Acer Android 7-inch and 10.1-inch Tablets Preview Videos Spotted

Acer announced its new 7-inch and 10.1-inch Tablets in an New York based event last month on Nov 23. Out of both, videos of the 10.1-inch Acer Tablet running Android was spotted on YouTube. Two different videos showed preview of the same thing - usage of gyroscope to flip through pages of magazine or a book. The tablet seems to have Acer UI 4.5 layered over the Android interface and also showed some innovative zooming gestures.

At the Acer's Conference, the 10.1-inch Android running tablet was shown with aluminum casing and one of the slides mentioned that the tablet would house a dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets. The capacitive touchscreen supports 1280x800 pixel resolution display. In the videos, a female previews Acer's Android tablet running an eBook application that flips pages based on the gyroscope. The interface is bit buggy. Watch the videos below:

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Android Honeycomb Tablet Of Motorola due at CES 2011

Before this month, Motorola's Google Android 3.0 HoneyComb OS running tablet - was rumored as MOTOPAD - and was reportedly spotted online. Earlier, on December 6, Google VP of Engineering Andy Rubin had shown Google's next major Android Update - Honeycomb at the D: Dive Into Mobile Conference. While we eagerly waited for the details of this MOTOPAD, Motorola' s official Twitter account shared a link to the tablet's teaser video. Though Motorola hasn't specified anything on unveiling it, we expected to catch a glimpse of it at Consumer Electronics Show starting January 6, 2011. 

Motorola Tablet's teaser video does not show much about the MOTOPAD, but it certainly features current rivals Apple iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab. These are the two tablets widely available. Since RIM hasn't released the PlayBook tablet yet, it won't be in the picture. In the Twitter update, Motorola simply stated, "Might want to hold off on that tablet purchase until 2011." However, it doesn't specify or promise unveiling or launching it on a specific date/month.

So far we have a rough list of MOTOPAD specifications that state it has a 10.1-inch screen with 1280x800 pixel resolution support. Under the hood, the tablet will run NVIDIA Tegra 250 System-on-Chip running at 1GHZ with 512MB RAM. Google Android Honeycomb update is said to be optimized for running on large screen tablets and devices. However, we're yet to get a glimpse of a working model.

Watch the MotoTablet/MOTOPAD teaser video below:

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Are these 3G Tablets Digging our Wallets Deeper?

Tablet computers have never made this big a noise since the iPad launch this year. Most tablets including Apple's shiny 10-inch device or even Samsung's Galaxy Tab (which we recently checked out) come with Wi-Fi for connecting to the net when you're around a hotspot. Many also have 3G for Internet accessibility anywhere you go. Now, something that many may tend to overlook are the recurring charges for the latter. This is more relevant to people who own tablet computers as well as smartphones (which I believe is a big percentage). For such people, they're already paying a monthly fee for 3G on their cell phone.

Over and above this, if you own an iPad 3G model, you'll be shelling out $15 per month to AT&T for a paltry 250MB. Another American carrier Sprint charges $30 per month for 2GB of usage when you purchase the Samsung Galaxy Tab via them. A possible way out of this is to share the Internet connection from your cell phone when required (known as Internet Tethering). For example, Google's Android 2.2 has a feature built-in that lets you turn your phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot. It uses its 3G connection to serve other Wi-Fi enabled devices (like say the Wi-Fi only iPad or iPod Touch) with broadband internet. A popular app called Joikuspot for Symbian devices lets you do the same. However, some operators do not allow such type of sharing of their 3G Internet to more than one device.

We still don't know the fate of 3G Internet tethering till all operators launch it. At least most of them have no such harsh restrictions for the currently running 2.5G Internet (or EDGE) service. So, for people already owning a 3G smart-phone and planning to buy a tablet, I'd suggest you do your math before jumping to buy a 3G tablet with a monthly plan. Explore Internet sharing over your smartphone before. You could save a big sum at the end of the year.

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