Apple plays spoilsport. Tuesday night, while most manufacturers of tablets showed their latest Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the media were invited to attend the following week, the launch of the next iPad from San Francisco.
For four days, the electronics giants have yet done everything to make us forget the iPad and mark their difference. Two of them, Samsung and LG, have chosen to deliver their new tablets with a stylus, following HTC, which was launched in the last year in this niche. This accessory, which allows you to write or draw and more accurately on the screen, is rejected by Apple, who believes only the touch screen.
Much of the Samsung booth and was dedicated to the Galaxy Score, available in two versions. The smallest, launched in October, is midway between the tablet and smartphone (screen 5.3 inches diagonally) and can act as telephone. The new model, twice as large (10.1 inches), is a format closer to the iPad. Samsung will install software specifically developed for the stylus and a suite of creative software designed by Adobe.
LG, whose stand was a short walk from the Samsung, also gave a large place with a touch pad accompanied by a stylus. Also able to act as a (big) phone, the LG Vu takes a screen in 4/3 assumed to be more enjoyable to read books or magazines. Initially sold in South Korea, it will come with tools for professionals, facilitating note taking and annotation of web pages.
No innovation in displays
Apple's other competitors, who have not succumbed to the fashion of the stylus, for their part have chosen to focus on the graphics power against the iPad fast cash advance. Chinese Huawei and ZTE, prominent during the Barcelona show, presented every two shelves featuring quad-core chips, twice the current iPad. Asus has preferred him with originality Padphone, a laptop that can turn into a tablet or smartphone.
During the show, no manufacturer has, however, ventured into the field of screen resolution, where the iPad 3 is highly anticipated. The new Apple tablet should indeed be able to display twice as many pixels on the same surface, and achieve the same quality as the high-end smartphones. This type of screen, says "Retina display", is more complicated to produce, and therefore more expensive. It could cause supply problems iPad 3, as the site DigiTimes.
Apple's competitors have proposed no major advances in the software. They are in fact dependent on advances of Android, they do not control development. However, the system suffers from a lack of applications and is not yet as attractive as in smartphones, has recognized the head of mobile at Google, Andy Rubin. In two years he has sold 12 million Android tablets, against 50 million iPad. To reverse the trend, Google wants to encourage developers to write software compatible with all types of screens.
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