AT&T will soon begin offering the Acer Iconia Tab A501 4G-enabled Android tablet. At the CTIA Wireless event, Sprint and T-Mobile also shared 4G tablet news.
AT&T,
making good on its promise to support more Android-running devices, will offer
Acer's first 4G tablet, the Iconia Tab A501.
Pricing and an
exact release date were left off a March 22 news release, but the 4G tablet
will launch in the second quarter, according to AT&T-which could mean just
weeks.
The Iconia Tab
features a high-resolution, 10-inch display with a wide viewing angle and
Google's tablet-optimized Android 3.0 operating system, known as
"Honeycomb." A 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 250 dual-core processor with integrated
graphics is also on board-hello, gamers!-along with a 5-megapixel rear-facing
camera and a high-definition front-facing camera for making video calls. Acer
has also included an HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) port for
playing 1080p-quality video on an HDTV.
"This
tablet is packed with features that will enable HD gaming and exceptional video
playback," David Haight, vice president of business development for
AT&T's Emerging Devices unit, said in a statement. "It offers a first-class
on-the-go entertainment experience."
Then, there's
the Iconia Tab's 4G connectivity, a feature that the Apple iPad 2 still
does without. The iPad is by far still the tablet to beat, despite the
growing-by-leaps-and-bounds tablet marketplace. (Though on March 22,
Samsung out-skinnied Apple, with the introduction
of its 8.6mm-thin Galaxy Tab 8.9.)
AT&T
currently offers limited 4G coverage via HSPA+ (Evolved High-Speed Packet
Access) technology, but has long been
planning to begin rolling out 4G LTE (Long-Term Evolution)
service, like competitor Verizon offers, in mid 2011. Toward this goal, in
December 2010, AT&T
purchased spectrum from Qualcomm that covers more
than 300 million people nationwide, including 70 million people in major
markets such as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston and Philadelphia.
The purchase,
AT&T said in a statement at the time, would help it "provide an
advanced 4G mobile broadband experience for its customers in the years ahead."
Needing still
more spectrum, the carrier recently announced plans to acquire T-Mobile, the
nation's fourth-largest carrier, which has
also been steadily building a 4G network
infrastructure.
That deal-should
regulators even approve it-will take most of the year to come together,
according to analysts. In the meantime, T-Mobile has also announced support for
a new, 4G-enabled, Honeycomb-running tablet,
the LG Electronics G-Slate.
At the CTIA
Wireless event in Orlando, Fla., March 22, T-Mobile showed off the tablet-an
in-betweener, at 8.9 inches-along with an LG 4G smartphone, the G2x. Not to be
left out, Sprint also had 4G tablet news at the show, introducing the
Evo View 4G, a 3G/4G Android tablet with a 7-inch
touch display, support for 3D video, dual cameras and the ability to act as a
hotspot for other devices.
The carriers
were all more eager to show off their devices than to share specifics about
pricing and timing. Suggesting the AT&T Acer Iconia Tab really is around
the corner, however, the tablet turned up on the
Federal Communications Commission Website March
21. Details in the paperwork show that 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity
are all also included, along with support for Adobe's Flash 10.1-a feature
common in Android tablets but that the iPad 2 also does without.
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