2010, month 2: year of the tablet, round-up 1

The devices in this article are a mix of launched, scheduled and rumoured. Because of this, I don’t have all of the details in some cases. I have applied the term tablet fairly loosely; the Fujitsu Lifebook UH900, for example, is being marketed as a mini netbook since it has a physical keyboard but in other aspects, it looks more like a tablet PC contender. The P88 is from our shanzhai friends at Shenzhen Great Long Brother Industrial Co.

Design

 

Tablet PCs have a wider range in terms of size compared to smartphones and netbooks. The size of tablet PC ranges from 4 to 12 inches. Dell has confirmed that their upcoming tablet PC, the Dell Mini 5 will have a tiny 5 inch screen, whilst the JooJoo has a whopping 12.1 inches. The Apple iPad has got a 9.7” screen, the Adam Tablet 10”, Archos 9 has 8.9”, and the HP Slate and MSI tablets may have a 10” screen (it’s yet to be confirmed). A screen size of between 8 to 10 inches is most common.

The weight of these tablet PCs is obviously affected by the screen size. The shanzhai P88 is the heaviest—it’s running Intel's x86.

Hardware

Mainly you’ll find NVIDIA Tegra 2, Intel Atom, Snapdragon, and ARM Cortex processors, except for the Apple iPad which features an Apple A4 processor. An energy efficient processor helps to extend battery life and that’s clearly evident when you look at the P88 with its Intel Atom which sucks up the battery leaving it with only 2 hours of play time.

So why does the P88 use an energy-sucking Intel Atom when there are plenty of energy efficient CPUs and chipsets available in the market? Is there a legal issue? No, it’s mainly about the cost! The popularity of any shanzhai product is heavily influenced by on its price. It has to be cheap. Most buyers in China don’t really care about which platform is used in a device, their only concern is price and hence, manufactures just use the absolutely cheapest platform/chipset and most of time, it’s the Intel Atom! Getting back to the comparison …

The Adam Tablet PC looks impressive with 16 hours of battery life and amazingly 160 hours on backlight off mode. The second best option looks like the Apple iPad with 10 hours of battery life.

 

On the storage front, the tablet PCs have between 4 – 64GB. Whilst I would have though that a microSD slot for memory extension was very important, Steve Jobs obviously doesn’t agree! There is no microSD port for extendable memory in the Apple iPad, which only has onboard storage of 16, 32 or 64GB. The P88 seems like a king in terms of storage space compared to the other tablets on the list. The roomy 160GB is a HDD and not SSD so although it’s big, it’s also probably slower and less shock resistant.

In terms of High Definition video playback, the iPad features only 720p whereas other tablet PCs on the list can easily support 1080p playback. Multitasking is also a great feature in tablet PCs but it mainly depends on which OS the device is running. Android and Windows 7 do support multitasking but unfortunately the iPhone OS 3.2 powering the Apple iPad doesn’t feature multitasking. To be able to use multitasking on the Apple iPad you’d have to run Mac OSX (as a hack).

Unlike smartphones, it seems like multi-touch has turned into a common feature for tablet PCs. Stylus and digital pens are not required as they are all true touchscreen capable. The resolution of the device varies with the screen size and from the table above 1024x768 seems to be most common. The JooJoo features a higher resolution of 1366x768 because of its larger screen size.

 

A camera is also a common feature of a tablet PC, but Apple iPad owners will be disappointed with the absence of one. The Dell Mini 5 is certainly the winner with a 5MP dual LED flash and a front facing camera. The Adam Tablet PC features a 3.2MP camera with the capability of 180 degree rotation—quite impressive.

 

Ports which are being featured in these tablet PCs are: USB, 3.5mm stereo headphone jack, dock connector, HDMI out and even a SIM card slot in some models. The Adam Tablet PC features 3 USB ports and HDMI out, excellent advantages over the iPad. I have to also give kudos to the Archos 9 for having an Ethernet port. The P88 may suck on battery life but when it comes to I/O it comes up trumps, with 3 USB ports, one VGA, one RJ-45 (Ethernet), card-reader and stereo jack.

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