Tablet-fest 2010
Typical isn't it? You wait several months for a new Acer mobile device and then four of them come along at once.
Acer held its big annual extravaganza in New York today, and chose to save a whole bunch of launches for this one day. Elsewhere on HEXUS you'll see coverage of a dual-screen notebook, but we're focusing on smartphones and tablets here, as is our won't, starting with the smallest.
A product referred to only as ‘Acer next-generation smartphone' claims, rather confusingly, to be ‘100 percent smartphone and 100 percent tablet'. The reason Acer has gone for this angle is that it's attempting to redefine the boundary between the two.
It's generally accepted that a screen size of four inches is roughly the upper limit for a device that can be considered handheld/pocketsized. So Acer has decided to make a 4.8 inch phone with a 21:9 aspect ratio and 1024x480 resolution.
The chassis is patterned metal, there's an 8MP camera and 2MP front camera. It runs on Android 2.2 and what appears to be a vanilla Snapdragon. The phone currently has no price, availability or name, it seems.
OK, onto the fully-fledged tablets. We're not surprised to see Acer sidestep the seven inch vs. ten inch debate by launching both - at least of the Android variety.
There's not a lot of info about either of them. The seven inch tablet will have a dual-core processor (Snapdragon, we assume), a 1280 x 800 touchscreen and a front-facing camera. The 10.1 inch one will have an aluminium chassis, 1080p capability and is being positioned as a premium gaming device.
Neither devices have names or prices. Tentative launch dates of April 2011 have been offered, but we get the impression that Acer won't be launching them until a tablet-optimised version of Android is released by Google - probably 3.0/honeycomb. So this looks like a good indicator of when that will be released.
Lastly Wintel WAMD got a look in. Acer announced a Windows tablet that may measure up nicely with the more buzz-tastic Iconia. The reason is that it "will run on the next-generation AMD platform," presumably Ontario. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first product to be officially launched containing AMD's long-awaited Fusion technology.
Other than that, again there's not a lot of extra info. It will have a 10.1 inch screen and weigh less than a kilo. It will come with a docking device that provides a keyboard and more connectivity options. It's expected to be available by February of next year, so it looks like AMD's plans are still nicely on-track.
