Chinese companies on the rise, Xiaomi MiPad sells out in minutes

Most of your favorite devices from companies like LG, Samsung and HTC may be manufactured in China, but these companies are all headquartered elsewhere. Today companies like Oppo, Meizu, Xiaomi and the new kid on the block, OnePlus, are starting to become household names because they sell innovative products with top specs that are usually hundreds of dollars less for an unlocked device.

Nearly all of the Android devices coming out of these companies were smartphones until recently when Xiaomi launched its first tablet, the MiPad, on July 1 in China. Now you may have heard of Xiaomi, the maker of the popular MIUI ROM and launcher, usually described as a mashup of the best of iOS and Android styling, especially since in the past year the former Google VP Hugo Barra became the VP for Xiaomi Global.

The device, which steals some of its looks from the Apple iPhone 5c and iPad mini, comes in five colors and two different storage sizes. For 1,499 yuan (about $240) or 1,699 yuan (about $270) depending on built-in storage, you can get a device with the following specs:

• 7.9-inch IPS display
• 2048 x 1536 326 ppi
• NVIDIA Tegra K1 procesor
• 2 GB RAM
• 16 or 64 GB Flash, expandable to 128GB via microSD card
• 8MP rear-facing camera
• 5MP front-facing camera
• 802.11ac 2×2 Wi-Fi
• 6700 mAh battery

With such impressive specs (it’s the first device with a K1 processor) and a great price, Xiaomi definitely has a winner in its hands as during the launch the tablet sold out in only 3 minutes and 59 seconds. That’s 50,000 units in under 4 minutes.

Xiaomi recently moved into Singapore, will be launching in India soon and eventually Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. It will probably be a while before it launches devices in the U.S. and Europe. Although that’s the case, you still import from places like XiaomiShop, AliExpress and various other online retailers, where the new MiPad is selling for about $335 and $365 respectively. Import prices may be slightly higher, but the 64 GB model is still cheaper than the 16 GB iPad mini with Retina Display at $399.

Xiaomi just announced its first half-year results for 2014 and said it shipped about 26 Million phones globally, an increase of 271 percent from H1 2013, with revenues of about $5.3 billion, an increase of about 149 percent from H1 2013. As it moves into more and more countries and releases more killer devices like the MiPad, it’s results will likely only continue to increase.

As more Americans begin to ditch their contracts or look to get away from subsidized devices, we may see even more devices from Chinese companies in the coming months and years. OnePlus is one of the first to offer an LTE device on the cheap, but competition is always welcomed.

Are you considering or interested in a device from a Chinese company/startup? Let us know in the comment section below.

Sources: Xiaomi, TNW, +HugeBarra, Tech in Asia

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OnePlus tablet hits rumor mill, probably won’t be available anytime soon

You may still be trying to get your hands on a OnePlus One, but that doesn’t mean the startup isn’t starting to think ahead to its next product. A recent leak from @evleaks suggests that OnePlus is working on a device called the OnePlus Tab.

The leak comes in the form of a screenshot dated June 29 of an alpha version of the site with a link or placeholder that reads “ONEPLUS TAB.” Besides this information, we know nothing else about the supposed device. Who knows it’s real or not, but it wouldn’t be surprising if the company was working on a tablet as well and if this was the first tablet to run CyanogenMod.

Would you be interested in a OnePlus tablet or are have you had enough with the company and its invite system?

VIA @evleaks

The post OnePlus tablet hits rumor mill, probably won’t be available anytime soon appeared first on AndroidGuys.

NVIDIA’s Shield successor is a tablet

The next version of NVIDIA’s funky handheld Shield console will actually be called the Shield Tablet, according to a listing from a testing body called the Global Certification Forum (GCF). There’s been much speculation about the device, especially after a diagram of what looks like the controller showed up at the FCC. That’s usually a sign that a product is imminent, and we were told last year that a new model could come sooner than expected by NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang himself (see the video below). As a reminder, the original Shield is a portable, Tegra-powered console, with a built in controller and 5-inch screen that can run Android games and apps. But it’s main raison d’etre is to wirelessly stream games from your NVIDIA-equipped PC, making it a rather nichey device. The GCF page confirms the “Shield Tablet” name that NVIDIA posted by mistake on its own site, and adds the fact that it’ll have 4G capability.

So why a tablet? The original Shield is just a tablet with a controller (permanently) attached, so separating them makes sense. That way, NVIDIA could market it as a high-end tablet, a handheld gaming device and possibly a home console that’d plug into your TV. It’s also feasible that more than one Shield device is coming, though that seems less likely. Either way, a mysterious benchmark for an NVIDIA Mocha tablet gives us a clue about the specs, which are identical to the new Xiaomi Mii pad. That device has a 7.9-inch, 2,048 x 1,536 screen, with 2GB of RAM and NVIDIA’s new Tegra K1 quad-core CPU. If the Shield Tablet is similarly equipped, it’d be much more capable of running serious games than the original, as shown in the video below (which features NVIDIA’s reference Tegra K1 tablet, by the way). 4G connectivity would also make it much more usable on the road. If all this pans out, it’d make sense — allowing the Shield to be a standalone tablet might be the final carrot to entice gamers into throwing their cash at it.

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