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A bit of confusion seems to have arisen around the recently announced lineup of Eee Pads shown off by Asus at CES. The tablets are actually looking quite good, and they are expected to see release in April, May, and June depending on the model. The question is whether or not the tablets will receive Honeycomb as promised. Rumors said that not only would the tablets not receive Honeycomb, but that their launches would be pushed back to Q3 of 2011.
Asus is saying that simply isn’t true. The tablets will launch on time and the current plan is to get them Android 3.0. The company said the rumor came from misinterpretation of facts: Asus had simply stated that Google hadn’t keyed manufacturers into the release timeframe of Honeycomb, but that the tablets were being built around a set of specs that should support Android 3.0, even though it has been said Honeycomb has no specific minimum requirements.
Yeah, so it is a bit confusing, but the takeaway message is that as far as Asus is concerned, these tablets will receive Honeycomb one way or another.
[via AndroidCentral]
I am guessing the high prices on the last 3 are without a data contract. While I love Android, these prices are way to high to compete with the iPad.
The prices I have seen for Android tablets are comparable to the iPad. I’d prefer an Android based tablet, but instead of offering a lower price as is typical of the PC-Apple cost structure, PC tablets have moved UP in price. Might as well get the gold standard in that case. Other than a 5 year old iPod, I don’t have any apple products so this not a fanboy post.
I’m not sure why people keep saying $500-$700 isn’t competing with the iPad. The baseline iPad is $500 and that’s 16gb of flash memory with no 3G radio (which is fine). It doesn’t have the processing power of the Tegra 2’s or the DRAM amount either.
I’m guessing the $500 option will be wifi only with 16gb memory.
I had a play with the slate at BETT here in the UK and its a great piece of kit. Also looked at the transformer and slide and the both look great and after looking/playing with various tablets – acer, Toshiba, viewsonic 10 (both the dual boot atom and the Tegra 2 version running froyo) and the asus transformer is looking the best. Pricing in the UK for the asus tablets are going to be £379 for the transformer and £100 for the keyboard, £429 for slider and £999 for the slate.
It is funny and sad at the same time that at CES, ASUS reps were not able to confirm this. One woman that was trying to convince a buyer didnt even know what honeycomb was. The other guy trying to help her was just knocking other competitors….Not very classy. On top of that, their booth was cramped inside the Venetian. Hopefully their products are better than their image.
I’m all over the Slider. For some reason, I feel less updates coming in the future, so I’m not all that worried about updates. What I am worried about is ASUS keeping their skin on it when 3.0 comes out. If they do, I’ll sacrifice my sliding keyboard for vanilla Android.
@Neil
Asus reps did confirm this one, at least if you talked to the reps that knew about the platform, as well as the plaques next to the tablets themselves.
In fact, the original Inquirer article, which after investigations, seems to be a misquotation on the part of Rob Coppinger, was saying the opposite of what those very reps were saying.
As for knocking competitors, I saw no examples of this, although I did hear a couple of comparisons. Care to give specifics?
And if your judging the underestimation of a booth size (No one there seemed to realize Tablets would be this crowded), on the quality of a product, then that is just….