We’ve just reported on the UK price and availability for the Viewpad 7 and turned around to see that NetbookNews have had hands-on at a launch event in Taiwan. It’s all happening today! Check out the video below.
Once again, we’re getting positive vibes!
Source: NetbookNews
If you’ve been thinking about an Android tablet purchase over the next 2 months, these devices are probably on your list. Galaxy Tab, Dell Streak, Notion Ink Adam, Viewpad 7, Archos 70, Archos 101 and maybe the Toshiba Folio. Only 2 of them are currently available and both the Tab and the Streak are great quality products (Streak even gets a 2.2 upgrade soon) but what if you’re looking for something a little cheaper? The Viewpad 7 might be just what you’re looking for.
We tested it extensively at IFA in Sept and were tricked by its speed into thinking it was based on a Snapdragon CPU.It’s not! Our reports from IFA here.
The Galaxy Tab is almost like-for-like in specs (although it is fair to say that it will be a higher-quality device in terms overall ‘product’) and it is retailing for £529 at Amazon.co.uk today [affiliate link] The Viewsonic Viewpad 7 is available by pre-order now for £399. We think that price might come down a little soon too, just like the price of the Tab did. Admittedly, the price is 50 pounds more than we were promised at IFA – “no more that £350” was heard a number of times – but retailers are obviously free to charge what they think is right and with the Tab price ranging up to over £600, £399 sounds fair as a starting point.
Availability is set for the 15th November (confirmed with Viewsonic) and we also heard that there’s a press event on Thursday 28th so expect a number of hands-on reports to go out from the .co.uk tech press. We’ll try to get there.
Availability in the UK will be through Maplin, Scan, Misco and Expansys. Only Misco is showing pre-order details at the moment although you can find the Viewpad 10 up for pre-order on Maplin (£499.99)
My advise is to wait just a week. After the press event you’re likely to see a scramble to get the Viewpad into online retail channels / price comparison engines and the price will find its place.
We had a chat with Viewsonic yesterday and it look like we’ll get a Viewpad 7 in early November so keep an eye our for news about the live testing session. We also heard that Germany is also on the list. MediaMarkt will be the partner according to some emails that have gone out.
If you’ve been thinking about an Android tablet purchase over the next 2 months, these devices are probably on your list. Galaxy Tab, Dell Streak, Notion Ink Adam, Viewpad 7, Archos 70, Archos 101 and maybe the Toshiba Folio. Only 2 of them are currently available and both the Tab and the Streak are great quality products (Streak even gets a 2.2 upgrade soon) but what if you’re looking for something a little cheaper? The Viewpad 7 might be just what you’re looking for.
We tested it extensively at IFA in Sept and were tricked by its speed into thinking it was based on a Snapdragon CPU.It’s not! Our reports from IFA here.
The Galaxy Tab is almost like-for-like in specs (although it is fair to say that it will be a higher-quality device in terms overall ‘product’) and it is retailing for £529 at Amazon.co.uk today [affiliate link] The Viewsonic Viewpad 7 is available by pre-order now for £399. We think that price might come down a little soon too, just like the price of the Tab did. Admittedly, the price is 50 pounds more than we were promised at IFA – “no more that £350 inch was heard a number of times but retailers are obviously free to charge what they think is right and with the Tab price ranging up to over £600, £399 sounds fair as a starting point.
Availability is set for the 15th November (confirmed with Viewsonic) and we also heard that there’s a press event on Thursday 28th so expect a number of hands-on reports to go out from the .co.uk tech press. We’ll try to get there.
Availability in the UK will be through Maplin, Scan, Misco and Expansys. Only Misco is showing pre-order details at the moment although you can find the Viewpad 10 up for pre-order on Maplin (£499.99)
My advise is to wait just a week. After the press event you’re likely to see a scramble to get the Viewpad into online retail channels / price comparison engines and the price will find its place.
We had a chat with Viewsonic yesterday and it look like we’ll get a Viewpad 7 in early November so keep an eye our for news about the live testing session. We also heard that Germany is also on the list. MediaMarkt will be the partner according to some emails that have gone out.
There are a few consumer tablets that stir excitement more than others. Of course the iPad is a leader in terms of being a complete product but there are three others you should watch out for. The Dell Streak gets Android 2.2 in November giving it a leading position in the Android tablet space. The Galaxy Tab should launch in November too. It will be expensive but will bring some large-screen optimised software to the Android platform for the first time. The third one on the ‘watchlist’ is the Viewsonic Viewpad 7. We were slightly disappointed to hear that it’s an ARM11-based device last week which means it definitely won’t have the ooompf to compete with the other devices mentioned here but having tested it and seen that it’s a complete ‘phone’ tablet with 3G, GPS and a surprisingly fast UI, we’re still happy that it competes. Pricing is said to be competitive.
The Viewpad 7 is a re-badged device manufactured by Foxconn and we’ve already seen that it will appear as the Olive Pad, the Camangi FM600 and the CSL Spice Mi700 Droidpad and it’s the latter version that is getting some attention right now because it’s already available in Malaysia and the blogger that made the in-shop review we highlighted last week now has a review model. Not only that but he’s found out that there’s a Snapdragon version in the works too. No doubt it will be more expensive but it certainly shouldn’t take long to get it to market if they use the same design. Foxconn aren’t using the same design though because our friendly Malaysian blogger says “DroidPad 2 slimmer, Snapdragon, will meet Android 3.0 req, planned release in Q1/Q2 of 2011. inch
With Foxconn being one of the largest computer design/manufacturing companies in the world it’s safe to say that they’re well connected in Google. Knowing exactly what’s required for Android 3.0 is a good indicator too.
We’ll be continuing to follow erlern on Twitter and his blog. We suggest you do to!
This is rather embarrassing
I’ve been a big proponent of ARMs Cortex CPU cores and have regularly highlighted that they are ‘entry level’ for any sort of Web work on an ARM platform. I’ve tested many ARM11 devices from smartphones to tablets and have never seen any browser speed or quality that would make me happy in a productive scenario. In today’s world of advanced smartphones, there’s every chance that the average consumer would notice too. The latest device that I’m testing, the SmartQ T7, is so slow that I’ve postponed my review until the company can confirm that there isn’t a networking fault. I’ve also been fairly public that the Nokia N8 with its ARM11 CPU won’t be a blazer when it comes to Web browsing and my early tests confirm it. I’ve also disputed cries that a new browser will make it better.
Imagine my surprise today when a tablet I’ve been very positive about in terms of speed turns out to be an ARM11-based device. Initial reports from Viewsonic indicated that the Viewpad 7 it would be a Snapdragon-based device but the specifications were changed and the unit will be based on the Qualcomm MSM7227 CPU. I only found out because all the other devices based on the same OED (Camangi FM600, Olive Pad, Spice Mi700) are all advertising the Qualcomm MSM7227. Viewsonic confirmed to me today that the device will now ship with the MSM7227 and interestingly, that the unit I tested at IFA and am basing my positive thoughts on was the ARM11 model. [Gulps]
Of course it doesn’t change the product one bit (unless you have an affinity for Cortex cores) but it does mean I have to be more careful with my analysis in the future. In my defence I was told that it was Snapdragon and it was actually pretty fast but I apologise for this mistake and hope you’ll respect my openness. The relevant product specification pages have all been updated. Learnt from this: Android 2.2 is an extremely efficient OS and it’s possible that Symbian^3 could also be well-optimised in terms of its latest browser software.
At the end of the day our ‘Open Review’ sessions and videos catch any failings and issues and we’ll be planning just that for the Viewsonic products (Viewpad 7 and Viewpad 10) so stick with us for the real story.
Note: I’ve also added a bunch of early review links to the Viewsonic Viewpad 7 product pages.
While we’re waiting for the Viewpad 7 to turn up in shops in EU and America, you can already buy it in Malaysia. It’s called the Spice Mi700 there and is offered through CSL, the manufacturing company that also put the JooJoo through its lines. One assumes that they are also manufacturing for Camangi, Viewsonic and Olive Telecom because it’s exactly the same device as their offerings.
More important than who’s manufacturing it is how it’s performing and in-line with my own hands-on, it’s getting the thumbs-up.
The Mi700 is, like the Viewpad 7 and FM600, a complete Android tablet with GPS, 3G, capacitive multitouch and Google applications making it stand out in the crowd. The processor, a Snapdragon running at 600Mhz, is faster than most of the cheap offerings too.
‘elern’ from ‘A World of Thoughts’ managed to spend 30 minutes with the device in his local electronic store and his report is well worth reading. Elern reports a slightly washed-out screen and a few software-related issues but the rest of the report is encouraging. Elern even manages to find out the battery capacity 12wh which is half the capacity of the iPad battery but given the smaller screen, should give around 5 hours of in-usage battery life (and the normal extended active standby time as per smartphones.) Finally, elern suggests that while this isn’t an iPad killer, its an alternative to the Galaxy Tab. I agree 100%.
You can check-out elerns hands-on here, follow him on Twitter here and view a thread he’s created in xda-developers here. Another owner has already chipped in with some comments. (“Web browsing is very snappy, no lag and fast, love it”) The product is available on-line here.
Notice something about that headline? It’s no longer the Viewpad 100, it’s the Viewpad 10. (Which makes sense as @thDigitalReader just pointed out to me)
More interesting news is that the pre-registration page is open. It doesn’t give any information on availability but at least you’ll be first to get the information when it’s available.
Note that the page is a UK-focused one which is as expected. The Viewpad will probably roll out in the UK before other countries. As there’s no hardware keyboard, that should be a fairly quick process. (I expect Germany and U.S. to be close behind.)
Finally in an official message we just received we have confirmation that the Viewpad 10 is using an N455 CPU and not the N550 as reported by some retailers and relayed by some blog posts yesterday.
We’re working on a review device and hope to have more news for you soon.
Chatting to people around IFA today we’re all agreeing that the Viewsonic Viewpad is another ‘complete’ Android Tablet product. Apart from the latest Ghz-class CPU, and lets not forget that a 600Mhz Cortex A8-class CPU isn’t actually that bad, it has everything needed for the full Android experience. From camera to 3G. From GPS to Market. From capacative touch to good build quality. You can even use this for voice calls.
The price is 399 Euro (maximum) which we think is very competitive indeed.
In the video below we go over the device and run a few tests, including the voice call!
Correction: IN the video I talked about a 1024×600 screen. We’re checking this. At the moment the general opinion is that it’s an 800×480 screen. That does make some difference for web browsing it will be difficult to detect any downside when using it in apps that are all designed for smaller resolutions anyway.
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