Hard sell: Motorola $ 800 Tablet Xoom, no Flash support

Xoom Motorola Tablet is seen by many as the first big iPad competitor, but its steep $ 800 price and lack of support for Adobe Flash suggest otherwise.

The forthcoming Motorola Xoom fell at the first hurdle in the fight against the dominance of Apple's iPad? After Motorola announced that its contestant iPad will cost more than a promo to iPad, Verizon discovered that Xoom doesn't support Adobe's Flash technology up sometime this spring.

Support for Adobe Flash technology has been a topic for the operating system Android because Apple's CEO Steve Jobs famously said that Flash is a dying technology and that it will not make up iOS devices for several reasons. Flash support in Android appeared with version 2.2 and Google even ostentatious as a killer feature for tablets running honeycomb (3.0), how the Motorola Xoom.

But it seems that Adobe and/or Google have yet to put the finishing touches on the implementation of Flash on Android 3.0. An advertisement for the Verizon website Xoom says (in section 6 below) that support Adobe Flash on Xoom is expected in the spring of 2011, which means that this feature will not be available at launch of the first tablet Honeycomb on 24 February. Considering how carriers and manufacturers are slow when it comes to software updates, this 2011 spring update could mean more like late spring 2011 ETA.

Meanwhile, Adobe said last week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that is still working on Flash 10.1 for Smartphones and tablets running Android. The company promised users dual core tablets and phones will benefit of HD Flash video, and up to 30 frames per second performance. Flash 10.1 for Windows and Mac was released earlier this month, but Adobe gave no clear indication when the mobile version of the plug-in will actually be available to users.

So far, despite initial positive responses from reviewers, the Motorola Xoom doesn't have two tests against iPad. Despite better specifications of Xoom, the Tablet is still the most expensive iPad matching. IPad 32 GB 3 G costs $ 729, while the equivalent of Xoom is $ 800, plus any contracts which may need to sign up with Verizon. Add that to the fact that the Flash will initially support, a feature is missing in the war against iPad, and do not accumulate possibility of Xoom to be suddenly a great success, that's okay.

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Disposable Flash Drives the future

[Photo: art Lebdev Studios]Here is a new concept for spies (or people who like throw away things)--disposable Flashkus "flash units.

In the near future (hopefully) you will be able to throw the data in the dumpster with these cardboard 8 GB or 16 GB, designed by Alexei Lyapunov, Lena Ehrlich at Art Lebedev Studio. It seems that these units will be cheap and produced on a strip of cardboard, so you should just rip one and write a note about it, if you want to give your friend a song, say, or carry some data fast with you.

Art Lebedev site suggests (translated from Russian) that these portable flash unit, disposable will be "even easier" from a floppy disk. I assume you mean that it will be easier to part with (more disposable, if you will).

Yes, the Flashkus is still just a concept, but it doesn't seem like one that is too far away. My guess is that people will CES before using them as suppliers, electronic press kit.

[Art Lebedev Studio via Engadget]

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NAND Flash consumption Tablet rise almost 400% in 2011

As the tablet market explodes, the use of NAND flash memory will do likewise in 2011. NAND is used in lozenges for storing content, such as books, photos, music and movies.

Tablet PC consumption of NAND flash is expected to grow from gigabyte 476.8 million in 2010 to $ 2.3 billion gigabytes in 2011, an increase of 382.4%. Shipments of NAND for tablets show no signs of slowing down in the years to come, finally hitting GB 12.3 billion by 2014, according to IHS iSuppli.

Average memory densities will vary from 27.1 GB for non-iPad lists at 41.5 GB in iPad. Windows tablet devices are typically with 32 GB to 64 GB of solid-state storage; This range of density is the highest that can be offered by the producers, while keeping costs down. Because most memory cannot be provided to Windows tablets without driving cost out of the sweet spot for price, however, the value proposition that supply is not as compelling as their counterparts in Apple or Android.

"The bump NAND consumption between blocks is likely to come from devices like Apple's iPad, as well as a series of Tablet devices powered by Android OS rival, expected to hit the market this year," Dee Nguyen, analyst for memory and storage at IHS, said as education. "Together, iPad Android-based tablets form a thread of Tablet PC experience offered by the producers of a centering on the consumption of Internet-based media. For these tablets, internal storage capacity is not a problem because the devices are intended to provide entertainment, not a full PC experience of computing ".

OCZ move 25nm NAND flash, customers are not happy

OCZ Technology announced today that it is the first manufacturer of solid state drives to complete the transition to solutions of NAND flash-based storage of 2Xnm. In particular, the company is using 25nm NAND flash chips to Micron, occupying less space and allows (possibly) great current capacity SSDs more 34nm chip, while also cost about 10-15% less.

The smallest chip began to appear in the vertex 2 and agility 2 drives last week, but so far there has been no significant price cuts from retailers who know neither OCZ is making a clear distinction between 25nm and 34nm SSDs. What some unsuspecting buyers indicated, however, is that the usable capacity on the newer units actually fell.

Storage reviews explains the reason behind this in a recent article and basically all comes down to the duration of the chip 25nm. You see, 25nm NAND is "good" for 3000 cycles of writing, while the old 34nm NAND reaches 5,000 cycles, so as to take account of this decline of OCZ needs to increase the amount of spare capacity which replaces the worn sections as a unit of living single cell degrades. As a result, newer units are always around 4-5 GB of usable storage space than the models themselves with 34nm--which is pretty critical when you are getting a bootable disc 40 GB in less.

In addition to the reduction of usable storage space, the problem would get even more frustrating for customers looking for a RAID 0, 1 or 5 installation only to discover that have units with capacity mismatch.

We note that this question is not exclusive to OCZ and how other top manufacturers releasing 2Xnm unit we will see probably a similar drop of usable storage space to allow guarantees and expected life spans remain the same. However, there is something to be said about the lack of transparency when it comes to usable capacity and failure of OCZ to label clearly what version you are buying--after all, customers are becoming less and less space for the same price and performance, while OCZ networks presumably higher profits with the reduced cost of small 25nm flash.

We hope that OCZ takes the major problem with this, but so far the only solution offered is for buyers of disgruntled send back their 25nm unit and receive a credit towards the more expensive 32 Gb die-based units. " Read the full article here.

Flash will dominate Smartphones, Adobe says

BARCELONA--while Apple rejects the value of Flash Player for its smartphones and tablets, which Apple mobile products do not support, the creators of Flash by Adobe Systems are pounding their chests about his promise.

Opera: TaylorAdobe Chip predicts 600% growth in the number of smartphones with the 10.1 Flash Player installed in 2011, reaching Smartphone 132 million and more than 50 models of Tablet PC with installed both the reader and available for download, the company said Monday. For the six months following the launch of Flash 10.1, more than 20 million smartphones were shipped or updated with it.

Platforms that support Flash in 2011 will include Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS and Hewlett Packard WebOS, among others, Adobe said at the Mobile World Congress, which began Monday. Adobe Flash Player 10, which offers new features such as Video Stage to offer better video performance on mobile devices, desktops and TVs on show too.

"Flash is hardly going away," said Anup Murarka, Director of product marketing at Adobe Systems ' Flash, in an interview. "Using points to continued growth."

The first 40 Smartphones with Flash, the most popular in the United States were in the Droid family, such as the x and the droid, Evo, HTC said.

"Apple's View is that users don't need Flash and can get on the Web without it," he said. "But we get comments that users can enjoy more of the Web with Flash".

Murarka does not make the case that customers buy specifically Smartphone for the Flash player, but he added, "is certainly something consumers have shown for the question."

Adobe provides the Adobe Air, a development tool that enables the delivery of applications for the Apple platform for iOS as well as Android, BlackBerry, Tablet OS and applications Air televisions. are available on Smartphones and tablets over 84 million already, Adobe said. More than 200 million smartphones and tablets will support air before the end of 2011, Adobe predicted.

Adobe also announced that its Digital Publishing Suite tools can now be used to create and distribute magazines for Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablets through software called Content Viewer for Android. One of the tablets concerned Honeycomb coming to market is the Motorola Xoom.

Publisher Conde Nast magazines, Dennis Publishing, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and National Geographic already use the Digital Publishing Suite.

In a statement, Joe Simon, CTO at Conde Nastezh, said that the suite is already used to produce digital editions of Wired and The New Yorker. "We are pleased to bring you some of the most loved magazines and the world's most influential for the Android platform," he said.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handheld and wireless networks for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @ matthamblen or Subscribe to the RSS feed of Matt. His e-mail address is mhamblen@computerworld.com.

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