The much touted Honeycomb tablet by Toshiba, which will be open to pre-order from the 13th of June, has finally been given a name by the company. They are calling it the Thrive, and according to Toshiba, the tablet will be worth the wait when it becomes available on the 10th of July. The company is so sure of the slate’s success that it claims to be among the top three vendors of tablet computers in all platforms by the end of this year. Toshiba hopes to deliver an experience which is without any compromise with the Thrive.
The tablet will run on the latest version of Honeycomb, Android 3.1 which is expected to be much more stable than the last Honeycomb version. Also included will be a full size USB port, which is a novelty, a full size SD card slot and File Manager software which will be bundled with it. However, the extra ports on the tablet have a cost on its design and dimensions, adding a little extra girth to it as compared to some other competing tablets. The weight of the Thrive is equitable to that of the Xoom at 1.6 pounds, the tablet measures 0.61 inches in width.
The pricing of the Toshiba Thrive will start at $429 for the 8GB version and the 16GB and 32GB versions will cost $479 and $579 respectively. At these prices, the Thrive is certainly not the cheapest tablet around; the Asus Transformer is much cheaper at $399; however Toshiba claims that the brand value of the Thrive along with the other enhancements will get the preference from consumers. These enhancements include a removable battery, SRS stereo speakers and Resolution Plus technology on the display which makes the SD content on the tablet seem more like high definition. Toshiba claims that the battery of the Thrive can be charged in just 1. Hours, which, it says, is almost twice as fast as the competing tablets.
There isn’t much that Toshiba is offering in the area of bundled apps except for the Book Place, App Place and Start Place, which resembles the start page of the Toshiba notebooks. According to the company, it wants to deliver a pure Honeycomb experience. As far as the accessories for the tablet are concerned, covers for Thrive will be sold in multiple colors. There will also be HDMI multi docks, standard docks and Portfolio 360 cases sold separately for the tablet
