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Hands-on With the iPad Alternatives On Display At IFA
Barence writes "This week's IFA show has seen a flurry of Android-based alternatives to the iPad emerge from leading manufacturers. The Samsung Galaxy Tab made a strong first impression on PC Pro's reviewer. The 7-inch tablet's TFT screen 'beams forth with rich, saturated colors and wide, wide viewing angles,' the device is capable of Full HD playback and the TouchWiz UI is 'clearly intended to draw customers away from the iFamily.' Elsewhere, ViewSonic has launched a pair of 7-inch and 10-inch tablets, the larger of which dual boots into either Android or Windows 7. 'Our first moments with Windows 7 were surprisingly painless, too: we expected the Atom processor and 1GB of memory to be horrendously sluggish, but it wasn't the case,' PC Pro reports. Finally, Toshiba's 10.1-in. Folio 100 marries Android 2.2 with Nvidia's Tegra 2 platform to deliver 'mighty graphics crunching power.' The build quality left a little to desire, though. 'The 14mm thick chassis feels lightweight, and even relatively gentle twisting motions left the Folio's plastic body creaking under the stress.'"
Maybe they're planning to put Swype on it - that helps a lot with typing on touch screen mobiles and I think Samsung have some kind of a deal to have it on their mobiles already even though it's still in beta elsewhere. If they're expecting people to use this as a lightweight web browser then that's probably a good compromise, but I agree I'd hate to do any serious typing on it (even with a bluetooth keyboard, you have the issue of how you comfortably prop up a tablet device and keep your lap free for the keyboard - if you go the route of a stand then you may as well have a netbook).