and currently available for pre-order. Getting back to that release date—the listing notes that “this product is scheduled to arrive in our warehouse on 09/26/2012.” Simply put, those who move forward with a pre-order can expect delivery towards the end of the month. Otherwise, the tablet will include a 10.1-inch (1280 x 720) display, quad-core 1.4GHz processor,...

"The smartphone in your hand is a marvel of innovation, packing sophisticated computing and communications technologies into a sleek digital device," writes Steve Lohr, in an article posted on the New York Times' website earlier today. "It is also a litigation magnet." The many specific and detailed aspects of the Apple-Samsung case, in which a decision was reached by a federal jury yesterday in San Jose, Calif., were indeed so complicated and confusing that the jury verdict form required "the jurors to consider 773 individual infringement claims at issue," according to a Cult of Mac post published on August 24. Nevertheless, the...

The tech blogosphere nearly convulsed with joy early this morning when engadget's Sharif Sakr posted an exclusive item about a new Galaxy Tablet expected to arrive in Best Buy stores in less than two weeks. (Currently, August 19 is the rumored date.) This special "Student Edition" of the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is indeed somewhat special; a keyboard dock (with Android function keys) and a USB connector are both included with the US$249 price tag. Also on board: a front and rear camera, a microSD card slot and 8 GB of memory.  For more details and specs, click on any of the links below. ∞ [Good...

Another ruling from a European court on the Apple vs. Samsung lawsuits over the Galaxy Tab’s design has come in, and it doesn’t bode well for Apple. An appeals court in The Hague, Netherlands dismissed Apple’s patent-infringement attempt to get the Galaxy Tab banned from sale in the country, following up on Apple’s appeal after a lower court’s similar decision in August. The court made its decision based on at least two pieces of prior art for each of Apple’s claims, determining that Apple’s claims were therefore narrow enough that they had not been infringed. Next week, a German...

CNET has a 3-minute video that bills itself as a “Buyer’s Guide” for tablets and e-readers, though it primarily focuses on tablets, and mostly the more expensive tablets—the iPad, the Galaxy S, and Sony’s Android tablet (which I hadn’t heard of before). It paints this trio of $499 tablets as the main attraction for buyers this holiday season, then spends a little time discussing the Amazon Kindle and Kindle Fire as alternatives. In the video, CNET’s Donald Bell refers to the Kindle Fire as a “good enough product”—essentially a device that will work well as an e-reader and...

Our sister blog Gadgetell reports that Samsung has started to sell the Galaxy Player 4.0 and 5.0 directly through its website, for $229.99 and $269.99 respectively. Both devices have similar specs: 800 x 480 resolution on 4” or 5” screens (just a bit less than the current iPod Touch’s 960 x 640 at 3.5”, but certainly better than its prior 480 x 320), 8 GB internal memory with a microSD card slot for expansion, front-facing camera and 3.2 megapixel rear camera (compare that to the iPod Touch’s 1 MP camera), Bluetooth 3.0, 802.11 b/g/n wifi, and Android Market access. They...

I’m not sure I follow this story, but if it’s true it could be important for the burgeoning Android device market. The blog Paris Lemon points to a story that’s been buried under today’s spate of Kindle news: Microsoft just issued a press release concerning a patent portfolio cross-licensing partnership it just signed with Samsung. Included in the press release is the sentence, “Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will receive royalties for Samsung’s mobile phones and tablets running the Android mobile platform.” Paris Lemon points out that this means that of the three major Android OEMs,...

A while ago I wrote about the paucity of Android equivalents to the iPod Touch, and suggested that Samsung’s Galaxy Player might be such an equivalent. Shawn Ingram at our sister blog Gadgetell has just gotten its hands on the Galaxy Player 4.0 and 5.0, and also the Galaxy Tab 8.9, and has posted some first impressions. In fact, first impressions are just about all it has of the two Players. (Ingram got his hands on a review unit of the Tab 8.9, and will review it more fully later, but apparently not for the Players.) It does note...

The Apple vs. Samsung court case in Europe over whether seems to get more ridiculous by the day. Recently, Samsung introduced as prior art footage from the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which depicted astronauts watching video on tablets that looked very similar to the design of the iPad. Inspired by this notion, CNet put together a photo gallery suggesting other patents that could be invalidated by science-fictional prior art—including a comparison of the Kindle to Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Of course, they neglect to mention that this isn’t even the first case of...

Ars Technica reports that Apple is again stepping up to the plate to defend its developers from patent troll Lodsys, stating in its most recent filing that it has every right to intervene in Lodsys’s lawsuits against its developers. Apple contends that its licenses to Lodsys’s technology extend to developers, who would not have the resources necessary to represent Apple’s interests in the suit. An interesting note in the piece is that Apple’s defense acknowledges Lodsys’s patents as valid, and is based on the doctrine of “exhaustion”, that its license extends to third-party developers. However, others are insisting...