It’s raining tablets

Recently many different electronics hardware brands are releasing all sorts of tablets in order to catch a shimmer of the Apple iPad fame. Obviously these manufacturers will never be able to put iOS in their tablets, so they resort to Android. Android has never claimed itself to be a tablet OS, and usage of Android is still most ideal for mobile phone. Although Google said that the next version of Android, Honeycomb (maybe version 2.4) would be suitable on a tablet, the actual user experience is still very vague.

Out of the many Android tablet out there, some are good, like the 7″ Samsung Galaxy Tab, albeit a bit on the pricey side (RRP=RM2699).

Some tablets are cheaper, such as the 7″ CSL Spice Mi-700 tablet which costs around RM1599. For that, you get a slower processor, a lower resolution screen and less internal storage. This tablet is actually a rebranded OlivePad VT100/ ViewSonic ViewPad 7/ Camangi Webstation FM600. Actually, I don’t know who originated this tablet but with so many manufacturers using the same hardware design, this tablet should be alright. 

Some tablets have been launched overseas but never seen the light of day here in Malaysia, like the 5″ Dell Streak which was released around June 2010.

And finally, some are bad, which i will cover separately as i’m still following the progress and haven’t made up my mind about them. Some manufacturers design and make the tablet so fast that most of their software are still buggy and yet to be optimized. Don’t be surprised to find some tablets still running the old Android 1.6 while we now already have Android 2.3 upon us. Hopefully, the bad experience with some tablets are only temporary which will be fixed in future software updates.

With the CES coming soon (January 2011 in Las Vegas),  we’re looking forward to more new tablets to come and hopefully they just get better in terms of quality, usability and affordability.