In the crowded tablet marketplace, tablet manufacturers are constantly looking for an edge to differentiate their products from the competition. Consumer-electronics manufacturer Sony has been at the electronics manufacturing game for quite a while, and has learned a few tricks along the way. Sony recently released their Tablet S 10 inch Honeycomb Android tablet, previously named the Sony Tablet S1, and has given it a few features that make it a unique tablet offering.
Studies released earlier this year showed that many tablet users employ their tablet more often at home than on the road. Because of this Sony programmed universal remote capability into their Sony Tablet S, and that remote programmability applies not only to Sony consumer-electronics, but other popular name brands as well. This means the Sony Tablet S user can control TVs, Stereos, Bluray players, DVD players and more from their tablet. As with their previous tablet offerings, the Sony Tablet S is PlayStation certified, and comes preprogrammed with “Crash Bandicoot” and “Pinball Heroes” out-of-the-box.
These two features are hardly game changers in any major way, but when combined with DLNA wireless capability to stream video games and content to your HDTV or monitor, they offer a substantial difference from many other tablets. The typical black rectangular tablet form factor has been adopted here with one slight twist. If you can imagine a magazine opened at the halfway point with half of the pages rolled under, you have an approximation of the wage shaped design that Sony has employed in building their Tablet S.
Sony came up with this design after extensive testing, and claims it is ergonomically more comfortable and easy to hold in one hand. With the unique universal remote and PlayStation certified features, this wedge design certainly helps the Sony Tablet S stand out from the competition. Sony stated that the wedge design they use shifts the device’s weight closer to the palm of your hand, and away from your fingertips, allowing you to more comfortably hold the tablet in one hand for longer periods of time.
The Sony Tablet S is offered in 16 and 32 GB models, at $499 and $599. The display is 9.4 inches, employs backlit capacitive multitouch gesture technology, and offers 1280 x 800 pixel resolution. A 1.0 GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core processor is supported by 2.0 GB of DDR2 SDRAM memory.
