Fusion Garage Unveils Android-Compatible Grid10 Tablet

After a weeks-long teaser campaign that caused much chatter and speculation, Fusion Garage was revealed as the company behind the parody companion TabCo. Fusion Garage made last year's failed JooJoo tablet, and the company disappeared off the radar after that product was withdrawn from the market. So is there room for incomparable more OS in the tablet party? Fusion Garage distinctly believes so, given the effort the society put into its big reveal, just the road onwards is going to be a bumpy united—even out with Android app support. The software interface showed off now looks intriguing, only the hardware and Price left us less excited.

Often inferior excited. Army of the Righteou's start with the terms. Non surprisingly, the Grid10, as the Fusion Garage tablet is known as, doesn't formulate much new land here—particularly when considering the Wi-Fi-only model The 16GB Wisconsin-Fi model will sell for $499, same as the Apple iPad 2 and Samsung Galaxy Tabloid 10.1, and $100 more than than the HP TouchPad; that same damage nates buy a 32GB tablet with the Lenovo IdeaPad K1. The 16GB Wi-Fi and 3G version will sell for $599, qualification information technology $50 to a lesser degree the comparable Apple iPad, at least. Though IT's unlikely that $50 butt against is sufficiency for someone to look at a Grid10 over an Apple iPad. Some models went along pre-sale today at Amazon.com, and both will ship Sep 15.

The raw specs are largely humble as well. It has a dual-core 1.2GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU, up from the basic 1GHz along all other Tegra 2 tablets to date; but its 512MB of Read/write memor is incomplete what every other Tegra 2 lozenge has, which may explain the lethargy ascertained in the webcast unveiling of the tablet. It also has 16GB of memory, and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, both common features; and the HDMI ouput and microSD are good inclusions over more or less of the others. Information technology measures 10.8 by 6.83 by 0.55 inches, and weighs 1.52 pounds, making it about the same heaviness and weight as the mean Android Honeycomb tablet we've seen. Put differently, no real innovations here.

Of the specs, only the screen resolution impresses. At 1366 by 768, the Grid10 has the highest resolution 10-inch class tablet on the commercialize. How in practice this will affect the display of apps on its concealment remains transcendent, though.

The unusual thing that caught my tending virtually the Grid10: The wheel-style navigation stacked into the GridOS. Fusion Service department's GridOS is stacked on top of an Android heart, but has a very other interface and pilotage. The OS can run Android apps for phone and tablet; headphone apps will beryllium centred, while tab apps leave come out scaly to full-screen, according to CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan, though how those apps will look on the display may be a wildcard. The jog wheel style navigation is non a new conception to Maine; I've seen variants introduced into some mobile apps, and into an Android multitasking widget on Lenovo's IdeaPad K1, and when I've used it, I found the ring helped me navigate more expeditiously than the scroll in Mechanical man Honeycomb's "late accessed apps." Whether this wheel-fashio navigation will be appealing on the Power grid pill stiff to beryllium seen in use.

I also likable what was shown of the grid cluster structure that serves as the home screen alternative in the appropriately named GridOS. Grouping apps together appeared fairly easy, and water faucet to expand.

Much interface niceties may prove useful, and Fusion Garage has a bigger picture plan with its freshly proclaimed call up, excessively. But they have a chewy hill to climb. Neither the pricing nor the spectacles/physical design appear to introduce (truly, any advantage from that postgraduate-res screen and slightly pushed CPU gets cancelled out past the low memory and weighed down, bulky intention). Fusion Garage is far from a household name; consumers may embody less likely to take a fall upon a no name than on a tablet from a known amount like HP. Android app compatibility will appeal to those who are more tech apprehension; but if you're tech apprehension, this may not be a fit for what you'Ra looking for, either.

Ultimately, Coalition Garage's overproduced, faux press out league webcast; its intelligent and socially engaging parody campaign; and gimmicks like skywriting over San Francisco won't be what the company is judged by. The Grid10 itself leave take to stand extinct in the crowd. And given the lack of Fusion Garage's mainstream make recognition, information technology looks as if the Grid10 volition have to fight double as hard as others to stand exterior, and even then it may not stand out for long beyond its 15 minutes of launch fame.