Show notes for this episode:

• The Roku 3 is available for $100 online, and will come to retail stores some time in April. More information about the device can be found on Roku’s website.
• Roku 3 comes with apps for most major content providers, but still doesn’t have its own YouTube app. Check here to learn how to play YouTube videos on Roku.
• Check out our e-book Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable to learn more about various devices that help you to get rid of cable. The book is available for $5 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and iTunes.

What’s your take on the new Roku, and especially the headphone jack? Worth a buy, or just a gimmick? Sound off in the comments below, get in touch with us on Twitter (@cordcutters) or email us at cordcutters @ gigaom.com. Also, please check out our new Google+ Cord Cutters community!

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Smart TV forecast: gigabit Wi-Fi in the living room
• Connected consumer third-quarter 2012
• Over the top in 2012: trends and technologies to watch

Finally, a new design out of HTC

HTC has churned out  dozens of smartphones over the past several years, but many have been incremental upgrades over the prior models. Not so for the HTC One S, which is part of HTC’s new One line. The One S has a refreshing look and feel that’s greatly improved. If you like a thin handset, the One S is right up your alley: At 7.8 millimeters, it’s HTC’s thinnest yet. And the 4.3-inch display is a nice compromise in size between smaller screened phones — I’m looking at you iPhone — and handsets that can double as small tablets. Weight is a scant 119.5 grams, or 4.2 ounces.

HTC beveled the sides of the phone where the display meets the case, making for a trapezoidal, comfortable feel in the hand. Below the screen are three capacitive buttons: Home, Back and Recent Apps. I don’t miss the Search button, but if you’re a daily user of it on a current Android phone, this configuration will take some getting used to.

Another difference? The back isn’t removable, which means you can’t replace the 1650 mAh battery. Instead, there’s a small cover that slides off to expose the microSIM card slot. I didn’t find the integrated battery to be problem, as I was getting through every day on a full charge with what I consider average use.

Sights and sounds are very good

The 8-megapixel camera with f/2.0 aperture in the One S may be the best yet for an HTC device. I used it for stills and video — it supports video capture up to 1080p — and liked the output compared to most other phones I’ve used. There’s no dedicated hardware button for the shutter, likely because of the phone’s thin design. But I like how the onscreen shutter buttons work. Note that I said buttons, plural. In the camera software are two buttons: one for stills and one for video. HTC calls this setup Video Pic. This wasn’t intuitive to me at first, but I like it better than a switch that forces you to choose between the two functions.

Instead, you tap one button for a still or tap the other to start a video. It’s a faster and simpler method. The phone is fast to take images as well. Holding the shutter button on the display activates a continuous shooting mode, which captures a stream of images, roughly 4 per second. You can then easily choose the best shot from the bunch. The image quality and fast shooting mode are likely helped by a dedicated HTC ImageChip.

HTC’s investment in Beats Audio is part of the One S package as well. The sound enhancements work best with Beats headphones, but I wasn’t able to test the phone with a pair of Beats. However, the feature does work with all headphones and can be enabled or disabled with a screen tap. To my ears, music sounded richer and louder with the Beats Audio function. The handset also includes an FM radio for music.

A high-performing Android 4.0 handset with Sense

Having used a Galaxy Nexus, the flagship Android 4.0 smartphone, since November, I figured I should compare the HTC One S to that device. Long story short: T-Mobile’s newest phone easily holds its own. Apps and navigation activities are snappy with little noticeable lag. Video playback, even in high-definition, is smooth and seamless. And browsing the web is generally an enjoyable experience too. I personally prefer Chrome for Android to surf the web, but HTC’s skinned browser is quite good: fast to zoom, with a desktop view option and an offline reading list.

I’m also partial to the stock Android 4.0 interface, but I think most potential buyers will find HTC Sense 4.0 to be very appealing. The interface is refined and intuitive, making it easy to figure out most of the phone’s functions. I especially like how Sense shows the recently used apps. Instead of a flat, 2-D list like I see on my Galaxy Nexus, the One S shows the apps in a 3-D card-like view. Like prior versions of Sense, the phone’s lock screen has a moveable ring: Slide it to unlock the device or slide it to one of four functions for quick access to the Phone, Camera or other oft-used application.

Another improvement due to Sense? Widgets can be added with a tap-and-hold on any home screen. This differs from Android 4.0, which only allows for wallpaper changes with this action. For some reason, Google hid the installable widgets in the application menu after all of the app screens. HTC’s approach makes far more sense to me, no pun intended.

A phone is only as good as its network

As a phone, the HTC One S worked well in my tests, both in hand and in speaker phone mode. The handset also supports T-Mobile’s 42 Mbps HSPA+ network, which the carrier calls 4G. Next year, the carrier will roll out LTE, a faster mobile broadband network, but for now HSPA+ 42 is fast enough for most potential buyers. The only caveat here is coverage areas.

Last year, T-Mobile completed rolling out network upgrades to HSPA+ 21 but it is still in progress of doubling the network speeds across the country. Where I live, for example, is a 21 Mbps coverage area, so connection speeds on the One S aren’t as fast as they would be in areas with 42 Mbps coverage. However, I was able to get download speeds averaging around 10 Mbps where I live with the handset and would expect to see at least a 50 percent boost in areas already upgraded. T-Mobile offers an online coverage map here.

The verdict

Consumers looking for a fast, thin handset running the latest version of Android need look no further. The HTC One S performs admirably in all areas and the only reason I’d consider passing on it is if you simply don’t like HTC Sense. If you’re focused on hardware specifications, the phone should prove a winner, although there are higher-resolution displays on the market these days. I didn’t find the 960 x 540 resolution to be a detriment, however. And although there’s only 16 GB of internal storage with no memory card expansion, HTC does offer 25 GB of free Dropbox storage for two years.

Overall, T-Mobile is likely to move a good number of HTC One S handsets; good at a time when HTC is fighting back to regain sales momentum and T-Mobile is readying a transition to LTE next year.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile 2012 and beyond
• The big theme of MWC: How to live in a connected world
• CES 2012: a recap and analysis

So here are my impressions of how Apple’s own productivity apps, which have been optimized for the new iPad’s high-resolution display, fare on the new tablet:

Keynote

Even if Keynote is your least-used app of the iWork suite, if you give just a trivial amount of presentations it is easily the suite’s killer app for you. The ease of hooking your iPad up to a projector and pretty much eliminating the not-so-silent prayers that go along with marrying projectors and presentations is a gigantic stress reliever. When I started looking at the new Keynote app and opened up a few of my presentations I was overjoyed with how great even graphics not optimized for the Retina display look and how crisp and un-pixelated the text looked. Then I crashed back to earth when I realized unless I was hooking into a truly fantastic display — which most conference rooms don’t have — there would be little to no difference in what the audience would see since the iPad screen is a higher resolution than the display.

Where I did find handy was how graphics looked on the Retina display. Looking through a draft of an old presentation, I could see where I had cheated and downloaded a Creative Commons graphic file that wasn’t a good resolution. On the original iPad and my MacBook, I could fool myself into thinking it wasn’t that bad. On the new iPad, I could see that, yeah, it really did look that bad.

What I haven’t been able to benchmark efficiently is how well the beefed-up GPU and 1 GB of memory will aid the creation of graphics-heavy presentations. My limited, non-scientific tests didn’t yield a marked difference on a 30-slide presentation where most if it was full-bleed graphics. However, a 30-slide talk is pretty small. If someone creates large, graphics-heavy presentations regularly, I’d love to hear from you.

Numbers

If Keynote is in the running for the least-used app of the suite, Numbers is likely the winner of the never-used award. People who are spreadsheet users probably aren’t using Numbers. Still, Numbers, in a way, I think benefits the most from the new display. It’s been my experience that spreadsheets often try to cram too much text into one page, making it impossible to read. On the new iPad, text set to the smallest size was perfectly readable, while on the original iPad it was a blur.

Pages

During testing, when I opened a file with Pages on my old iPad, I realized just how much I’d been suffering for my art. My first reaction: I used to work on this thing? Opening a document with 10-point type was an awakening. Sure, I was amazed at how great my e-mail looked, but when I opened a document with a couple thousand words I’d typed on my old iPad, the, dare I say it, awesomeness of the Retina display hit home. Even now, looking at my MacBook Pro, my iPad is going: Look at me. Now look at your MacBook, Now look at me. That display looks like the bad end of the horse, doesn’t it?

How the apps affect my workflow

What I love about writing these articles is it forces me to take an inventory of my current writing process and tools. The new iPad with an external display is looking like a more visually comfortable writing environment than my MacBook Pro. The key tool for me is iCloud, so my main writing tool is Byword for iOS (which also looks awesome on the new iPad) and OS X because it looks great and syncs between all three of my devices. Pages is well-poised to take the top spot for writing apps this summer when the OS X version of iWork becomes fully iCloud-aware.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1
• A look back at mobile in Q1

The fitRAIL is billed as an “exercise mount” for both the original iPad and the iPad 2. It’s a sturdy, collapsible aluminum and steel gadget that manages to be both portable and secure when holding your iPad, and it’s an elegant solution to a problem I’ve been trying to solve since getting my first iPad.

Your screen, your stuff

The fitRAIL is basically a harness for your iPad that folds out so as to clamp down perfectly on the display consoles of most upright cardio equipment — ellipticals, treadmills, climbers and the like. It folds down to a small size and comes with a pouch for convenient carrying, and features sticky (albeit easy to remove) pads to keep your iPad securely in place, along with a hook attached to a neoprene strap to make sure it won’t pitch forward. The stretchiness of the neoprene strap and double grooves in the base make the fitRAIL easily compatible with any generation iPad.

It hooks over the top of the machine’s console (and seems to work with every variety I could find), and then hangs there, buttressed by rubber bumpers in the back to keep it from bouncing around too harshly. That way, you can watch or read whatever you want as you work out (so long as you downloaded it before to your iPad or you have internet access at your gym) instead of being beholden to whatever your gym chooses to play on its televisions.

Not just a gym rat

The fitRAIL also works remarkably well outside of the confines of the gym, which is good news in case you’re not often the type to stick with your New Year’s resolutions. It can be configured to work as a display stand, or as an angled prop for typing, in which capacity it easily outperforms other devices with similar purposes, like Apple’s own Smart Cover. You can also hook it over a door for hands-free viewing in a pinch.

Smart design that avoids too tight a niche

My office is virtually a graveyard of iPad stands. Too many of these were single purpose devices that quickly outlived their usefulness when something that not only acted as a stand, but did something else, too came along (the PadPivot comes to mind). The fitRAIL is a stand, yes, but it also offers a very specific function that satisfies the demands of many like myself who’ve been looking for a simple, easy-to-install way to mount an iPad to cardio equipment. It’s smart design that avoids being too precious, and that’s why it’s got a permanent place in my gadget bag.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• A look back at mobile in Q1
• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era

I did my tests in outbound and inbound stages. On my way from central Chicago to Arlington Heights, I basically tried to break the HTC Vivid and Samsung Galaxy SII Skyrocket with video. While on the way back into town, I ran a barrage of speed tests. In general, I was impressed with overall experience as well as the speeds I clocked, though I did have some concerns about how LTE’s inner-city network will perform when its truly loaded. But onto the results!

Flawless video

Starting at home, I turned off Wi-Fi on both phones and then downloaded the Netflix streaming app on the Samsung. It handled the 6-MB download almost instantaneously, but the real test would be how it actually handled watching a movie. I started some Britcom episode my wife and I had already seen (so as not to tempt her to watch while she drove), and while the video popped up instantly with no buffering, initially it played at a much lower resolution than I was expecting. Within 20 seconds, though, the show went into a much higher resolution and stayed that way for the remainder of the test.

AT&T's LTE footprint in Chicago (dark blue)

Our trip took about 45 minutes, starting on Chicago’s streets (where it’s never really possible to go more than 25 mph) for 15 minutes and then onto the Kennedy Expressway for most of the remainder of the journey. The Netflix video ran flawlessly the whole way, only interrupted when the episode ended and I started a new one. I saw no discernable loss of resolution, no hiccups or pauses and no artifacts, except right when pulled into the driveway and there was a slight buffering delay. I don’t test as many gadgets as Kevin Tofel, but I’ve certainly played with quite a few, and I’ve never seen a phone on a wide-area cellular network do this before.

Networks are fickle creatures: bandwidth typically rubberbands between extreme highs and extreme lows as you move from the center to the edge of cells, as users join and drop out of the cell you currently occupy and as beams cross paths. At some point those wild fluctuations (and AT&T has plenty of them as we’ll see later) are bound to mess with your bitstream. To see a phone play continuous high-quality video without a single glitch while passing through dozens of different cells at freeway speeds and through crowded cityscape –- well, that’s truly impressive.

Of course, Netflix has a lot of buffering built in, which helps even out those peaks and valleys. So with the HTC, I surfed around a bit giving the device far less opportunity to cache. Websites came up  almost instantaneously –- which was nice considering I’ve almost come to expect the “smartphone lag” –- while YouTube videos came in at full resolution without a hitch or buffering delay. Only at one point did I encounter a problem. A YouTube video halted mid-stream and I had to restart it.

Fast but not as fast you’d think in the city

On the trip back, I ran nothing but speed tests, which is where the fluctuations in bandwidth I expected became apparent. On the Samsung, I used RootMertics’ Coverage Map app to run a continuous speed test for the entire trip. (I would not recommend doing this with your own phone, especially on an LTE network. 45 minutes and nearly 90 test cycles ate through an entire 2 GB plan.) I split the test into two parts: freeway driving and city driving. Meanwhile, I downloaded Ookla’s Speedtest app on the HTC and used it to take individual speed measurements every two minutes or so.

The first thing I noticed is that AT&T’s LTE network is a lot faster outside of the city than it is within. In Arlington Heights I was getting measurements over 20 Mbps from Speedtest. Those speeds slowed down considerably as we started driving and got on the highway, but that’s to be expected. It’s much harder for a network to maintain a fast connection when moving. For the freeway trip, Root’s testing app ran through 68 cycles, recording an average download speed 10.8 Mbps and an upload speed of 6.1 Mbps, which is right in line with what Kevin T saw when he tested Verizon’s LTE network soon after launch. On the freeway trip, AT&T also had a 100% data connection rate, it never failed to find a signal over which to ship data.

Once we got to our exit, I started the tests over again. We were moving much slower but so was the network. Running for 21 cycles on surface streets, Root recorded an average download speed of 5.7 Mbps and upload speeds of 3.9 Mbps – almost half of what the devices clocked on the freeway. It also failed to connect on one of Root’s cycles and on one manual speed test. There’s much more population density in the city, yes, but there should also be a much higher cellular density to account for the greater number of devices packed into the same square footage.

I’m not complaining — 6 Mbps is plenty of bandwidth for anything you’d ever want to do on a smartphone (and most of what you’d do on a laptop). In only one of the tests did downlink speeds drop below 2 Mbps — only just barely — while upload speeds remained consistently high. In the 3G world, network speeds can easily drop down to the sub-100 kbps range, so as long AT&T can maintain a minimum of 2 MB range, I doubt its customers would ever notice anything like the capacity problems they experienced with the iPhone.

The issue is AT&T’s LTE network is practically empty today. It only launched here in Chicago in late September and its smartphones went on sale earlier this month. Once its network becomes loaded, with millions of devices vying for the same shared capacity, those lower inner-city speeds I recorded might become a problem — at least on the north side of Chicago. That said, AT&T has just started to build out its LTE network. In addition to adding more markets, it will likely increase the cellular density within existing markets as it adds more customers.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• LTE-Advanced: what it is and isn’t
• Sprint’s tightrope walk: finding a balance for its network modernization plan
• U.S. Wireless Data Market: Q4 and Year-End 2008

But the reality is, most of us usually look to our friends and family for much simpler input on things that they’ve bought or experienced. Was it good, or not? Was it worth it? That is exactly what a new iPhone app called Stamped aims to help people do.

User reviews that are simple and social

The way Stamped works is simple: You use the app to give a “stamp” of approval to something you’ve bought or experienced and liked, such as a book, movie or restaurant. Each stamp can be commented on by other app users. Stamped makes money by taking a cut each time a user buys something on sites such as OpenTable, Amazon, iTunes (aapl) and Fandango based on another user’s recommendation.

Stamped screenshot (click to enlarge)

The app features a constantly updating list of stamps from your social contacts, and it aims to maintain quality and combat spam by only giving new users 100 stamps each. Users earn the right to more stamps based on the quality of their recommendations. It is currently available only on iPhone, but Stamped says Android, iPad and web versions are in the works right now.

Stamped co-founder and CEO Robby Stein says the app wants to keep it simple by only having people recommend products and experiences that they wholly endorse — not things that are mediocre or bad. Stein said in an interview Monday:

“We’re trying to very much just replicate what happens when you talk to someone in real life and a great thing that you recently did comes up in conversation. For the most part, you don’t recommend bad things to people. We’re trying to take a very social, natural approach to this, where every stamp starts a conversation.”

But which recommendation app will win?

To me, what Stamped does makes a lot of sense: I hate sorting through a bunch of long reviews to try and suss out whether I would like something or not. What does three out of five stars really mean when coming from a random Yelp reviewer anyway? But Stamped is not the only app gunning to take down the flawed but dominant five-star rating system for online reviews. For example, Wikets, an iPhone app that launched earlier this month, does a strikingly similar thing; Kevin Rose’s new startup Oink does as well. Foursquare’s “list” feature that launched earlier this year allows people to give their approval to great restaurants and shops in a simple way. An iPad app called Ness debuted a few months ago with a similar value proposition of tailored recommendations based on social cues. That’s just naming a few of the players in this new wave of super simple, super social review apps.

Of course, with startups the execution is just as important as the idea, and Stamped stands a great chance of succeeding based on the pedigrees of its founders, investors and advisors. Robby Stein and his co-founder Bart Stein are both ex-Googlers, and Stamped’s third co-founder is Kevin Palms, who previously led development of risk analytics technology at a New York City hedge fund. The company is backed with money from Google Ventures and Bain Capital, and counts Instagram’s Kevin Systrom as an advisor and celebrity chef Mario Batali as an early user and advisor.

One thing is for sure: The era of the five-star rating system for user generated review appears to be coming to an end. But which company will lead the review system of the future is still up for grabs.

Thumbs up photo used courtesy of Flickr user Sarah Reido, or “.reid.”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications
• Frenemy mine: The pros and cons of social partnerships for online media companies
• The evolution of consumer-media cloud storage

Hardware and Design

As soon as you see the Infuse 4G, you can’t help but notice the sheer size of the display, which takes up nearly the entire front of the phone. A small top and bottom bezel holds the front-facing camera, ambient light sensors, speaker and the four standard Android buttons, which are touch-sensitive on this device. Although the display uses a typical 800×480 resolution, the screen doesn’t appear pixelated at all; fonts and icons are smooth. Even at the lowest brightness, colors appear to pop from the screen due to Samsung’s Super AMOLED Plus display. All activities are more vivid and brighter than on any other handset I’ve used yet. The beautiful screen may be too big for some, but I find it pleasing, thanks to larger text and more room on the software keyboard. The screen can appear washed-out in direct sunlight, but is still very usable.

My first-look video offers a glance at the Infuse’s hardware and design.

Overall it’s clean and minimal, good for a large handset as too many buttons or controls would simply make the phone appear larger. Volume buttons are on the left while the power / wake button is on the right. A 3.5 millimeter headphone jack sits on top, next to a microphone , while the bottom has a second microphone and micro USB port. The back houses a speaker for hands-free calls and the 8 megapixel camera sensor with LED flash.

Although the phone has a big footprint — you can see comparisons to other devices in our image gallery below — it’s thin at 8.99 millimeters. Had the phone been thicker, it would feel too much like a brick. But the Infuse 4G actually feels comfortable to hold for such a large-screened device. I occasionally found it tricky, but not impossible, to use the phone in one hand, and at 5′ 5″ and 125 pounds, I have relatively small hands.

Much of the phone is plastic, but the device feels solidly made. The lack of metal helps keep the feel of the big smartphone lighter than it looks, and the removable back cover is just a thin plastic piece. Taking the cover off reveals a generous 1750 mAh battery, SIM card slot and place for a microSD expansion card. You must remove the battery to remove or replace a memory card, which is inconvenient. With the larger-than-average battery, I had no problems getting through a full day of typical use, with power to spare.

Software and Performance

The handset runs on Android 2.2, which isn’t the latest version of Google’s mobile software, but few phones are yet shipping with Android 2.3. Samsung’s customized TouchWiz interface hides the bland stock look of Android in a pleasing way. A choice of three software keyboards are included: the standard Android keyboard, Samung’s own custom keyboard, and Swype. A handful of AT&T-branded applications are pre-installed, along with a few from Samsung. Specifically, Samsung’s AllShare app (used for media streaming), Media Hub for video rentals and purchases, and custom Task Manager app are pre-loaded on the device. The Infuse has access to the Android Market, and can also install software from outside the Market; a first for AT&T, which has blocked such “sideloaded” apps in the past.

TouchWiz offers up to seven home screens, and the program launcher is similar to that on Apple iOS devices. Samsung’s browser is fairly standard, but offers a useful brightness setting within the application. The browser experience is on par with any other Android handset at this price and in terms of speed, I found it to perform a slightly better than on the Nexus One handset I bought last January. For the benchmark-minded, the Infuse 4G scored 5082 ms using SunSpider (where smaller numbers are better) as compared to 5487 ms on my Nexus One. That’s likely due in part to the Infuse’s slightly faster single-core CPU, which clocks in at 1.2 GHz. The Infuse 4G will generally be slower when compared to a dual-core handset, but only those who have used a dual-core smartphone would know the difference. The processor keeps Android moving at a fast pace when compared to other single-core handsets on the market.

Marketed as a 4G handset, the phone radio has outpaced AT&T’s network. The carrier is in the process of upgrading to HSPA+ as a stopgap to its planned LTE network rollout. That means the radio in the phone can handle downloads up to 21 Mbps, yet most of the network can’t deliver such speeds. However, as the carrier expands its network, the Infuse 4G is future-proofed to a degree, as it’s ready for the faster network speeds. My speed tests topped out at 3.2 Mbps downloads and 1.2 Mbps uploads, which is much slower than what AT&T’s competitors offer. Speeds of course, will vary by coverage areas and other factors, and I don’t live in or near an AT&T coverage area that’s been upgraded, so you may see faster mobile broadband speeds.

Samsung’s camera sensor impressed me, especially when paired with software that improves video recording. The camera tops out at 720p image capture, but features an auto-focus function when taking videos. Don’t expect the focus adjustment to be instant, but it works well and is quick enough to be useful. Regular camera images looked better than video; crisper and cleaner. The front-facing camera inspires a common complaint: Manufacturers aren’t angling the sensor, so you have to tilt the device to stay centered on a video chat. Samsung has an opportunity for improvement here, but if you’re not into video chatting, this shouldn’t prevent you from considering the Infuse 4G.

Call quality was solid, both in normal use and through the speakerphone, and I didn’t experience any dropped calls. AT&T’s network has always been solid in the rural area I live in, so this doesn’t surprise me.

Conclusion

If you’re in the market for large-screened phone that’s still pocketable, the Infuse 4G is a must-see. The screen looks fantastic, possibly the best I’ve seen yet on a handset, even as other phones such as the Atrix 4G offer a higher resolution. But the size may put some folks off, and no review can tell you if the handset is too big for you. This is the kind of handset you have to hold and use before buying. Current smartphone owners using handsets with a 1-GHz processor won’t see much of a speed boost, but those that haven’t purchased a handset in the last year or so ought to be impressed. With the beautiful display, more room on the software keyboards and the ability to gain faster mobile broadband as AT&T beefs up its HSPA+ coverage, the Infuse 4G has much to offer those looking for a big Android smartphone.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Carrier IQ and the continued erosion of operator trust
• Survey: How apps can solve photo management
• Mobile first-quarter 2013: analysis and outlook

Hardware and Performance

Acer is probably known more for its utility rather than as a high-end hardware manufacturer, but the A500 is a solid attempt to change that perception. Most of the device is built from aluminum, with just a little plastic on both the left and right edges as well as one small covering for the microSD card slot. The glossy 10.1-inch display provides a wide viewing angle and offers adequate brightness. Here’s a video overview of the hardware I shared upon receipt of the A500 review unit.

The tablet offers the ports and amenities you’d expect on a tablet: microUSB, micro HDMI, a docking port, stereo speakers, a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack and even a full-sized USB port. That USB port proved handy for viewing videos and listening to music from a USB flash drive and works with USB keyboards as well. Although the tablet didn’t recognize music on my microSD card in my video overview, that was only because I didn’t wait long enough for the device to scan the memory card: The A500 works perfectly fine with microSD cards up to 32 GB.

While other Wi-Fi tablet models skip the GPS radio, Acer’s A500 actually does offer location services by way of GPS. The tablet can use Wi-Fi networks to supplement the GPS radio, but you don’t need an Internet connection to find your location. However, most map-based or location-based apps will need a wireless connection to function, so the inclusion of this radio may be limited for some. I found the GPS to work quickly while outside in my tests; it worked much better indoors when Wi-Fi was enabled and assisting. The A500 includes a gyroscope, accelerometer and compass which can be used for Google Maps or any other apps suited to take advantage of them.

The two included cameras are standard fare for a Honeycomb tablet today, but the picture quality is slightly sub-standard based on my experiences. Still images aren’t as crisp as I expected and while the A500 is capable of 720p video capture, my test videos came out very soft. The front-facing camera was a little more disappointing, but not due solely to marginal image quality. I tested Google Talk video chat with my son and found it a challenge to use.

Acer chose to place the camera on the left bezel about 1.5-inches from the top of the A500 as held in landscape mode. The camera sensor isn’t tilted in any way, so to use it for video chat, I had to hold the tablet well off-center in order to keep my face in the video frame. Holding the device in portrait mode was no better as evidenced by this example: I’ve centered the A500 to my face, but I’m barely in the picture. My son could only see me properly if I held the A500 at odd angles and placements, although he did get a good look at my bedroom lamp.

Holding the A500 at any angle can become a chore after a while, however. Although the rounded edges feel good in the hand, the A500′s 1.69 pound weight feels a bit hefty, especially when compared to other tablets. For the price, I found the A500 to generally hold its own against its peers in terms of performance. That shouldn’t surprise, though, because all of these tablets are built with very similar components.

Nvidia’s Tegra 2 works well for video playback and full-screen gaming based on my tests using Let’s Golf, Need for Speed Shift and Hero of Sparta HD. Battery life was solid: if you’re going to use the device constantly during the day, you should easily get 8 or more hours of run-time, unless you spend much of that time gaming or watching videos. For occasional use as a supplemental device, I was able to go nearly three days on a charge.

Software

As I’ve noted in prior Google tablet reviews, Honeycomb isn’t quite ready for prime-time. Acer included version 3.0.1 on the A500 because Google released Honeycomb 3.1 after the tablet launched; just last week at Google I/O. However, Acer representatives tell me that the A500 is expected to see the updated software by the end of May. For now then, the A500 is held back a bit by Honeycomb’s current issues: mediocre performance and a lack of tablet-optimized applications in the Android Market. I’m not sure if the lack of mobile broadband has anything to do with it, but I experience fewer application crashes on the A500 than I did on the Xoom or G-Slate. I didn’t find the browsing experience to be different from the other Honeycomb tablets I’ve used.

Acer has tried to improve the Honeycomb experience with its own interface, but it’s mainly just a slight rehash and reorganization of what Google already offers. On the home screen you’ll find four icons: eReading, Games, Multimedia, and Social. Tapping any one of them brings up a custom bookshelf-like interface with relevant shortcuts. The eReading screen houses LumiRead and Google Books, for example. But these are nothing more than themed program launcher screens that a user can customize.

Aside from the standard Google Honeycomb apps, Acer preinstalls a number of other software bits, but most aren’t top-tier titles and there are few that I’d consider to be a “must have” for most. Two exceptions for home media buffs are Acer’s Clear.fi and Media Server applications that can help share media content with other devices. Google’s standard apps are installed, so the A500 offers Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Talk. DataViz’s DocsToGo is also standard fare and handy to read PDFs or other office documents while offline.

Conclusion

For the price, Acer’s A500 is a reasonable tablet to consider. It provides the same general performance as the more expensive Honeycomb choices and will see the same Android software update that should improve the device. If you’re looking for a tablet to use often as a camera or for video chat, I’d probably pass because of the quality and user experience issues I experienced. The addition of a full-sized USB port is attractive for USB periperhals, especially since Google just announced new USB support features in Honeycomb 3.1. Acer tells me that USB mouse support will arrive in the second quarter via a software update, so that’s another feature to consider.

Overall, the A500 isn’t a bad tablet for those on a budget and don’t mind hunting for Wi-Fi or using their smartphone or a Mi-Fi as a mobile hotspot. Just be sure to build up your arm strength because the A500 surely isn’t the lightest tablet on the market today.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• What the Google-Motorola deal means for Android, Microsoft and the mobile industry
• Is there a tablet market, or is it just an iPad market after all?
• A Media Tablet Forecast, 2011 – 2015

I’ve been using a loaner Streak 7 for a very short amount of time: T-Mobile provided one this past weekend, along with the cellular data service. Normally, I like to live with a device for several weeks before passing judgment, but the Streak goes on sale shortly, so here are my first impressions. I plan to follow up with a more detailed post after using the Streak 7 for at least another week.

Hardware Has Hits and Misses

Much like the Samsung Galaxy Tab I purchased out of my own pocket, the Streak 7 is a relatively thin and light 7-inch tablet. Like so many other hardware vendors, Dell has opted to power its mobile device with a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor. This choice of chip generally enables high-quality graphics that render fast, 1080p video recording and peppy performance. Unfortunately, the potential of the Tegra 2 is almost wasted on the Streak 7.

The key issue is the display. While a 7-inch tablet enables a greater level of mobility — the key reason I dumped the larger iPad for my Galaxy Tab — Dell chose a screen with 800×480 resolution for the Streak 7. As a result, the graphical benefits of the Nvidia chip can’t be seen because games are more blocky and less detailed than they could be, as shown in the image gallery below. Essentially, Dell took the same display resolution used on smartphones in the 3.7- to 4.3-inch range and repurposed it on a larger screen, making for a mediocre visual experience at best. Given that users look at the display whenever using the Streak 7, they’ll constantly be reminded of this poor design choice.

I’m also unsure of a few other decisions Dell made when it comes to the hardware of the Streak 7. The battery capacity is only 2780 mAh as compared to the Galaxy Tab’s 4000 mAh unit. A true battery test requires more testing time, so I’ll revisit this aspect, but the Streak 7 seems to gulp power. Using it in limited fashion, I’ve seen the battery indicator drop by 10 percent in as little as 30 minutes, for example. Gone too is a dedicated search button on the bezel. And although the device is advertised to record 1080p video, I only see an option for 720p. Testing it yielded a sub-par video, which is disappointing since the Tegra chip is capable of so much more.

On the plus side, the screen is responsive, as are the capacitive touch buttons. Music sounds relatively good from the two stereo speakers located on the left and right sides of the Streak 7. And of course, the real strength of the device lies in the 21 Mbps radio, which can take full advantage of T-Mobile’s 4G network within proper coverage areas. I took a short trip from my home office to pick up a 4G signal to test the Streak 7 and ran a few speed tests. Every aspect tested was better than what I see on my 3G Galaxy Tab, which also uses T-Mobile’s network.

Average latency for the Streak 7 hovered around 70 milliseconds; download speeds averaged 5.5 Mbps, while uploads were in the 1.5 Mbps range. For a frame of reference, I tested the 3G Galaxy Tab at the same location; latency was around 90 milliseconds, while downloads and uploads were 3.8 Mbps and 1.3 Mbps, respectively. Since coverage and network performance varies based on many factors, I’m sure both devices could have seen faster or slower speeds depending on the variables. But I’m also comfortable saying that the Streak 7 will likely always have a faster data connection.

Software Could Have Shone but Is Marginal

Just like the choice to use a smartphone resolution, much of the software choices are smartphone-like for the Streak 7. Unlike Samsung, which optimized core apps for the Galaxy Tab, Dell uses the same Google apps as any standard Android smartphone, which is a missed opportunity. Granted, it’s also one that can be corrected with a software update, but when buying a device, consumers are evaluating the device in its current state, not a potential, future state.

Dell did spend time creating a customer interface called Stage. This brings some clarity to five of the seven home screens on the Streak 7: two are left empty. Stage groups apps and services by screen: Music, Social, Home (showing weather and nine recently used apps), Web, and Email. For people not familiar with Android or those  who don’t like the stock Android interface, Stage will be welcome, but not necessarily impressive.

T-Mobile also included services and software that may appeal to some. Included is an option to download the T-Mobile TV service which offers a handful of free programming or can be upgraded to premium offerings for $8.99 per month. There’s also a Blockbuster application to rent movies, Amazon’s Kindle app and the Zinio magazine reader software. By and large, most of these apps can be found on other Android devices or will be coming to them in the future, so I don’t consider these to be a major differentiator from other Android devices.

Of course, there are trial games on the Streak 7 as well as many available in the Android Market. They run well but are hobbled by the display resolution, making for a marginal experience that could have been a great one with a better screen. I played the Asphalt driving game and Let’s Golf, but almost felt like I was using a last generation Nintendo DS after playing with a modern one in a store.

This Way or That Way?

One last important note on the Streak 7: It’s really meant to be a landscape device, which I find a challenge because I use my tablet in portrait mode more often than not. The front camera and microphone are on a horizontal bezel, while the touch buttons are on the side, as are the speakers. That may not be a problem for most, but it’s a different approach from the iPad and Galaxy Tab.

Conclusion

Folks looking for a low-cost, fairly basic Android tablet that can overlook the screen resolution could be happy with the Streak 7. It all depends on if the 4G radio is worth the purchase, because the Galaxy Tab for $50 more offers many better features. Regardless of the fast data connection, the screen is a deal-breaker for me personally, simply because it’s the function most used.

Again, I’ve only had a few days with the Streak 7, so I’ll incorporate into my daily routine and substitute it for my Galaxy Tab to see if I feel differently in a week or so. Perhaps its unfair to compare the Streak 7 to the Galaxy Tab, but both devices are offered by T-Mobile, so customers will certainly be making that same comparison.

Also worth noting are the data plan prices for the Streak 7. Current T-Mobile customers can pay $40 per month for unlimited data (with a 5 GB soft-cap) or $25 per month for 200 MB. New customers will pay $10 more a month for the unlimited plan or $5 more each month for the smaller data plan.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• To Ship or Not to Ship — Product Launch in the Smartphone Era
• Will Killer Apps Affect Which Handsets Consumers Buy?
• Marketing Handsets in the Superphone Era

TuneIn Radio makes it easy to find and play local radio stations. The initial screen divides the thousands of stations into categories making it easy to find the type of station you want to hear. Selecting Local Radio uses the phone’s geolocation to return a list of all stations in the immediate area. If you want to listen to stations anywhere in the world, you can find any music genre, talk radio, sports stations, even radio stations in a particular language. There is an integrated search bar to help you get to the particular station by call sign or name. The ability to stream stations located anywhere globally makes TuneIn a great way to find new music. There’s even a Canadian station that plays nothing but Pink Floyd.

Playing a radio station is as simple as tapping the station name on the screen, which starts playing immediately. You see the station’s logo in place of album art, and the currently playing song/artist is displayed in the play screen. You can check the daily program schedule for most stations with a single tap. Sound quality of the music stream is quite good and when you find a station that appeals to you simply set a preset just like on the radio in your car.

The Android version takes advantage of multitasking and keeps playing when you leave the app. A simple player control appears in the Android notification bar for easy access from anywhere in the system. TuneIn Radio is one of my favorite apps for Android; it’s hard to believe it’s free.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

• Why RIM’s Future (Unfortunately) Hinges on BlackBerry OS 6
• Nokia’s Tie-Up With Microsoft Won’t Help
• Needed: A Neiman Marcus for Mobile Apps