In less than two months, April (2013) to be exact, you will be able to buy a Slate 7 Android tablet from HP for $169 USD.
Announced at the ongoing Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain, the Slate 7 Android tablet is HP’s first consumer-level tablet device since the failed webOS-powered Touchpad.
But for that price, what will you be getting?
Nothing spectacular. The Slate 7 will be powered by an ARM Dual Core Cortex-A9 processor gunning at 1.6 GHz. That’s not in the same class as current Android tablets most of which are powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 3 processor, but for $169 USD and a 7-inch screen, what did you expect?
Here are the other features that will ship with the Slate 7 Android tablet:
- All the Google services you can handle – Gail, Google Drive, Google+ Hangouts, Google Play, etc
- Android 4.1 (Jellybean)
- 8 GB of on-board storage
- Micro-USB port
- SD card slot
- 1024 by 600 screen resolution
- Dimensions: 10.7mm by 197mm by 116mm and weighing in at 13 ounces
- Beats Audio technology
- Rear (3 MP) and front VGA camera
- Support for HP’s ePrint service
Sadly, no HDMI port. The Slate 7 will come in two colors – silver and red. To be notified when this device becomes available, visit here.
This leaves out which GPU the device will be using. If it has a Mali 450, for example, then it would have a more powerful GPU for most applications than the Tegra 3 GPU. That would make overall performance a bit more even with Tegra 3 powered devices. On the other hand, it could have an underpowered GPU and not even be worth the price of admission (though I’d expect something at least decent).