Lenovo is the latest company to throw its hat in the Android powered tablet PC ring. Lenovo says that the tablet will be known as the LePad and will likely launch in China before the US. That’s the same approach the Chinese-based company is taking with the LePhone, Lenovo’s first smartphone, which also runs Google’s Android operating system.
There aren’t really any details about the LePad at this point — other than the fact that it looks like Apple has successfully convinced the world that the proper nomenclature for tablets is “pad” rather than “slate,” “tablet,” or pretty much anything else you can think of. After all, we’ve already seen the Eee Pad, and possibly the PalmPad. Now we have the LePad.
Lenovo showed off a device earlier this year called the IdeaPad U1 Hybrid, which was a sort of laptop with a removable display that could function as a standalone tablet. At the time, the tablet featured a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 10 inch multitouch display, and a custom version of Linux called Skylight that had been developed in-house. It’s possible that Lenovo will repurpose some of the design elements of the U1 Hybrid in developing its upcoming Android tablet.