Apple’s iPad has been out since April of 2010 and the tech world has been waiting for its first real competitor.  We continue to hear about potential Android based tablets but have yet to see anything that can take a serious run at the market share Apple has already carved out for itself.

Well, we had to go looking Down Under, but we might just have found something worthwhile.  Pioneer Computers, headquartered in Australia, is getting ready to release what they are calling “The World’s First Dual Core Android ePad.”  The DreamBook ePad N7 is a dual core, Android based tablet with a 7” WVGA Capacitive touch display with an 800 x 480 resolution.  So what does all of that mean?  It means an Android tablet with a real touchscreen that allows multi-touch just like you’d hope to find on any good touchscreen device.

By now, many of you have probably already heard that Google has launched Voice Actions for Android 2.2 users.  The voice actions feature allows you to interact with your phone using your voice to get the information you need in a way that used to require you to type, tap and search through your phone’s browser, contacts, map application or email.

Google and US mobile phone carriers have been rolling out Froyo rather quickly in the last couple of weeks.  There have been announcements about the Droid, the EVO 4G, the Nexus One, and the Droid 2, which shipped with the upgrade already installed.   We are expecting to see the Droid X get the update soon and then many other devices are set to follow in the weeks and months to come.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, August 18^th, you should be able to add the Verizon’s Droid Incredible to the list.  Updates should be pushed over the air.  We’re not entirely clear if all Incredible owners will receive the update at the same time or if Verizon will push the update to smaller groups at a time.

We know that many of our readers are Android fans and that due to all of the recent good and bad news for Apple, we haven’t posted as much about Android as we should have.  In recent weeks, we’ve been making a greater effort to do so, and Google has been giving us plenty of good material to talk about.

Most recently, Google has created a new extension for Google Chrome that makes sharing content between your Chrome browser and your Android device extremely easy.  The extension is called Chrome to phone and it is very simple to use.  It is only compatible with Android 2.2, Froyo, at this time, but with Google changes and updates to other, older versions of Android are always possible.

It’s August 12^th, and you know what that means.  Don’t you?  That’s right everyone, if you’ve been waiting to purchase the Droid 2, the wait is over.  Verizon and Motorola have officially welcomed Droid 2 to the growing Droid family.

The original Droid was one of the most popular and best selling Android phones.  Now, the Droid 2 appears to be picking up where the Droid left off.  A few key improvements likely have Droid owners drooling.  Among these improvements is a redesigned QWERTY keyboard that includes raised and separated keys.  The keyboard is also spread out along the slide out portion of the phone.  They were able to accomplish this by removing the “d-pad” that the original Droid had which allowed them more room to spread out the keys and create a separation between letters that would have reduced some of the most common complaints about the original model.

Motorola has sent word that the new Droid X at Verizon is scheduled to get Android 2.2 (Froyo) in early September of 2010.

The Droid X is Motorola’s most recently launched super phone.  It was released at Verizon on July 15^th.  The consensus is that this is among the most powerful if not the most powerful phone on the market right now.  It has a 1GHz processor, a 4.3” high resolution display, 8GB of built in memory and is preloaded with a 16GB MicroSD card, expandable to 32GB for a total of 40GB of memory.  It currently comes equipped with Android 2.1 (Éclair), which while snappy in its own right, is significantly slower than Froyo.

Image provided by droid-life.com

Reportedly, a couple of hundred Droid X phones have ended up in the hands of some lucky folks almost a week ahead of schedule.  The only problem was that these fortunate individuals were unable to activate their phones because Verizon wasn’t ready.

The new Motorola Droid X, Verizon’s answer to Sprint’s EVO 4G, is scheduled to launch on the 15th of July.  We’re not quite sure how the handsets got out to people early, but Verizon was evidently not prepared for the early release either.  On Friday, however, they were able to fix the activation issue and now all of the early release phones can be activated.

Image provided by Google

Ok, so I was just in Chicago where parking is extremely hard to find.  Add to this that it was the 4th of July weekend, the Taste of Chicago was on in full force, and U2 was in concert at Soldier field.  During the U2 concert day, if you could find any available spots, you were paying double for them.  However, price wasn’t much of an issue, because you simply couldn’t find anything.