It's been five months since Sony officially unveiled its first Android tablets called "S1" and "S2" in Tokyo. Finally, the time has come to release one of the two. The Sony Tablet S which is previously named "S1" is making its first debut in US market this September.
The Sony Tablet S is a 9" Android tablet with a unique design called "folding design". It's quite interesting to talk about unique design of a tablet PC, remembering what happened to the Samsung Galaxy Tab when the German court upheld the Galaxy Tab 10.1 ban for Apple's patent issue. The folding design is undoubtedly original by Sony. So that at least they don't need to worry about such an issue.
The design which is inspired by a folded piece of paper is not only unique, but also really makes a sense from the comfort standpoint. The folding design creates two sides: the thick and the thin. When we hold the thick side by one hand, the tablet's weight is concentrated at this side. It feels pretty comfortable. And if we put the device on a table in landscape orientation, the folding design also provides more comfortable typing position than what "the flat design" does.
A unique and comfortable design only is certainly not enough for winning the competition in 9" tablet class. At least there are the iPad 2 and the HP Touchpad in this class. Is the Sony Tablet S ready to compete with such both tablets?
Let's take a look at the Tablet S' specifications and features!
The Sony Tablet S comes with 9.4" (1280x800 p, 161 ppi) screen, a 5 megapixel rear-facing camera (2560x1920 p), a VGA front-facing camera, dual-core 1.2 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor running NVIDIA Tegra 2 T20 chipset, 1 GB RAM, and 16 GB/32 GB internal memory. With these specifications, the Tablet S has better display's pixel density and higher camera in comparison to those of the iPad 2 and the HP Touchpad.
The Tablet S runs the latest version of Android Honeycomb with some modifications, pre-loaded Sony apps, and games. You will find Sony's Reader app for ebooks, the Reader Store, a File Transfer app along with Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited, Quick View in the browser for faster loading, and the popular PSOne game: Crash Bandicoot. If you want more games, you can load the other PSOne and PSP titles.
The other interesting features are DLNA support and Remote Control app. You can click the "Throw" button in audio and video apps, and it will immediately scan for DLNA-compliant devices, allowing you to stream video or music from the tablet to those devices wirelessly. The Remote Control app enables you to use the tablet as a universal remote. It works with any A/V hardware, not only for Sony's brand. That's pretty cool.
Seemingly it's no exaggeration to say "all of Sony's innovations folded into one". And that is precisely what Sony says about the Tablet S.
You can check out more about new Android tablets through our link.
