Lenovo 'Skylight Slate' Revealed on FCC

[xaueious]

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Lenovo finally got their act together and decided to go through with the FCC approval for their entry into the Android tablet market, with what may soon be called the Lenovo Skylight. The 10" Android 2.2 tablet's FCC testing documents made its way into the FCC database yesterday.

The device is being manufactured by Compal electronics in Taiwan. A product manual revealed the following specifications:

2 variants - one with a leather housing at 760g, and the other with paint only at 770g
size - 262.5 mm x 187.5 mm x 12.9 mm
Platform - Qualcomm QSD8650A
RAM - 1GB
Screen - 10.1" HD LED (1280x800 resolution)
Touch interface - 4-point multitouch display
Integrated camera - 2.0MP (front facing)
Battery - 2700kWh Li-polymer battery
OS - Android 2.2 with Lenovo custom overlay
Ports - tablet dock connector, 3.5mm headphone jack
Perhiperals - built-in microphone, stereo loudspeakers, g-sensor, bluetooth, wifi, power adapter

Going through the FCC pictures reveals what appears to be a microSD slot. The wifi chip being used is a packaged Broadcom BCM4329, which is one of the more common wireless modules in Android devices today. It supports wifi b/g/n as well as FM transmission, but the FM portion of the BCM4329 is typically left unimplemented in most devices, and it was not tested for FCC approval. Of note is the proprietary charging port that doubles as a dock connector and a USB data port, and the screen rotation lock. It is unlikely that the device charges over USB, as the stock charger outputs a voltage of 12v, 1.5A (18 watts).

The QSD8650a processor is a single-core Cortex A8 processor that normally clocks to 1GHz. While the extra RAM should help the device handle more smoothly, there is no denying that this is going to seem a little underpowered compared to the dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 Honeycomb devices as well as the new iPad 2.

The device has seen preorders with 32GB internal storage, along with a price tag around the equivalent of $550USD. The price will likely be a very important consideration factor for the success of the tablet. A 1280x800 resolution will not be kind to some Android 2.2 applications out there today. Until this gets Honeycomb, we'd imagine that this is a little too expensive for most.

Source
FCC via Engadget

 

[strider_mt2k]

I think the manufacturers need to understand that in the Android tablet game it's not just about pushing the hardware out there, but making firmware and software to bring the user a good experience too. -of course you have to pay REAL money for that, be it in talent or resources or both.

Heck, there's a ton of tablet hardware out there now, some of which could be winning pieces if the companies that made them would only bother to finish the job by getting the things coded up so they work well.

 

[GrEn]

The problem is that although a few Android tablets have come out nothing officially from Google has been released until recently to take advantage of the bigger screen so Honeycomb is still really buggy and not many apps have been updated to work with it. The smaller tablets like the galaxy tab and the rooted nook colors with the 7 inch screens can get away with working good enough to be a viable tablet but when you start using normal Android apps on a 10 inch screen it starts to really look strange. On top of that a lot of screen space is being used needlessly since the layout wasn't designed for the bigger screens. Even once Google gets all the bugs worked out of Honeycomb untill more app authors start to produce apps specificity for tablets its still going to feel strange.

All three things really need to catch up to make Andriod the amazing tablet experience that it should be. The hardware is great now, the products that are comming to the market have amazing specs and should be able to do everything that is needed. Google needs to get HC all fixed up and working just as good as the phone based version and I am sure that will be done fairly quickly since Google seems to see how big tablets are becoming. The last part will be the trickiest I think. Getting good apps designed for the bigger screens could take a lot of time. As of right now the amount of programs designed for tablets is just sad. Its only a matter of time but who knows how long it will be to get the apps people really want. Since this is reliant on third parties to design and produce them we have no way of knowing how quick (or how long) it will take for a decent amount of apps to come out.