CES Roundup | A Tablet for Every Carrier
The year of the Also Rans
Are Tablets a trend? Or was CES 2011 the year of the also rans? Apple released the iPad last year and set the industry a blaze. Manufacturers from every corner of the globe flooded CES this year with their new revolutionary offering. Now, it does not matter what carrier you want to use, there is a tablet device for you.
Major manufacturers released their incantation of what a tablet device should be:
T-Mobile
LG announced the upcoming Android Honeycomb-powered T-Mobile G-Slate with Google. Expected to be available in coming months, the G-Slate will be the first 4G tablet from the two companies powered by Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), the upcoming version of Google’s Android platform optimized for tablets.
LG released the Optimus Pad that will run on the T-Mobile 4G network. It features an 8.9-inch display while running on the Tegra 2 processor and Android 2.2.
Dell Streak will also run the T-Mobile 4G network. The device features a 7-inch WVGA multi-touch screen and runs Android 2.2 on a dual-core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab gives you a compact and light tablet. Equipped with 3G connectivity, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 3.0. With a battery life of up to 13 hours and a TFT-LCD display.
Verizon
The Motorola Xoom on Verizon runs the new Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS. The Xoom is powered by the Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor each running 1GHz and has been optimized for tablet-size applications and widgets.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab gives you a compact and light tablet. Equipped with 3G connectivity, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 3.0. With a battery life of up to 13 hours and a TFT-LCD display. The 4G LTE-enabled Samsung Galaxy Tab version is expected to be available from Verizon by mid 2011.
Sprint
RIM released the Blackberry Playbook a 7” offering that runs on RIM’s software and the Sprint Network. The Playbook will try as the mighty Blackberry of yesteryear did and conquer the enterprise market while offering an OS that some may perfer over the iOS by Apple and the Android of well, everyone else.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab gives you a compact and light tablet. Equipped with 3G connectivity, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 3.0. With a battery life of up to 13 hours and a TFT-LCD display
AT&T
The Samsung Galaxy Tab gives you a compact and light tablet. Equipped with 3G connectivity, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 3.0. With a battery life of up to 13 hours and a TFT-LCD display
Apple of course did not release details regarding the iPad 2 that will be available on AT&T in 2011. As we all know Apple does not play nice in the CES sandbox and will have its own conference. The iPad 2 is better suited to have it’s own event and not get lost in the sea of also rans.
Tablets at CES were as ubiquitous as weak drinks and flashing lights in Vegas. Listed above were just the major manufacturers and network carriers. To list all of the offerings would take a ten man curation team and more coffee than I am willing to drink.
One interesting thing to note. Windows does not even make the list. Samsung offered the Series 7, a convertible form factor laptop that runs windows 7. Well Windows, you were behind in the smartphone race, what made us think you would keep up with the tablet market either.
So is the tablet a trend? Will we see the 2.0 versions of these come CES 2012?
