This week in gagagadget: February 5 – 11

This week in gagagadget:

A commercial for the Motorola Xoom aired during the Super Bowl on Sunday. The ad takes shots at Apple, alluding to their iconic white stock iPod earbuds, as well as Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl commercial. The, promoting the upcoming Android 3.0 tablet as “The tablet to create a better world,” is not the first Motorola advertisement to swing at Apple; last summer, a print ad for the Droid X alluded to the infamous “death grip”/”antennagate” issues experienced by users of the iPhone 4.

The Daily, a subscription-based collaborative publication/app from News Corp. and Apple was released this week. The publication is designed specifically for the iPad, and features news, multimedia, and interactive elements for a monthly or yearly fee. Unfortunately, in our review of the app, we found the app to be slow, unresponsive, and prone to crashing. These issues may be addressed in a later update of the app.

Sprint announced the Kyocera Echo Android smartphone this week. The phone boasts some impressive specs, such as a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 5 megapixel rear camera with LED flash, and – an “industry first” – dual capacitive touch screens. Whether or not introducing dual screens to Android devices will cause issues to developers is yet to be known. The Echo will be available this spring for $200 (after rebate and 2-year contract).

It has been predicted that Apple may have a big year on their hands with 2011. Rumors are floating around about a number of products that the company may announce and release this year. Of course, in true Apple “yearly update” fashion, are the rumors of a new iPad (the iPad 2, or perhaps 3?). Along with that are supposed iPhone 5, rumored iPhone Nano, and a proposed MacBook Pro Air. Time will tell if there is any truth to these rumors.

HP unveiled a number of upcoming smart devices at their Think Beyond event earlier this week. The company started off the event with their answer to the iPad, stepping into the tablet wars with their TouchPad. The tablet will feature a 9.7″ screen, front-facing camera, 1.2 GHz Snapdragon CPU, and will have capacities of 16 or 32GB. HP also announced the Pre 3, the latest model in the Palm Pre smartphone line. The Pre 3 will boast a 3.6″ multitouch screen, a 5 megapixel camera capable of shooting HD video, a 1.4GHz Qualcomm processor, 512MB of RAM, and 8GB or 16GB of storage. Finally comes The Veer, a miniature version of HP smartphones, or, as some have called it, the “Pre Nano.” The tiny device will feature a 2.6″ touchscreen, an 800MHz Snapdragon processor, a 5 megapixel camera, and a QWERTY keyboard. All devices are expected to release Summer 2011.

Dell hosted its own event this week. At their Back to Business event, hosted in San Francisco on Tuesday, Dell announced a number of new machines, including new versions of Optiplex desktops and Latitude E-series laptops, a total of 39 in all. A number of these will contain processors from Intel’s new Sandy Bridge line. The company also announced a new Windows- and Android-based 10″ tablet. Not many details about the device are available, but it will run Windows for compatibility reasons, and will run on an Intel processor.

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Tagged as: Apple, Dell, Echo, HP, iPad, Kyocera, Motorola, News Corp, Pre 3, Sprint, The Daily, TouchPad, TWiG, Veer, Xoom