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Our very own Gordon Ung summed success in the tech world pretty succinctly in this month's issue: if you want to make your product a hit, it helps to make it cheap. Looks like Chinese manufacturer ZTE was paying attention. This Super Bowl Sunday, the company is releasing a new 7-inch Android Honeycomb tablet -- the ZTE Optik -- with pretty decent specs and a $100 price tag that undercuts the Kindle Fire by half.
There's a catch, of course. To get that dirt-cheap price, you'll need to sign up for a 2-year data plan with Sprint, whose tablet data options start at $20 for 1GB/mo. (Wha...?!) Otherwise, you'll need to plunk down $350 in upfront cash to go plan-free.
So what's that $100-plus-data-fee get you? Here's the specs ZTE owned up to in its press release:
Notably missing: 4G support. Yep, despite the fact that ZTE sounds curiously close to LTE, this bad-boy's 3G CDMA only. Could its low contract price woo you into buying a ZTE Optik, or would you rather stick to Wi-Fi only or contract-free tablets that cost more money in the short term, but less cash (and more freedom) in the long term?
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TechW
February 02, 2012 at 5:17pm
I'm seriously considering the Asus MeMO 370T 7" Tegra 3 ICS tablet if they can really hold the price down to $249. WiFi only is perfectly fine. If I need to I can always tether it to my Nexus S 4G. No additional monthly payments.
Sorian
February 02, 2012 at 1:04pm
I am already set my sights on Galaxy Nexus to replace the Samsung Moment (no laughing, I had to have a working phone at that time and it fit the bill, and with the switch over from WiMax to LTE right at the upgrade, worth the wait).
yomanwill
February 03, 2012 at 8:40pm
Had a Moment. Not that bad of a phone. Bit of a fan of a physical keyboard.
