Dear God, Not Another Upcoming Tablet Announcement
Dear God, Not Another Upcoming Tablet Announcement
Posted 09/02/2010 at 9:52am
| by Paul Lilly
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Maybe we should put out a tablet -- we could call it the MaxiPad -- because at this point, it seems like we're the only ones who have yet to announce an upcoming slate. All the cool kids are doing it, which now includes Hannspree.
Come November, Hannspree promises to launch a 10.1-inch multi-touch slate with a capacitive screen sporting a 1024x600 resolution. It will come armed with Nvidia's Tegra 2 SoC with a pair of ARM Cortex-A9 cores clocked at 1GHz.
Like so many other upcoming tablets, this particularly one will run on Google's Android 2.2 platform with native Flash 10.1 support and a custom UI. Other features include 16GB of internal storage, a microSD card slot, mini USB and mini HDMI ports, an accelerometer, and a 3,500mAh battery Hannspree claims will provide enough juice for up to 8 hours of 1080p playback.
Pricing will hover around $500.
Image Credit: Hannspree
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sybert
September 02, 2010 at 3:19pm
Astectically it could use some improvements (I don't like how it says "Hannspree" mainly), but I think this is the first tablet that has comeout that I would consider buying instead of an iPad.
JonPhillips
September 02, 2010 at 12:49pm
I think we may have broken the magic number of 50 potential iPad killers. In the Maximum Tech that will hit newsstands next week, I list and describe 38 competitors. For the website version of this article, I'll make sure to include the some 10-12 tablets that weren't yet announced when I was researching the story. Regardless, I personally love the explosion of hardware development. It reminds me of the good old days when we had competing soundcard manufacturers, six different GPU companies, and portable MP3 players coming out of our ears.
Eoraptor
September 02, 2010 at 1:04pm
There's definitely something to be said for that. The same is true of the brief burst of netbook class devices... look at how much the revolutionized other, larger devices by reemphasizing smaller, more efficient processors and more ram, over the big block of gigahertz/cores and multitudinal legacy ports that were otherwise prominent from the main designers at Intel, Nvidia, and AMD.
JonPhillips
September 02, 2010 at 2:19pm
Yeah, it's almost like the world needs 50 tablets (or netbooks) for natural selection toward the greater good. Fifty tablets are released. Forty-five fail, and five emerge as winners. And then other products learn from the vast number of mistakes, and the small number of winning innovations. Also, per the original point of the likelyhood of many of these tablets being crapware or vaporware, I would say that's exactly what we'll see. Just look at all the tablets that were shown off at this year's Computex: Most were from relatively small-fry far-eastern manufacturers that -- c'mon, let's face it -- won't stand a chance if even one of the big-name CE companies scores a win with its own tablet. (See Samsung Galaxy Tab.)
Eoraptor
September 02, 2010 at 1:00pm
The real question, in this tidalwave of "tablets" and "tween devices" how many are going to turn out to be small run items, or outright vapor-ware? Two years ago, everyone and their brother's pet monkey was designing a netbook, and how many do you actually see in use now that the tech has matured? Granted, I live "between the coasts" rather than in a tech mecha like NYC, but virtually everyone I talk to is happy to carry a notebook class device ( >14.6") AND a media player/smart phone, rather than something of this design.
I mean, yeah, for specific cases like retail sales or factory floor they're fine, but they're too big to justify as a general communications device ala smart phone (would you like to talk into a clipboard everytime your phone rang, even with a headset?), and too small to fulfill the wide-range of operations a notebook does as data entry, video player, internet terminal, and big storage bucket. (and increasingly also as mobile i-net hotspot)
I suppose it all comes to screen size. you can catch tweets and facespace stuff on a cell phone class screen, but for watching video, reading large amounts of text or full message boards? How many of you owned anything smaller than a 15" screen back during the days of CRT either as a TV or a monitor?
Well, my two cents any way. Guess we'll all have to see what shakes out... after all, how many questioned notebooks as primary computers even five years ago?
Mighty BOB!
September 02, 2010 at 12:07pm
lol, there are so many "upcoming tablet" announcements now that I don't care and just skip over them. Remind me again when they actually ship to market.
JohnP
September 02, 2010 at 11:04am
That is what I said about Netbooks... What is left, smart watches? Oh wait, I am wearing one...
http://assets.timex.com/datalink/software/
Julmuri
September 02, 2010 at 10:21am
am i the only one who would really like to have a properly sized device (A4 sized screen!). it wouldn't need to sacrifice power to batterylife cause i just want to have it on sofa to read and browse, maybe play something small.
allso, does android behave nicely with windows? can you acces homeserver / networked comps? thats a must i think.
Eoraptor
September 02, 2010 at 12:45pm
That's the same question I had... a smart phone only has to have a basic level of interaction, transfering contact info and static files like small media... but something much larger really needs to seemlessly be able to print, transfer complex files, and synchronize with other media libraries. Apple/Itunes can do it, but of course that's a closed ecosystem where someone else is deciding what rights you have to your media and data, but for the larger windows/linux/OSx world?
If I want to grab a stack of files on the go from the several hundred gigs in my laptop or desktop will these things balk at letting a local media server do so; will they demand to call home to (insert media company or app store here) and try to justify playing the non-DRM anime stored on my desktop without deauthorizing it there first? or will it work more like an existing home/SMB network and just stream or transfer the files en masse? Likewise with printing a document, or working with a file in the cloud or on the local network. These are questions that really need to be answered to justify these devices beyond the initial blush of hype.
Ashton2091
September 02, 2010 at 10:59am
I'm not sure how other third party vendors tweak android, but i have a archos 5 android device and it plays very well with windows 7 as far as streaming and accessing my home network. it's really sweet...but i'm sure it depends on who the maker of the device is. there's a lot of tweaking, disabling, enabling stuff that goes on before they are released into the wild.
Trumppoll
September 02, 2010 at 10:20am
Oh God, "MaxiPad", thank goodness I wasn't taking a drink when I read that or I would still be cleaning off my monitor.
aviaggio
September 02, 2010 at 11:27am
Feh... I've been calling the iPad the "maxiPad" since it came out. I knew I should have trademarked it!
Ashton2091
September 02, 2010 at 10:12am
I'm sure a lot of us saw this coming. A lot of these pads have been talked about quite a bit, even before the iPad. they were the next logical step to get rid of that dang netbook. ugh...i shiver when i say that. terrible devices.
Paul_Lilly
September 02, 2010 at 10:09am
Not on the screen, but through the mini HDMI port, assuming you have it connected to a 1080p display.
-Paul Lilly
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