Late last year Sharp launched a line of Android tablets in Japan under the Galapagos name. Initially the company offered 5.5 inch and 10.8 inch models that were marketed as digital media consumption devices, complete with digital book and magazine stores. Now Sharp is discontinuing the original Galapagos devices, but the recently unveiled 7 inch model will continue to live on.
The last Galapagos standing is the A01SH model which has a 7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display, a 1 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual core processor, and runs Google ANdroid 3.2 Honeycomb. It also has a rather large and ugly bezel around the display, but at least the specs are pretty good.
As Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and pretty much any company that’s ever released an eBook reader has already figured out, 6 to 7 inch screens are just about right for digital devices aimed at reading books.
Larger displays come in handy for web surfing or watching movies, and clearly there’s plenty of room for personal taste. But I’m not surprised to see Sharp stick with the 7 inch form factor for now — although I kind of preferred the physical design of the company’s earlier devices.
via Engadget