S1 and S2, Meet the Sony's First Android Honeycomb Tablets!

Wow!, that's what came to my mind when I saw Sony's latest Android Honeycomb tablets for the first time (yep... only saw the pictures, not for real). Even before going into the details when looking at the below pictures.. seriously I'm excited!.

S1 (to the Left), S2 (to the right)

A little about "Honeycomb"...

Honeycomb's "approach" to Tablets...

Now, not that long ago when Android was getting some serious market share in the smart phone industry, it was obvious that the next generation of a "phone" should be something that looks like a phone but let you do things that a Tablet PC is capable of doing. But the apparent disadvantage that Google had was that Android was not designed especially for Tablets.

So although you could run Android OS (version 2.0 and below) on Tablet PC's still, it was not quiet capable of giving the optimum usability for the users (such as the applications and the OS was designed for smaller smart phone type devices... so some portion of the screen while on Tablet PCs were "wasted", etc). But then Google decided to seriously work on a "version" that is especially designed for Tablets which they later called the Android Honeycomb.

This gave the Tablet PC manufacturers the ideal opportunity to install a Tablet PC optimized OS with their products thus resulting a much better user experience which was followed by the Samsung (if I'm not mistaken). Anyhow, the latest in the "list" is Sony with the introduction of S1 and S2.

The S1 comes with a 9.4" looking touch sensitive screen while the S2 takes a bit of a different approach by giving 5.5" dual screens with 1024x480 resolution. They both use the Tegra 2 SoC, both certified for PlayStation, Wi-Fi and 3G/4G "compatible" - don't know what that means and fully supports DLNA framework as well (a photo sharing protocol)... these are the main hardware details that I'm aware of.

Below is the official presentation by Mr. Kunimasa Suzuki, Sony's deputy president....

Viewsonic Viewpad 7, Another Android Powered Tablet!

Android tablets are everywhere these days. Motorola announced their latest called the xoom. And Android recently released the (well still only for developers) 3.0 version which is optimized for tablets. Anyway the name viewsonic is actually quite familiar as a PC monitor/LCD manufacture. They've decided to create a Android powered tablet of their own called the Viewpad 7.

To be short and sweet to the point ;-).. here are the main hardware details...

*. Uses the older version of Android 2.3 or earlier (but remember as said the version 3.0 is optimized for tablets, so as soon as it hits the market they'll let you upgrade... so be patient).

*. AT&T and the T-Mobile provide the deals.

*. 7 Inch touch screen.

*. 512MB.

*. 800x400 resolution.

*. Wi-Fi, 3G, Blue-tooth and the GPS is available.

*. Battery life of 4-6 hours under heavy loads.

*. Low quality cameras - 0.3 Megapixel on the front and 3MPX on back.

These are the main hardware details. But the point is the storage really sucks. I mean the 512MB is barely enough... so if you want to get some real use of that Android video player then you'd better purchase a MicroSD memory card. And on the other hand, even after considering camera, etc the cost is a bit higher.

Anyway if you want to know more about it then go to this viewpad7 official page for more.