Now before we begin, I must say that this is not the first we’ve ever heard of this tablet, nor is it the first we’ve ever seen it in real life (If I remember right, we snuck a tiny peek at it at CES 2011 but were sworn to secrecy.) Now we’ve got our grubby mitts on it and we’ve been given the opportunity to compare it not only to the Motorola XOOM tablet, but the iPad 2, both for size and for weight. This is a tablet that’s made of metal, this is a tablet that’s made for Honeycomb, this is a tablet that is nowhere near ready for release.
This tablet is a relatively attractive looking piece of machinery, but with the tablets that have been released just this past 24 hours, we’re not as thrilled as we otherwise may have been. Given that and the fact that not only is this tablet not displaying Honeycomb (AT&T is not yet allowed to do so, they say,) but the test copy of Android 2.1 Eclair they’ve got flying around in here is so buggy that it was jumping back and forth across the screen as it sat in the display holster.
[vms b4d3fbd5ba2ce59211f5]
This is a tablet that’s perhaps got a future in the business of people seeking out the odd, but without a working copy of an Android OS to look at, I and we can’t really make too big of a judgement in any direction.
The hardware is heavy, but not heavier than the Motorola XOOM. It’s heavier than the iPad 2, and definitely heavier than the Samsung Galaxy Tab devices revealed today, and it’s basically the same thickness as the XOOM. Behold a weird one!
Brushed metal, son!
what an odd review … my wife got an a500, and we were so impressesed with it that she dumped her existing android tablet immediately. a bit later i got an a501 for myself, and can’t be happier with it
as a retired software engineer i’m always amazed by the lack of insight the press (and reviewers in general) have for products undergoing development. typically a crew of developers is working on several items, and they are all ”buggy” before release — and yet the same people who clamor for an early peek are the last to recognize exactly what it is that they have been given (no wonder Apple has for so long denied the press early access to products : to avoid exactly this kind of foolish ‘reporting’)
the reviewer forgot to mention, in the vapid comparison with an apple product, that the iPad still does not display the web properly … but thickness (something found in ample supply here) and weight (something i will not be giving to reviews here) are simple grade-school metrics these folks can easily wrap their heads around — further indicated by a plethora of images which replace the need for meaningful examinations
sad