Notion Ink came under a bit of fire last week for a less-than perfect pre-launch event for the company’s much anticipated Adam tablet. On paper, the tablet looks like the best thing since sliced bread… or at least since the iPad, thanks to its NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual core processor, optional Pixel Qi display, reasonable price tag, rotating camera, and custom software stack. But some have questioned whether Notion Ink is on the straight and narrow, or if the product is even real, while others acknowledge that it would be difficult for a small startup from India to launch a product of this sort without at least a few roadbumps.
In order to help clear things up, Notion Ink founder Rohan Shravan has put together a demo video of a production version of the tablet. The video was first sent to Android Police, one of the web sites that first raised questions about the company after Notion Ink started taking pre-orders. The video will also soon be available at the Notion Ink blog, or you can check out the YouTube embed below.
Among other things, the video shows the Adam tablet running multiple applications simultaneously — with a custom user interface allowing you to actually see multiple windows at the same time — something that most Android devices won’t allow. That’s because of Notion Ink’s custom “panel” driven user interface that essentially lets you run three apps on the same screen, such asn email ap, file browser, and weather widget.
You can also launch applications such as the map application in full-screen mode, and there’s a program launcher bar which you can pull up which zooms out to the middle of the screen.
The software seems very responsive, and the video shows multitouch gestures such as pinch to zoom and two-finger scrolling working well.
The tablet also supports USB thumb drive storage and peripherals such as a wireless mouse using a wireless dongle.
While the tablet comes with a custom set of applications and Notion Ink plans to release an SDK for developer to write new apps, it does not currently ship with the Android Market since the tablet doesn’t meet Google’s specifications. It’s possible Android Market access might come after Google releases Honeycomb, an upcoming version of Android which will be optimized for slates.
I’m still not clear on why it took Notion Ink about a week to put this video together, but it’s definitely nice to see a finished production unit running the software that will be shipping with the Adam tablet. The Adam tablet is available for pre-order now, and the company says it should begin shipping in January.
Update: The company plans to release a new video every day showing off different features of the Adam tablet. You can check out the first and second videos after the break. The software is definitely intriguing, but I’m looking forward to seeing how stock Android apps run on the Adam Tablet. I think a lot of people were expecting a product with excellent specs which can run mainstream Android applications — which the Adam probably can, but right now the company seems to be primarily showing off its custom software.
Android Police might have been the first to receive the video, but those guys haven’t even posted their impressions. What do they think of the tablet’s UI? Nobody knows. Do they still think that the tablet is vaporware? Isn’t it strange that they are now keeping mum after all those efforts to prove that Adam is vaporware?
Only an idiot would be first in line to buy this.
Volunteer promotion? Give it a rest. What exactly are you expecting from a website like this? That they not cover what looks like one of the coolest tablets ever? Because that’s kinda what the blogs do.
On another note, man, I sure hope this thing is real. But I’ll be waiting for reviews just in case.
Maybe we should cut Notion Ink a little slack being that they are a startup company that’s trying to put out a new type of hardware as well as significant software for the device, not an easy task. while they certainly have made some marketing mistakes as of late judgement ought to be held till the product begins shipping and we can really see what this device is all about and what the company is really about–we’ll see that as soon as users develop a few problems.
I was planning on buying this. I’ve been looking forward to it for nealy a year. About a month ago I decided that I could live without this particular tablet and that I really didn’t like the way that these guys did business or the way that you blogs were doing volunteer promotion for them. I’m not buying it anymore, and in a perfect world nobody would give this company money. They apparently think that we want everything except for the actual tablet in our hands. This is a total joke.