T-Mobile G-Slate in Chennai – Second HoneyComb tablet PC

T-Mobile G-Slate – Second Honey Comb tablet PC

T-Mobile G-Slate is an LG product and it is second device to have Google Honeycomb OS, the first one being Motorola Xoom and a lot of users will be wondering what has been done here in order to keep the two gadgets different from each other. T-Mobile G-Slate is a smaller device and the screen too is one inch smaller. There is a 3D camera along with support for T-Mobile’s 4G network. Other than that, the functions of the tablet are similar to smaller Xoom.

T-Mobile G-Slate has an 8.9 inch display and it is smaller than Xoom which comes with 10.1 inch screen. Also the iPad 2 has a screen of 9.8 inches. G-Slate is heavier than Apple iPad 2 and the weight distribution is a bit odd which makes it feel heavier. This tablet is 0.49 inch thick and about one third thicker as compared to iPad which has thickness of 0.34 inch. In the landscape mode, the width of the display is similar to iPad 2 but it is one inch shorter in height. It is comfortable to type on this device while keeping it in the hand in both portrait and landscape mode. The gadget is also less likely to slip from your hands because of the materials used on the casing.

On the bottom side of the T-Mobile G-Slate, there are ports for miniHDMI and miniUSB but unlike Xoom, there is no microHDMI port. The microphone pinhole and volume rocker are located on the top. On the left and right, there are one and two speakers respectively. Also the lock/power button is located on the left side along with power adapter jack, and headphones jack.

In order to access the SIM card of the T-Mobile G-Slate, you need to be a little more involved than the Xoom. The G-Slate has a hidden panel on the rear side and you need to push and slide it down. Inside, you will see the SIM card slot and reset button. Cameras are now common in tablets but T-Mobile G-Slate has raised the bar by giving a 3D five megapixel camera on the back and a standard two megapixel front facing camera. It is like having three cameras and it is surprising the see that T-Mobile isn’t heavily marketing this feature of the tablet. On the back of the T-Mobile G-Slate, there is a silver narrow plate which I first thought was a kickstand. But it is not, the manufacturer has put it in order to give some aesthetic touches.

T-Mobile G-Slate is the first Honeycomb tablet to have support for 4G out-of-the-box. There is also T-Mobile streaming TV preinstalled here and you get T-Mobile TV, which is on-demand service. Other goodies include Need for Speed Shift HD from EA, Zinio Reader, and 3D camcorder and player application. Through Get Flash application, you get full Flash support and Flash will be installed on the device in mere seconds.

T-Mobile G-Slate has all the standard tablet features like Bluetooth 2.1 audio support along with peripheral support. Bluetooth keyboards too are supported. Wi-Fi antenna supports 802.11n. The gadget has sensors like screen brightness, gyroscope, and accelerometer. Under the hood, the gadget has Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core mobile processor running at clock speed of 1 GHz and for storing the data, there is 32 GB internal flash memory.

This is the second tablet ever to have Google Android 3.0.1 OS aka Honeycomb which is made especially for tablets and it is good since the older versions of Android OS weren’t really usable on tablets. The apps and developer tools were made for the smaller screen and it showed. But Android has now shown commitment to tablets with the new OS. This new iteration is drastically different from the mobile phone versions.