Toshiba Android 3.0 Tegra Tablet Review and Features

Toshiba will soon launch an Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet named "Thrive". The tablet was being advertised for pre-order at JR.com, but that advertisement has suddenly and inexplicably been pulled down at the time of filing this report. You can still view the Google Cache copy of the page over here. The price quoted was US$579, which is about $ 700 not bad for what is on offer.
Powered by a 1 GHz Dual core Tegra 2 processor, this 10.1-inch tablet sports a capacitive multitouch screen with pixel dimensions of 1280x800. This screen features Toshiba Adaptive Display technology, which adjusts the brightness and contrast to suit the surrounding lighting conditions; practically allowing you to use this tablet even in sunny weather. Adobe Flash support with hardware acceleration is present for an enriching web-browsing experience.

Along with a 5 Megapixel primary camera featuring Auto-focus, Digital zoom, and 720p video capture at the back, there is also a 2 Megapixel HD camera at the front for video calling. The HDMI output lets you hook up this tablet to your HDTV and watch movies on the big screen in 1080p (Full HD) resolution. Thanks to the Tablet's Resolution+ technology incorporated in this device, even Standard Definition (SD) video content is upscaled neatly with no details lost.

The tablet features, a GPS, an accelerometer and a digital compass helping pinpoint its exact location and motion. Even the battery is user-replaceable, which is something every consumer wants, but no tablet manufacturer obliges. This allows you to carry a second battery pack and replace the battery on-the-go if the tablet runs out of juice. Connectivity is taken care of by Wi-Fi (with hotspot capability), USB 2.0 (with one full and one mini-USB port) and Bluetooth. No mention is made of GSM connectivity, so that probably won't be available in this version at least. An SD memory card slot is also provided to augment the 32 GB internal on-board memory.

Toshiba has been delaying the launch of this tablet, and may further delay it to the third quarter of this calendar year. The launch date is therefore not clear. We must note that Toshiba has already launched the Portege 12-inch tablet in India, so we expect this to follow suit soon enough.