Still got tablet fever? Somebody must, because they just keep coming.
Sony unveiled the final versions of its two new Android tablets Wednesday. These are the same two devices we saw last month — the curvy, wedge-shaped full-sized tablet is now called the Sony Tablet S, and the dual-screen tablet that folds up into a pocket-sized burrito is now called the Sony Tablet P.
The Tablet S will land in stores this September, priced at $500 for a 16GB version and $600 for the 32GB version. The Tablet P will arrive closer to the end of the year, and pricing on that one is still up in the air. The full-sized Tablet S is Wi-Fi only, but the Tablet P will be outfitted with AT&T wireless connectivity options.
From the front, the S looks like every other tablet: boring, shiny and flat. But from the side or the back, you can see it resembles a magazine with the front cover and the first dozen pages folded around back.
The hardware was officially announced at the IFA trade show in Berlin. However, we were given a demo version of the Tablet S to play around with over the weekend. The software (it comes with Android Honeycomb) isn’t fully baked just yet, so we’ll hold off going deep on that until we get a final version. Look for a full review later in September in the Product Reviews section of Wired.
From the front, the S looks like every other tablet: boring, shiny and flat. But from the side or the back, you can see it resembles a magazine with the front cover and the first dozen pages folded around back. The black plastic shell wraps around the fat “spine” and continues across the back of the tablet, tapering off and ending before it goes all the way to the other end — just like a folded magazine cover doesn’t wrap all the way around, leaving an inch or two of the back cover’s outer edge exposed.
This goes against the unspoken Code of Tablet Design, which mandates thinness above all else, and from which we’ve seen very little deviation. But while Sony’s S is bulky (at least along the “spine” edge) you don’t notice it.
It’s supremely comfortable to hold with one hand — more comfortable than the thinner and lighter tablets, even though it weighs about 1.3 pounds, the same as an iPad 2. The whole shell is crafted from smooth plastic, but the fat spine is subtly textured with raised bumps to it give some grip. The bumps continue around the back so your fingertips don’t have to dig in as hard.
The screen is lovely. It’s bright with excellent color depth, and black tones are represented especially well. I’d expect a good display from Sony, and this one excels. Of course, the 9.4-inch screen rotates to accommodate both left-handed and right-handed users.
There’s another advantage of the wedge shape, which is that when you set it down to type on the screen in landscape mode, the top of the tablet is propped up towards you a little. It’s not ideal — I found myself wanting to slide something under the spine to angle the screen toward me more — but it’s better than typing on a touchscreen that’s laying totally flat.
Holding the tablet by the spine (in portrait mode), the top and bottom edges of the tablet are like little teardrop-shaped valleys. This is where Sony has stashed all the ports and physical buttons. If you’re right-handed, it’s most comfortable to hold the tablet in your left hand so you can touch the screen with your right. This puts the power button and volume rocker on the top. Next to those is a tiny, recessed Reset button. The ports — USB and an full-sized SD card slot — are on the bottom of the device, behind a little removable door. Also on the bottom is the headphone jack. There are two cameras — front-facing and rear-facing — built into the middle of the spine.
Two unfortunate things to note. First, as is often the case with Sony, the charging cable is proprietary, so you have to carry a power supply instead of just using a standard USB charger. Also, the speakers are weak. They are on the back of the device, so they face away from you whenever you’re looking at the screen — a common annoyance in tabletville. It ships with earbuds. Crappy ones, but earbuds nonetheless.
As I mentioned, the software on our tablet was not finalized, but I can tell you that it already appears as snappy, responsive and powerful as you’d expect on a top-tier tablet. The S has a dual-core 1GHz Tegra 2 processor and 1GB of RAM, so no worries there.
We did see some demos of the apps that will be shipping with the Tablet S. There’s a universal touchscreen remote that’s quite handy — you can control almost any home A/V component (Sony or otherwise) through the tablet’s IR eye. You can load PlayStation games onto it through an emulator — this is a “PlayStation-Certified” device, and it will come pre-loaded with Crash Bandicoot. Finally, the tablet is a DLNA-compliant device, so you can throw videos, photos and music to any DLNA component on your network.
Minus the universal remote, these features are all on the Sony Tablet P as well. The P is a dual-screen clamshell, so it folds up into a flattened cylinder that you can slip into a jacket pocket or a purse (or a man-purse). The dual-screen configuration makes it especially nice for playing those PlayStation games, with the top screen showing the action and the bottom screen reserved for the touch controls. Also, held with the spine vertical, you have a pleasantly book-like form factor for reading e-books. Both tablets come loaded with e-book software that lets you browse and buy from Sony’s store.
The P has a few more kinks to work out — not surprising, given the unconventional tooling — so we didn’t get as much hands-on time. But we’ll hopefully see more of it before the holidays.
As an Android experience, Sony’s Tablet S is fully capable and largely unexciting — aside from the universal remote and the PlayStation emulation software, it performs very much like every other Android tablet in its class. But the hardware design is the real winning element here. Sony has taken a chance by eschewing the simple slate and going with a more humanizing shape. It’s new and unusual, but yet familiar to anyone who’s read a magazine at the beach. An admirable choice.
Photos by Jon Snyder/Wired
