Un smartphone cruzado con un ereader

Este nuevo y loco teléfono que no se parece a nada que hayas visto

por Ben Geier - Fortune


Este nuevo teléfono tiene una pantalla LCD y una pantalla de papel electrónico.

Un teléfono móvil con dos pantallas ya está disponible a través de una campaña de IndieGoGo, y seguro que es otra cosa.



El Yotaphone 2, como su conocida, tiene una pantalla LCD similar a la de un iPhone o un Android. En la parte posterior, sin embargo, el dispositivo tiene una segunda pantalla más similar a un Nook o Kindle e-reader. Yotaphone afirma que este es el teléfono inteligente de pantalla por primera vez dual.



Pre-ordenar el teléfono a través de Indiegogo le costará $ 550. Durante las primeras 48 horas de la campaña, que se descuenta a $ 525. El teléfono se espera, finalmente, a un costo de $ 600.



Se espera que los envíos que se iniciará en agosto.

Más de $ 75,000 ya han sido recaudados por la campaña a través de las primeras seis horas después de haber sido publicado el martes.



El teléfono también tendrá aplicaciones nativas, al igual que otros teléfonos inteligentes. Un cargador inalámbrico portátil también está disponible en la página de IndieGoGo.

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Moleskine, una agenda computable asociada a iPad

This New Moleskine Is Like An iPad Made Of Paper LIKE TO BE CREATIVE ON PAPER BUT HATE THE THOUGHT LOSING YOUR BEST IDEAS? MOLESKINE MAY HAVE A SOLUTION.



Ask companies like Adobe and Fiftythree, and they’ll tell you that tablets are the future of drawing. Give in, and get used to the concept of touching a stylus to your screen. Because as hardware and software get better, you’ll be able to create the sorts of things you can only dream about creating on paper.



Moleskine--the preeminent journal company with no lack of self-interest in keeping paper alive--has presented the vision of another possible future. Its new Livescribe Notebook ($30) appears to be a typical, tactile Moleksine. Except, when you write on it with a $150 Livescribe smartpen (a pen known for turning written, paper notes into typed, digital transcripts), your doodles and brainstorms are not only automatically backed up to an app, they’re also infused with the conveniences of digital-native technologies.



The pen is programmed with the exact lines, margins, and buttons of the Moleskine paper, so it always knows where the pen is hitting the paper, which opens the possibilities for a gee-whiz user experience. If you’d like to tag a sketch to pull up later, you simply tap onto one of three icons printed at the bottom the page--a star, flag, or tag--much like you might tap an icon in your Gmail inbox. If you’d like to record a verbal note alongside your sketch, there are play, pause, and record icons at the bottom of the page, too. Additionally, two pull-out bookmarks offer some logistical features as well, like letting you update your pen’s Wi-Fi settings (complete with password support), pairing your pen, or scrubbing through your recordings.



Now, a Livescribe pen, coupled with a Livescribe journal, can already pull off a lot of these stunts on their own. The cleverness here is that Moleskine and Livescribe are both thinking beyond their own brands, and designed the book and pen to work in tandem.



Moleskine is a powerful brand that does $100 million in sales a year [PDF], which Livescribe can use to extend its reach. At the same time, more than 90% of Moleskine's revenue is from paper products. Livescribe offers Moleskine an opportunity to stay relevant in the digital age.

Fast Codesign

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Smartwatchs

Here's Our Favorite Apple iWatch Concept Design So Far

Business Insider


Everyone's hearts go aflutter at iWatch rumors, the supposed wearable wrist computer that Apple could launch as early as this year.

A designer named Todd Hamilton took a stab not only at what the still-speculative watch might look like, but how it might actually work to make calls. Check it out.

Here's the lock screen with Siri access.

Todd Hamilton

Slide to unlock and we land at the homescreen.

Todd Hamilton

Now you have access to all the apps and info you want.

Todd Hamilton

Hamilton created this video to offer a take on how we might use the iWatch to make phone calls.

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Se viene la tablet de 20 pulgadas

20-Inch Panasonic Toughpad 4K Tablet Arrives in January

• PC Mag
  By Chloe Albanesius

There has been a lot of discussion about how big is too big when it comes to mobile devices, mostly as it relates to super-sized smartphones, or phablets.

But what about a 20-inch tablet? Panasonic announced today that its massive Toughpad 4K Tablet will be available in the U.S. starting in January, and for just $6,000.

Before you contemplate replacing your iPad with this 20-inch monster, you should know that the Toughpad 4K is largely being targeted at the enterprise. An architect might use it to review blueprints, for example, while retailers could use it as an interactive display, or artists could work with a larger digital canvas.

"This is a full Windows 8.1 4K pen-enabled Tablet PC in the same price class as some 4K desktop displays," Microsoft said in a blog post. "Imagine being able to watch 4K video footage a full resolution on a tablet with screen real estate to spare! Consider being able to see almost all of your DSLR image area at 100 percent magnification. You can with the Panasonic Toughpad 4K Tablet."

The oversized gadget is pen-enabled and sports a 3,840-by-2,560 display, or 4K, with a 15:10 aspect ratio and 230 pixels per inch. It weighs just over 5 pounds. There's also a 1,280-by-720-pixel built-in front camera.

The Toughpad 4K runs an Intel Core i5 vPro processor and Nvidia GeForce GT 745M graphics. There's 8GB of RAM and the option of a 128GB or 156GB SSD.

Panasonic said the device can survive a 2.5-foot drop from the bottom and a one-foot drop on the other sides. It includes USB 3.0 and SD card slots, headphone and speaker jack, and a docking connector.

Panasonic first showed off the Toughpad at this year's CES, but it was just a proof of concept at the time. It made another appearance at the IFA trade show in Berlin, when the company tipped a November international release. Now, it's arriving stateside.

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Falla épica en una Chromebook

I Gave Up My Mac For A Google Chromebook Pixel And Loved It ... Until It Became A Brick At Starbucks

JULIE BORT - Business Insider

For the past two weeks, I've been working 100% in the cloud, giving up my MacBook Pro to use a Google Pixel Chromebook.

I loved it. Until it had an epic fail.

For the first 13 days, I was so happy that I was ready to recommend it instead of a Mac (with some caveats). But last weekend, I took it Starbucks and experienced such a disaster that I changed my mind.

Before I get into the Starbucks fail, I want to talk about the 13 days where things went well. With the Chromebook operating system, all work is done via cloud apps over the Web. Instead of using applications installed on your PC, you open cloud apps in Chrome tabs or new Chrome windows. 

You can save some files to your PC, too, though that's not the default. Mostly your files will be automatically saved in your Google Drive.

That was fine for my job because at Business Insider, we rely almost entirely on cloud apps. We use Gmail and Google Apps. Our main application, the "content management system" where we write stories, is accessed through a browser. Editors chat to each other through an online chat program called Campfire, or through Google Chat. I use Hootsuite for Twitter, etc. 

I opened the ChromeBook, signed into my Business Insider account and all my bookmarks to cloud apps and saved passwords were there. No downloading. No installing anything. It was great!

I had one problem: I also use my personal Gmail account for work. For instance, I use RSS reader Feedly and the only way to access it is to be signed in with my personal Gmail account. But I found a way to rig ChromeBook to sign into multiple Google accounts at the same time. (From Gmail, click on the user account icon and then "add account"). It wasn't hard, but it wasn't intuitive. That "add account" is a little hard to find.

Pixel and Chrome OS are fast and responsive, even when I have a lot of tabs open. No beach balls. No fan coming on, mysteriously heating up the device for hours at a time like my Mac loves to do. No bugging me to update my software.  

I was a happy camper.

One bad thing: Many Chrome add-on apps are still immature. For instance, the calculator doesn't support copy/paste. I had to manually type in numbers.

Also, the Mac blows the Pixel out of the water when it comes to image editing.

ChromeBook's default Photo viewing app is really weak. It won't even resize a photo (except to crop). I found a Chrome OS app called Pixr, which worked OK. But the Mac's apps, iPhoto and Preview, are far better.

The Pixel Chromebook does have a beautiful touchscreen, which worked great. I didn't need an external mouse.

For non-work things, like watching movies, it's also great, like the Mac. And because the screen has such high resolution, it took great screen shots, even when cropping and resizing photos to be bigger. 

For instance, here's a screenshot from the Pixel screen:

Google Pixel Screenshot

So, for 13 days, I was delighted. I even wanted to buy a new HP Chromebook for my daughter, who is in college. 

Then I took the Pixel to Starbucks. And the Pixel wouldn't let me log on to the Internet.

This particular Pixel has 3G, but it told me that the 3G network wasn't available. That was crazy. I was right in the middle of town, across the street from the college and 3G worked on my phone.

At Starbucks, AT&T requires you to sign an agreement before accessing the network. The AT&T sign-up page wouldn't load, no matter what (logging in and out, rebooting, going straight to the Starbucks AT&T page ...). Since that didn't happen, I got an error message that told me I couldn't use the network:

Business Insider/Julie Bort

Without being able to use the Internet, I couldn't access ANY apps. The file I needed was actually stored on the Pixel's hard drive, not in the cloud. But because I couldn't get to the cloud app Google docs, the file wouldn't open.

Business Insider/Julie Bort

The Pixel was a brick. I couldn't even take screen shots. (I took these fail pictures with my phone.)

This would never have happened with a Mac or a PC. Even if I couldn't access WiFi, I could open a file and work offline.

The upshot is, at under $300, like for an HP ChromeBook ($279, no touchscreen) a ChromeBook is fine for home, or school, where WiFi is reliable. 

But the Pixel costs $1,300 and for $1,100 you can get a new 13-inch MacBook Air. For $1,200, a new MacBook Pro. (Not to mention a countless variety of Windows 8 machines.)

So I don't recommend the expensive Pixel instead of a Mac. 

That said, I'm going to miss this Pixel after I send it back. For working at home on stable WiFi, I've learned to prefer it.

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¿Xiaomi vencerá a Apple?

Xiaomi has beat Apple in China, but can it win over the rest of the world?
By Iris Mansou




Quartz begins a series today profiling companies around the world experiencing explosive growth.

Lei Jun walks on to the stage like a young Steve Jobs. It’s September in Beijing and the founder of one of China’s scrappiest smartphone brands, Xiaomi, is about to unveil its flagship Mi-3 phone. This model uses one of the fastest processors on the market, retails at just over $300 and already has legions of fans.

On the surface, Xiaomi seems to have a lot in common with Apple. Phones are slickly designed, sell out within minutes and have a cult-like following. Lei even wears jeans.

But Xiaomi’s strategy is actually the antithesis of Apple—partly the secret of its success. Apple makes fat margins off hardware and services, while Xiaomi is barely selling its phones above cost. Apple’s budget model, the 5C sells for almost $500 more than Xiaomi’s latest model in China. To reduce costs even more, Xiaomi sells its phones almost exclusively online and the company has increased its sales projection from 15 million to 20 million before the year is through.

Xiaomi’s MIUI operating system is also more open bar than walled garden, which means that any Android device can run its OS and get access to Xiaomi’s store of apps, services and games. Xiaomi recently announced that more than 20 million users had downloaded its operating system and the store has had more than 1 billion downloads.

Indeed, Xiaomi has made its mark on in China’s much-coveted mobile market in a relatively short amount of time. The company is only three years old, yet in the last quarter it shipped more smartphones in China than Apple. The gap was close, with Xiaomi racking up 4.4 million phones versus Apple’s 4.3 million, but the figures still put Xiaomi in sixth place when ranked by the number of phones sold.


Xiaomi’s cheap and cheerful phones. CREDIT? Courtesy of Xiaomi.Courtesy of Xiaomi

And it is clear the company has its eye on the market beyond China.

Its recent decision to hire away Google’s former vice president of Android product management, Hugo Barra, suggests Xiaomi’s future may be elsewhere—even as it keeps breaking from the Apple formula.

Blogging about his first week in the job, even ex-Googler Barra was struck by the pace:

…it’s been a pretty intense journey so far.

The Chinese tech ecosystem moves at breakneck speed. I’ve never seen such fierce competition and such impassioned desire to build things fast. There’s a pervasive entrepreneurial spirit in companies both small and big.

Hiring Barra could give Xiaomi an edge when it comes to raising the company’s profile internationally, as well as when it comes to dealing with local carriers and regulators. “That could be an important part of the growth strategy, but they’ll also need to deliver on the other part of the strategy for this to work,” says Morning Star analyst Dan Su.

That other part is made up of content and phones. Cheap hardware and an open OS helped Xiaomi build a critical mass of users who it hopes to hook in with Xiaomi’s content and make it king. Once it has built a sticky online store, the company will be able to deliver the same content through any device.

Or at least that’s the plan.

“If they’re putting Xiaomi content services on non-Xiaomi devices, it’s very smart,” says Rajeev Chand, managing director and head of research for Rutberg, an investment bank. Why this strategy works: It maximizes Xiaomi’s customer base and so maximizes its money-making potential. It also puts Xiaomi in a strong position when negotiating content and attracting developers. All in all, Chand says it’s a “drastically different,” approach to that of its competitors Samsung and Lenovo, which are trying to make money from devices while bundling and under-selling content.

Xiamoi has been valued at $10 billion. Other evidence of explosive growth: if you compare the first half of 2013 with the whole of last year, it’s sold almost double the number of handsets and made double the money.

Although its fledgling roots are in smartphones, Xiaomi has spent 2013 trying to multi-screen, move into people’s homes and disrupt another coveted market—television. In April, Xiamoi started selling a set-top box. It added a 3D Smart TV for under $500 to its product line in September. There have even been rumors of a tablet.

In the post-mobile era, Chand says, “you want to be with the consumer throughout the journey.”

But it’s Xiaomi’s recent high-profile hire that helped catapult it into mainstream tech buzz. In an interview with All Things D, Barra said Xiaomi represented “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, truly a dream job, this idea of building a global company which could be as significant as Google, from the ground up.”

He added:

There is no question the phone business is very low margin today, but they want to get to a place where they can sell the device at cost and then sell high-margin services to make that phone experience even better.

The company’s already started to sell its wares in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but Lei and his co-founder, another ex-Googler Lin Bin, are hoping that Barra’s international contacts and expertise will really kick off the expansion.

In developing markets, Xiaomi’s quality-to-price ratio makes most sense. That’s why analysts predict it will start with its Asian neighbors first, namely places like Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand, where the opening price point is attractive compared to the competition.

That said, its international aspirations will prove to be a challenge.

First off, the content that Xiamoi has staked its reputation on is local to China, where Google’s online store, Google Play, has a weak presence. Creating a sticky online store in parts of the world where Google Play is strong, will be difficult, especially in countries which put a premium on brand-recognition, like European countries or the US. Second, there aren’t many precedents of domestic Chinese firms expanding beyond China, nor does the company have anywhere near the marketing resources of Apple. In countries where Lei’s magic doesn’t translate, that will count for a lot. With domestic success certain, what’s really at stake now is whether China can become a global contender.

Quartz

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Teclado de papel

Presentan un teclado delgado como una hoja de papel
Mide menos de medio milímetro; es inalámbrico y flexible; presentaron un prototipo para integrarlo en cubiertas para tabletas o en una mesa
La Nación


La membrana se transforma en una superficie sensible al tacto para detectar las presiones en las teclas. Foto: CSR

La firma británica CSR (especializada en toda microprocesadores de transmisión inalámbrica de datos) presentó un prototipo lo que considera el teclado más delgado del mundo.

Mide 0,49 mm de espesor, está impreso en una membrana flexible y sensible al tacto, y usa Bluetooth LE para comunicarse con el dispositivo que lo controla (una tableta, smartphone o PC). Según la firma, usa un estándar llamado Bluetooth Smart (hoy presente en Windows 8 y iOS 7) que permite economizar el consumo de energía mientras se usa.

El teclado tiene una latencia de 12 milisegundos, y además de las teclas clásicas incluye una zona que funciona como touchpad, y que reconoce los gestos tradicionales que pueden hacerse en él (pinzas, etcétera). La compañía usa una tecnología similar a la de inyección de tinta para imprimir las zonas sensibles al tacto (y conductivas) en el material sobre el que se crea el teclado.

Un video oficial (en inglés) muestra un prototipo en acción:



La compañía por ahora no planea, sin embargo, venderla por su cuenta, sino que la ofrece para integrarla en dispositivos de otros. Por ejemplo, en la tapa de una tableta, al estilo de lo que ofrece la Surface de Microsoft , pero con un espesor todavía menor..

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Nintendo llega con portátiles

Nintendo apuesta por las portátiles con el modelo 2DS
La compañía japonesa anunció una consola plana con doble pantalla, sin el efecto 3D y compatible con los juegos de los modelos previos hasta la 3DS; costará 130 dólares en Estados Unidos

La Nación



Nintendo lanza una nueva versión de su consola portátil con el modelo 2DS, plano, con dos pantallas y sin bisagra.

En plena batalla por captar la atención del público aficionado a los videojuegos, Nintendo presentó un nuevo modelo de su línea de consolas portátiles con la consola 2DS, con un diseño plano que deja de lado el sistema de bisagras utilizado en modelos previos. Asimismo, este equipo no tendrá disponible la función 3D en la pantalla, y costará en Estados Unidos a unos 130 dólares desde el 12 de octubre.

Con un diseño que se asemeja más a los primeros modelos de la emblemática línea Game Boy, la Nintendo 2DS posee dos pantallas, incluirá un puntero táctil, conexión inalámbrica a Internet vía Wi-Fi y una tarjeta de memoria de 4 GB.

Con la Nintendo 2DS como una alternativa de consola portátil económica, la compañía japonesa apuesta al segmento en donde mantiene un buen ritmo de ventas, con más de 32 millones de unidades vendidas de la 3DS desde su lanzamiento a comienzos de 2011 . En cambio, su equipo hogareño Wii U, con el que busca competir contra la Xbox One de Microsoft y la PlayStation 4 de Sony, tuvo un pobre desempeño en el último trimestre, con 160.000 unidades despachadas al mercado.

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Google pide a los ópticos que programen en Android

Google Asks Glass Developers To Start Working On Android-Based Apps Ahead Of Glass Development Kit Launch

TechCrunch

It looks like Google is about to unleash a new wave of more powerful applications for Google Glass. Currently, Glass developers can only build apps that are essentially web-based services that talk to the user’s hardware through a set of relatively limited APIs. At its I/O developer conference earlier this year, Google announced that it would soon release its so-called Glass Development Kit (GDK), which would let them build Android-based apps for Glass that can run directly on the device.

So far, however, Google hasn’t launched the GDK. Instead, Google today encouraged developers who are waiting for the GDK to start working on Android apps for Glass using the standard Android SDK (API Level 15) to try out their ideas.

As Google notes, developers can use the SDK to access low-level hardware to render OpenGL and use stock Android UI widgets, for example. Developers can also access the accelerometer of Glass through the SDK.

Glass, after all, runs Android 4.0.4, so it’s a pretty well-known platform for many developers. To help newcomers get started, though, the company also released a number of sample apps (a stopwatch, compass and level) today that highlight some of the things developers can do with Android on Glass. Over the next few weeks, Glass team member Alain Vongsouvanh writes on Google+ today, the team will also use these sample apps to “demonstrate the migration path between a traditional Android app and a full Glass experience.”

For Glass to reach its full potential, developers need better access to the device’s hardware, so it’s nice to see Google moving ahead with this. It’s still a bit of a surprise that Google hasn’t released the GDK yet. And the fact that it made today’s announcement indicates that it could still be a few weeks out. If you’re a Glass developer, though, now is probably a good time to start thinking about how you would use Android on Glass.

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La lenta tecnología de las baterías

CHART OF THE DAY: The Depressing Truth About Battery Technology

JAY YAROW

Here's an old chart that sadly still holds true today. 

While computing power has taken off, battery life has languished. 

Christopher Mims republished the chart today at Quartz. It came from a 2005 report by Joseph A. Paradiso of MIT.

Mims asked if there was an update to the chart. He was told there was no update. In other words, battery technology is still stuck. 

Business Insider

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Celulares: Nuevos modelos de bajo costo

Los celulares de bajo costo siguen dando que hablar

Te mostramos los nuevos modelos de baja gama que Nokia acaba de anunciar para el mercado mundial. Mirá las fotos, el video y contanos qué opinas de este tipo de teléfonos. 

Está claro que los smartphones de alta gama han copado el mercado con tanques como el iPhone o los Galaxy S de Samsung, eclipsando al resto de los teléfonos de menos cartel. Pero a pesar de la preponderancia de los teléfonos inteligentes en el mercado móvil, también existen otros teléfonos, no tan inteligentes. Hablamos de los llamados feature phones, móviles de gama baja que brindan todo lo necesario para aquellos usuarios que no precisan grandes prestaciones ni diseños y prefieren un teléfono que permita el acceso a internet, no se rompa a la primera caída y tenga un precio razonable. 

En este caso, Nokia -que tiene una rica historia en esta franja- acaba de anunciar la salida de dos nuevos modelos que siguen esa línea: el 207 y el 208. Ambos teléfonos cuentan con conectividad 3G, Bluetooth, radio FM, reproductor de Mp3 y tienen pantallas de 2,4 pulgadas QVGA. Además, desde la empresa finlandesa, hacen referencia al punto fuerte de estos teléfonos: su batería. Según los datos oficiales, ésta es capaz de tener una autonomía de 30 días en modo stand by. 

Las diferencias más significativas entre estos dos modelos, es que el modelo 207 no tiene cámara y usa una sola SIM y el 208 posee cámara de 1.3MP y cuenta con una variante con dual SIM. En tanto, ambos teléfonos estarán equipados con el sistema operativo de la compañía llamado Symbian y tendrán instaladas una serie de aplicaciones como Twitter, WhatsApp y Facebook. 

El lanzamiento está previsto para el tercer trimestre de este año en Europa a un precio de 68 dólares. 

Conexión Brando

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Stratays compra a su competidor

Stratasys just acquired MakerBot, the one 3D printing firm that could have disrupted it

By Christopher Mims @mims

Turns out that giving people the ability to 3D print random tchotchkes is worth about $600 million.

You can’t 3D print money, but Stratasys just did the next best thing in buying MakerBot, the one company with the potential to disrupt Stratasys’s 3D-printing business.

The deal will be transacted entirely in Stratasys stock, and the initial acquisition price is 4.76 million shares (worth $403 million today). Depending on MakerBot’s performance, an additional 2.38 million shares could be exchanged as part of the acquisition, yielding a total acquisition value of $604 million. Stratasys is up 3.3% in after-hours trading.

MakerBot’s revenue was $11.5 million in the first quarter of 2013, so a valuation of $604 million represents an impressive multiple. But it’s not an outrageous price considering that MakerBot, with its relatively inexpensive but capable 3D printers, was already eating into Stratasys’s existing business, and in time could have represented a significant disruptive threat.

“MakerBot is giving Z Corp and Stratasys a run for their money,” said Will Gibbs, founder of manufacturing automation firm Corvus and Columba and a 9-year veteran of the 3D printing industry. “They can’t sell their $50,000 machines anymore that are equivalent to MakerBot’s” in their capabilities.

Indeed, side-by-side comparisons of MakerBot’s Replicator and Replicator 2 printers and Stratasys’s cheapest 3D printer, the Mojo, show the Replicator coming out ahead by all measures, despite the fact that the Mojo costs $10,000 and the Replicator is just $2,200. This has led some veterans of the 3D printing industry to wonder, perhaps hyperbolically, how Stratasys would survive in a world full of MakerBot Repilcators and the vast open-source community that supports them.

In acquiring MakerBot, Stratasys isn’t merely capitalizing on all the hype that MakerBot and its charismatic founder, Bre Pettis, have managed to generate for 3D printing. MakerBot managed to make itself an attractive, even necessary, acquisition by following a script familiar to many disruptive 21st-century technology companies: Start with an inexpensive system and refine it over generations until it competes with higher-end technology, but at a much lower price.

http://qz.com/96109

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Análisis de la tablet Ainol Novo 10 Hero

Ainol Novo 10 Hero: Análisis y experiencia de uso en un precio muy contenido

Quiero que, para leer el siguiente párrafo, os remontéis a los últimos días de 2012. Llegaba de una mañana un tanto aburrida a casa, y Papá Noel personificado en cartero se presentó en la puerta con un paquete para mi.
Que casi no me pilla es otra historia…

Después de esta introducción un tanto navideña
cuando ya está muy pasado, toca hablar de los Android Chinos, unos grandes desconocidos e infravalorados. Muchas veces a la hora de escoger un Android ni los tenemos en cuenta, cuando se pueden encontrar verdaderas maravillas si buscamos bien. Hoy os traemos una Tablet china de gama media que cumple, aunque con altibajos.

Lo que hoy os presentamos es la Ainol Novo 10 Hero, una Tablet de 10 pulgadas y cuerpo metálico que procede de una empresa completamente china.  Bajo esa pantalla IPS con una resolución de 1280×800 píxeles esconde un procesador AMLogic AML8726-M6 a 1.5GHz, una GPU Mali-400 y 1GB de RAM.

Exterior

Cuando la cogemos por primera vez, nos viene una idea a la mente: robusta. El cuerpo de metal se hace notar (y también su peso), además de que da la impresión de estar muy bien construida. Los bordes son redondeados, lo que ayuda a agarrarla con las manos, y se hace cómoda de sostener. Un detalle es que los altavoces están situados a ambos lados del exterior, lo que mejora mucho la recepción.

Si nos vamos al papel, veremos que su peso es de 620 gramos y tiene un grosor de 9.9 milímetros, un poco por encima de la media. Aun así no se hace pesada ni de usar ni de transportar con nosotros.

A un lado de la Tablet tenemos todas las entradas: auriculares, microUSB, miniHDMI, microSD, micrófono/reset y entrada de alimentación. El no usar un estandar para la carga es a la vez una ventaja y una desventaja: no puedes usar el mismo cable que con otros Android, aunque deja el puerto libre para usar el adaptador USB OTG o lo que queramos.

Sólo encuentro dos contras al exterior de la Tablet: los botones están situados en una posición un tanto extraña, que se nota sobretodo al usarla en vertical, y la pantalla parece mancharse con solo mirarla (aunque esto es un problema de cualquier pantalla táctil).

Software y Rendimiento

Charmeleon Launcher es el Launcher de las capturas. La Tablet es completamente AOSP, como explico más abajo.

Aquí nos encontramos con Android 4.1 Jelly Bean sin ninguna capa de personalización: la única personalización que encuentras es varias aplicaciones chinas (que se pueden inhabilitar perfectamente) y multimedia en la memoria interna. Android en general va rápido, sin notarse ningún signo de resentimiento o lag, y con todo lo que trae Jelly Bean a Android.

El tema de la estética ya va según gustos: Holo es un diseño bastante bueno, y que no hace falta detallar. El rendimiento entra dentro de la media, y la contra viene si nos vamos a tareas más exigentes como juegos potentes, porque vamos a percibir en ocasiones el ya famoso lag. La reproducción de multimedia va sin problemas, ya sea por medios internos o externos (tarjetas microSD y USB). También lee sin ningún problema formatos no tan comunes, y la pantalla se ve estupendamente.

Pero hay tres pegas en el apartado del software (que haya podido encontrar). La primera es quelos valores que nos da el sistema sobre la batería son muy inestables y erróneos (desconozco si será un error de software o hardware). La segunda es que no sólo me ha pasado una vez que la Tablet se quedara completamente congelada, sin opción a hacer nada. Solo podemos o esperar a que se agote la batería o coger un alfiler y pulsar el minúsculo botón de Reset que hay en el orificio del micrófono. Y la tercera es que, sin saber muy bien por que, hay aplicaciones que no son compatibles en Google Play, y no te deja instalar (lo raro es cuando metes la .apk por tu cuenta y va estupendamente, pero eso es otra historia).

Sin embargo, a pesar de los errores en la medición, la batería rinde estupendamente. Con un uso de música, vídeos en alta definición y juegos, no tendremos que cargarla todos los días, como si pasa con la mayoría de Android. También cabe mencionar que utiliza un conector propio en vez del estándar (como he aclarado antes). Y hablando de Benchmarks, en AnTuTu Benchmark obtiene una nota de 9594, mientras que en Quadrant saca 2953 puntos.

Para terminar con esta sección, hablaremos de la conectividad: incluye un adaptador USB OTG, que nos permite utilizar memorias y otros accesorios que funcionen vía USB, y cumple su función perfectamente: desde memorias hasta periféricos. Incluye también otras funciones como WiFi o Bluetooth que funcionan como deberían, sin más.

Cámara y sonido

Si volvemos al papel, podemos leer que tenemos dos cámaras en el conjunto: trasera de 5MP y delantera de 2MP. Y si nos vamos al uso real, nos damos cuenta de que la cámara es uno de los puntos más flojos de todo el conjunto: cumple, pero deja muchísimo que desear cuando la iluminación no es la idónea. Las fotos de exteriores son normales, aunque no le veo el punto a sacar fotos de exteriores con una Tablet de 10 pulgadas
(además de que te mirarán raro por la calle). Y si pasamos a las fotos de interiores no encontramos resultados mucho mejores. Respecto a videoconferecias y usar la cámara delantera, cumple su función.

Los altavoces, colocados en una posición idónea como he mencionado antes, tienen mucha potencia y nitidez, por lo que no tendremos problemas al ver una película o escuchar música sin auriculares. También se incluyen auriculares, que se quedan en la media (que es baja, para ser exactos), y el micrófono funciona como debe.

Conclusiones

En el uso diario esta Tablet cumple perfectamente: hace todo lo que tiene que hacer un Android sin ningún problema. No tiene nada que envidiar a otras Tablets de ese segmento. Lo que tenemos entre manos es una Tablet de gama media, y cumple su función perfectamente, aunque sus fallos pueden ser suficientes para degradar la experiencia de uso diaria.

La Ainol Novo 10 Her0 es un Tablet ideal para el que quiera empezar en el mundillo de las Tablets Android de 10 pulgadas o simplemente quiera una con un precio bajo. Y si te tira hacia detrás que provenga de China, con eliminar o deshabilitar las aplicaciones de fábrica que incorpora sobra: es lo más chino que pueda incluir. Está disponible al público por, alrededor de los 200$ (que se quedan en unos 150€ al cambio) en tiendas online como Ainol-Store oPandawill (creo que en estos últimos está mas barata).

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