What’s that? You want an eight or ten inch WiFi tab, but failed to place your pre-order for one of Moto’s latest earlier this month? Worry not, slate-seeking friend, for both the WiFi Xyboard 8.2 and 10.1 are officially on sale at Motorola’s website, with free two-day shipping thrown in for good measure. As a quick refresher, the 8.2 comes in 16 and 32GB flavors for 0 and 0, respectively, while the same amount of memory in the 10-inch form factor will set you back 0 more. Sound good? Head on down to the source links below, credit card at the ready, and Moto will gladly send one your way.

Motorola starts selling WiFi Xyboards for 0 and up originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 29 Jan 2012 03:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ZTE may have shown off a 7-inch tablet running Android 4.0 at CES, but the company still has a bit of a backlog of previously announced devices to actually push out the door. The latest to resurface is the ZTE V9A Light Tab 2, which we first saw at Mobile Asia Congress back in November, and is now confirmed to be hitting the UK in late February for £235 (VAT included), which should translate to something less than the 5 direct conversion if it ever lands in the US. That buys you a 7-inch capacitive screen, a 1.4GHz single-core processor, WiFi and 3G connectivity, front and rear-facing cameras, and Android 2.3 for an OS (with no word on a possible ICS upgrade). Those curious for more can find the complete specs from retailer Clove at the link below.

ZTE Light Tab 2 hits the UK next month for £235, still runs Android 2.3 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Jan 2012 23:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For the last few years, an alternate wireless network has been emerging in the U.S.; one not built by the mobile operators but by cable providers. Cablevision, Time Warner Cable, and Comcast have all launched numerous Wi-Fi hotspots in their service areas, and last week Bright House joined the club, turning on 2,000 outdoor and indoor hotspots across the state of Florida. The Multiple Service Operators (MSOs) have latched onto the idea of Wi-Fi as a way of extending their home and business broadband services to customers on the go, and its paying dividends. Why haven’t their mobile counterparts followed suit?

Apart from AT&T, U.S. mobile carriers have been slow to adopt Wi-Fi in their networks. Verizon Wireless only began limited use of Wi-Fi hotspots in big public venues last year. Meanwhile, Sprint and T-Mobile have been content to let their customers take advantage of the plethora of free Wi-Fi in the public domain, they haven’t launched any hotspots of their own. Even AT&T is being fairly conservative. It makes extensive use of use of the café/restaurant/airport network it acquired from Wayport to offload mobile data traffic, but it has only built outdoor networks extensively in New York City. In the rest of the country, AT&T’s outdoor access points are limited to handful of high-profile, high-traffic “hotzones” such as Chicago’s Wrigleyville and San Francisco’s Embarcadero.

Time Warner's Los Angeles WI-Fi network

In comparison, Time Warner’s Wi-Fi coverage of Los Angeles is a dense mass of polka dots covering major intersections, parks and public venues from downtown all the way to Santa Monica and snaking down the coast to Redondo Beach. The MSOs have even expanded their reach by signing network-sharing deals with each another, creating the cable equivalents of roaming networks. Wi-Fi has proven to be tremendously popular with their customers, who get to access the networks for free as long as they’re home cable modem subscribers.

The obvious answer as to why mobile carriers haven’t been as quick to pull the trigger the trigger on Wi-Fi is that they don’t need it from a geographic standpoint. Their networks already cover every conceivable area they could hope to reach with Wi-Fi, so the business case for carriers isn’t coverage; it’s capacity. As more customers consume more network resources, they place tremendous loads on the network’s high-traffic zones.

Many international operators have already gotten wise to the benefits of Wi-Fi for cheap data offload, probably none more than Free.fr, which is building its Free Mobile unlimited and data service on the back of 5 million Wi-Fi “nano cells” embedded in the set-top boxes of its broadband subscribers.

If you’re looking for an example closer to home, Republic Wireless is signing hotspot deals to create a “Wi-Fi first” service that, allowing it to offer unlimited voice and data for a mere a month. Republic acknowledges that it’s service is still experimental and it’s not sure if it can make its unlimited business case viable, but if it weren’t for Wi-Fi, it wouldn’t be able to make the attempt.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE
• Mobile Q4: The scramble for spectrum continues
• Report: The Ongoing Battle for the Digital Home

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Motorola’s been a bit cagey about its whole “project” for the Motorola Xoom, but it may finally be time to roll back the curtain to reveal, get this, a big ole pile of Ice Cream Sandwich. According to Engadget tipsters, the update has begun rolling out the mobile OS to a select group of Xoom owners — both the WiFi and 4G LTE varieties. It seems like the roll out begins tonight and continues over the weekend, bringing Android 4.0 to the star of CES 2011.

Motorola starts rolling out its Xoom project, opens up a big ole box of Ice Cream Sandwich originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Jan 2012 02:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While scouring Samsung’s booth at CES’s Digital Experience for that glorious 55-inch OLED set this evening, we came across a table full of new WiFi-enabled cameras and a camcorder. The logic behind the WiFi feature is that it enables direct access to Microsoft’s Sky Drive, E-Mail, PC Auto Backup, remote viewfinding and of course Facebook, Youtube, and Picasa right from your phone. The top of the line 9 WB850F — the F designation indicates it has WiFi — has a 16 megapixel BSI CMOS sensor, 21x optical zoom, 3-inch AMOLED display, shoots 1080p HD, and even has GPS with POI. The 16 megapixel 9 DV300F was also on hand with a 5x optical zoom, a 3-inch display and shoots 720p video. Samsung’s 14 megapixel 9 WB15F also sports a 3-inch AMOLED screen, and shoots in full HD with up to 18x optical zoom. The tied-for-least-expensive 9 ST200F still puts in a showing with a 16 megapixel shooter, 10x optical zoom while still capturing HD video at 720p. Samsung launched one HD camcorder, the 9 Q20 which packs 20x optical zoom, time lapse, and HD recording at 1080i @ 60fps. All of the cameras have a similar heft and are built with similar materials which should help narrow people’s purchase decisions to looking at what features they want and what’s affordable. On to the gallery!

Samsung’s WiFi-enabled cameras hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Jan 2012 02:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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