Dell introducing new 7-inch tablet
Dell is ready to unveil it’s second Android tablet within the next few weeks, this one having the 7-inch display, and also a ten inch model may appear at some point in 2011.
The brand new tablet’s introduction, verified by Dell Greater China President Amit Midha, was published in a Wall Street Journal article today. The announcement comes after Dell Ceo Michael Dell was at Oracle World last week where he enticed the audience with a short look at the new 7-inch tablet, but had not really provided any real details.
“It was showed off at Oracle World by Michael last week and we’ll be launching very, very soon, within the next few weeks,” Midha told the Journal.
Although Dell has not verified this, the brand new tablet may be the same 7-inch Android-based “Looking Glass” device that Engadget heard about last April thanks to some leaked Dell documents. If that’s the case, the specifications would apparently include Android 2.1 (though that may have been updated by now), an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, a solid 800×480 pixel screen, the 1.3-megapixel camera, as well as 4GB of storage. The tablet will be expandable having a 32GB SDHC card and gives an optionally available TV tuner.
The 7-inch tablet might join Dell’s current 5-inch Streak that first appeared in European countries and has already been available in the United States via Dell.com from August. The Streak is slated to be hitting Best Buy shops shortly, based on the statements from the company.
However Dell is not standing still with its new 5-inch or 7-inch devices. Midha disclosed to the Journal that the 10-inch device and additional 3-inch and 4-inch products (most probably smartphones) might reach the marketplace in the next six to twelve months. Although Dell has stayed with Android to date, Midha mentioned that a few of the new devices might also operate Windows and Dell is also thinking about using Google’s forthcoming Chrome OS on a number of its devices.
Dell’s new tablets may join the developing and growing marketplace slowly becoming created by Samsung, Research In Motion, Hewlett-Packard, Research In Motion, and LG, and others. However it remains a marketplace dominated by Apple’s iPad for now. And similar to Dell, Apple is not sitting still and is apparently working on a thinner and more function-loaded iPad set to debut in early 2011.
