China Mobile working on 7-inch Android slate
The Zii EGG may be the hot topic in Android hardware this week, but there's another new piece of gear just revealed on the internet that deserves a little attention. While not as impressive or promising as the EGG, especially because very little is known about it, this tablet/slate bearing China Mobile's G3 logo and equipped with China's favored TD-SCDMA 3G connectivity is said to be running Android on a 7-inch touchscreen, which isn't too shabby. Specific details like CPU type/speed and other specs are unknown, but voice and video calling, web browsing, emailing, SMS/MMS messaging, and multimedia functions all seem to be part of the unit's feature set.
The unnamed slate is presumably part of China Mobile's OMS (open mobile system) and OPhone project, which recent reports indicate is now being supported by the likes of Dell, Samsung, Motorola, and of course Lenovo. It seemed unlikely to me at first that a device this big would be made to double as a phone, but the dedicated "talk" and "end call" hardware buttons clearly visible in the first photo and sort of visible in the second one make its intended usage pretty clear. A VoIP-only slate wouldn't have those buttons, right?
TD-SCDMA means this device, at least in its current incarnation, won't be seen outside of China, but with that new list of companies that are supposedly now involved with the OMS/OPhone, I suppose it's always possible for one of them to find a way to bring something like this to the States (and beyond). I mean, if a lesser-equipped 7-inch internet tablet like the SmartQ 7 can make it to our shores, surely this could too.
[TMCnet.com | digi.163.com]
