Budget electronics maker Coby has announced plans to bring five new tablets to market in the first quarter of 2012. They’ll have screens ranging in size from 7 inches to 10 inches, but all five models will feature:
- Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
- Capacitive touchscreen displays
- 1 GHz ARM Cortex A8 processors
- WiFi
- HDMI
The tablets will offer up to 1GB of RAM and feature up to 32GB of storage.
Here’s a run-down of the new tablets:
- Coby MID7042 with a 7 inch widescreen display
- Coby MID8042 with an 8 inch 4:3 display
- Coby MID9042 with a 9 inch widescreen display
- Coby MID9742 with a 9 inch 4:3 display
- Coby MID1042 with a 10 inch widescreen display
Coby says the tablet will have access to thousands of apps — but doesn’t make it clear whether the tablets will ship with the Google Android Market. All of the company’s tablets to date have shipped with third party app stores, but that’s because they were designed for older versions of Android which weren’t designed for tablets.
Google Android 4.0 is designed for phones and tablets, which means that Google may allow Coby and other budget device makers to include the Android Market and other Google apps such as the official Gmail and Google Maps apps.
Android Market / Google Play not included. The 9.7″ (4:3) has a 1024×760 IPS (!!!) glass fronted capacitive touchscreen. The body is plastic (of course) and feels a bit cheap. Nice compliment of jacks including microUSB — no proprietary connections here!. No indication of Bluetooth or GPS. Response is fairly quick for what it is. 1GB of RAM really helps. No flash for camera (has both front and rear facing). External 5V charger.
It’s no Prime but it could be a lot of fun, if one doesn’t expect too much.
I was gonna tip you guys on this like I did some other sites, but then I saw it was already up. Oh well! 😛
(The tablets do look interesting, though, especially if the Android Market is indeed included)