Gather round children and let us tell the story of the little Android tablets that could, ViewSonic-gTablet.
Once attack on the senses came (November 2010), in the a whole lot of terrible Android tablets of technicians of around the world, the powerful gTablet (affectionately known as the gTab) along with information on competitors for months to come (10.1 screen, Tegra 2 processor and half a gig of RAM) seen would not. It was also a full-size USB, mini USB and GesamtmicoSD card slot, which are also consumers who desires their media and files and want to move from their slates.
Price way, began in the range of $400 - so even though new, it was smaller than the iPad but competition and a pretty terrible screen if you are not with him frontal (the viewing angle is something like 30 degrees, compared to the iPad 178 degrees), drops in the first six months of the year 2011, and just two weeks ago resulted in consistent price, the vigilant were able to hook up one for only $249. But even at this low price, you could guess that this product, that doesn't have GPS, compass, gyroscope or HDMI output would no longer fully-equipped Android from tablets such as Motorola Xoom, ASUS transformer, Acer Iconia and Galaxy tab win 10.1, right?
Well, with the exception of the transformer you would be wrong. Even with all of the competition sold ViewSonic gTab still like hot cakes on sites such as TigerDirect (where the # 2 selling tablet, directly between the 16 GB and 32 GB versions of the transformer) and Woot, which sold 10,000 of them recently in one day. How could that be?
Now, again, price is certainly a great, if not the largest factor - in $249 with free shipping (and no sales tax), which is half as much as the iPad 2 and $150 less than $399 is 16 GB transformer (which certainly is the best buy on the market for those of you who do not want to sign with custom ROMs). The price point but not what a this seemingly average to best Android consistent seller has made tablet in the last eight months.
Rootability
One of the lead proponents/developers for the gTablet is "Roebeet" (here is his SlateDroid profile, must be logged on to map) which not only writes to guide, how the root / modding the gTablet navigate, but has honeycomb, with its bottle smoking ported ROM (keep in mind, Google has still not open sourced Combs, so all unofficial Combs ROMs are that much more impressive), on the gTab, works like a charm.
When you install the latest alpha version of the bottle from smoking, thanks to Roebeet explicit his gTab say "loves be flashed"- and this is the key. The gTablet is exactly what has made so popular Android phones, and more vendors must look. Other popular custom ROMs for the gTab include VEGAn, Cyanongen mod-7 and others.
So, what can learn from the history of the gTab children? Well...
- Android tablets have yet to be perfect (i.e., the iPad) successfully can be executed.
- All Android tablets should easily rootable bootloaders directly out of the box with unlocked.
- It is a thriving ecosystem that Android would like to see tablets successfully.
- The Sub$ 400 price point (especially with free shipping and no sales tax) is what a lot of people are looking for.
- The more ports (USB, SD card slots, HDMI) the better.
The lack of dedicated applications is of course still a major problem for all Android vs that IOS, but truth be told, the tablets a problem for Android phones, which on the iPhone once and took. What the ridiculous popularity was led by mobile, that they were cheap, had great hardware, on all carriers were and because they rootable were (after some of the devs work). If a tablet on the market hit all these points may be, it could really drive innovation and adoption, and - shall we say? -maybe even take on the iPad.
Let's just hope that it has a nice screen.
The end.