Viewsonic has blamed Android and Adobe’s Flash for poor first-impressions of its 10.1-inch GTablet slate, suggesting that the reason the Tegra 2 based tablet was pulled from Staples shelves over the weekend was not, as the retailer suggested, because of a “manufacturing defect” but merely a shortfall in “user experience”. The GTablet will get a software update by the end of this week that will apparently address complaints about the Tap ‘n’ Tap UI – including giving owners the opportunity to turn it off altogether – among other things.
However, the GTablet will have to wait until the end of January 2011 for an update to Flash Player that will see the plugin certified by Adobe; Viewsonic has been impacted by the same issue that Advent reported earlier this month affecting its Vega tablet.
[via SlashGear]
Press Release:
ViewSonic Confirms High Performance of GTablet
Software Upgrade Release to Improve User Experience
WALNUT, Calif. – December 20, 2010 – ViewSonic Corp., a leading global provider of computing, consumer electronics and communications solutions, today responded to recent retailer actions surrounding its GTablet 10.1″ Android 2.2 Tablet. The GTablet, based on the nVidia Tegra II chipset, is one of the fastest Android tablets on the market today, consistently leading industry benchmarks.
“We always listen to customers; while they love the hardware, they raised several issues about the user interface,” Jeff Volpe, VP and GM for ViewSonic Americas. “As a result, our software partner is releasing an upgrade that will address customer concerns. Along with great performance improvements, customers will have the flexibility to use both a standard Android interface as well as a user-customizable interface which has been significantly enhanced since the product launch.” Volpe went on to say, “ViewSonic is committed to its tablet endeavors and will continue with new announcements at CES in January.”
Current GTablet owners will automatically receive the upgrade through their WiFi connection by Friday, December 24. Users simply need to accept the request to install the upgrade. In addition, Adobe® Flash certification is targeted for the end of January, 2011. In the interim, users can download Flash from various websites that distribute android applications.
For the latest on GTablet software updates, please visit ViewSonic.com/gtablet beginning Wednesday, December 22. For general questions, please contact GTablet support at (866) 501-6405.
I owned this tablet for about 18 hours. Saw it for $410 after tax @ Sears, so I figured I’d give it a shot. Out of the box experience was absolutely awful. That TapnTap UI is the worst Android overlay UI I’ve ever seen. Severely limits what you can do with the device, especially considering its lack of Flash. So, I decided to flash TNT Lite 2.2 onto it. This really woke the device up. Jumped through some hoops and got the Android Market working on it as well. But even this couldn’t save the device in my eyes. And that isn’t just a metaphor, because it was my eyes that made the final decision. The screen is pretty bad. Extremely pixely considering its resolution (1024 x600), which is the same resolution of my Dell Mini9. Now, this could be an Android scaling issue, or it could be a poor quality screen. But either way, the experience was the same. The viewing angle was the worst I’ve ever used on any device, as well. You can’t tilt it more than 20 degrees in any direction without distorting the colors. And if you have to rotate the screen to portrait mode to play certain games (paper toss), you get a weird “glare” effect on the screen, as if it wasn’t actually meant to be turned that way. I feel like a jerk for totally tearing this tablet down like I have, but I just don’t want the “picky” end-users (like myself) to be surprised and end up paying a restocking fee due to extreme disappointment.
Hundreds of dollars spent and lost because there is no access to the Android market. The gtablet doesn’t do anything. I gave mine away twice and people gave it back because they said their cell panes do more than the gtablet. Don’t buy one yet.