By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
Cheaper Android tablet, yay! Ice Cream Sandwich, double yay!
By ditching the rear camera and stramlining the feature set, Acer has been able to adjust the price of its tablet and give some perspective to the industry by offering a reasonably priced yet powerful and updated Android tablet.
Reasonably priced. Powerful. Updated. Android tablet. What a delicious concept!
There's really no point in spending money on overpriced Android Honeycomb tablets with 3.0 or 3.1 operating systems right now, way to change the game Acer! Full press release after the break.
The newest addition to Acer’s line of full-featured Android tablets, the 10.1-inch Acer Iconia Tab A200 is a portable activity hub for gaming, e-books, movies, music, photography, social networking and more. The many enhancements of Android 4.0 enable customers to interact with and enjoy the Acer A200 in ways that are both truly natural and exciting.
“The Acer Iconia Tab family of tablets is an excellent example of Acer’s ability to deliver high-performance, full-function mobile devices at unbeatable values,” said Max Hu, senior product marketing manager for Acer Canada. “Acer brings the Iconia Tab A200 to consumers at an affordable price, without making sacrifices on key tablet features such as expansion, connectivity to other devices, HD displays and cameras. Android 4.0 OS further complements the sleek, powerful and well-designed Acer Iconia Tab A200 tablets to give customers an all-around first-rate experience.”
Sleek and easy to hold, the Iconia Tab A200 weighs 1.5 pounds. The tablet is wrapped in a slim, titanium gray-colored casing, with an eye-catching patterned back side, which is soft to the touch. On the front, the A200 showcases a beautiful HD multi-touch display featuring crystal-clear 1280 x 800 resolution for an outstanding viewing experience.
Made especially for multimedia enjoyment, the Iconia Tab A200 combines hardware and apps for loads of fun. The tablet provides an enhanced level of performance with its NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core mobile processor and integrated GeForce™ GPU that allows users to enjoy HD gaming, 1080p video, Flash-based applications, faster browsing and multitasking.
Gamers of all ages will enjoy the preloaded Tegra Zone Android app, which allows users to search and download the best Android games that are optimized for NVIDIA Tegra powered tablets. The Iconia Tab A200’s fast gaming experience is also supported by a six-axis motion sensing gyroscope, essential for high-precision gaming so actions and animations are more correctly performed.
Users can enjoy up to eight hours of cable-free battery life(1), providing many hours to surf the web, watch movies, play games and read e-books, far from the nearest electrical outlet. The Iconia Tab A200 comes pre-loaded with apps like Kobo for countless reading selections and Netflix for instant delivery of movie and entertainment titles. One tap on the Android Market allows users access to thousands of downloadable apps.
Offering superior expansion and connectivity, the Iconia Tab A200 has a full-size USB 2.0 port for hooking up other devices and a MicroSD slot and micro-USB port for passing data. A two megapixel front-facing web camera enables face-to-face chats or quick snaps for still photos. For an enhanced social networking experience, the Iconia Tab A200 includes Acer SocialJogger, which consolidates Facebook, Twitter and more into one spot.
Acer clear.fi is installed on the Acer Iconia Tab A200 to connect with any other DLNA-compliant device to quickly and easily share digital medai. Clear.fi automatically connects all Acer devices on a network (smartphones, notebooks, desktops, HD media plays and storage devices) and gathers and organizes media files by type (video, music, photos, pre-recorded TV).
Android 4.0 Brings Additional Capabilities to Acer Iconia Tab Line
The Acer Iconia Tab A200 with Android 4.0 delivers new features that give customers more usability and enjoyment. Customers will appreciate the faster browser, enhanced app and folder management options, more intuitive navigation, and a completely reimaged design that is more polished with enhanced holographic effects. Plus, customers can more easily customize their Acer tablet and will enjoy improved integration with Gmail™ email and calendar functions as well as improved multitasking and switching between tasks.
The Acer Iconia Tab A200 with Android 4.0 also includes several new features that are unique to Acer tablets, such as the highly-customizable Acer Ring. The Acer Ring can be launched with a single touch and lets customers have quick and easy access to apps, surf the web, capture screen images, post photos and status updates to their social networks, and more.
Customers will also enjoy an improved weather widget and will be able to access their favorite apps even when the screen is locked.
Availability and Affordable Price Starting at only $329.99
The Acer Iconia Tab A200 is available in Canada now at major technology and elctronics retailers. It will begin selling pre-installed with Android 4.0 within the next several weeks.
The Acer Iconia Tab A200-10g16 in titanium grey and the A200-10r16 in cherry red both have 16GB of memory and a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $349.99 CAN. The Acer Iconia Tab A200-10g08 in titanium grey and the A200-10r08 in cherry red have 8GB of memory and a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $329.99 CAN.
Customers in Canada who have already purchased the Acer Iconia Tab A200 tablets can expect their devices to receive an over-the-air update to Android 4.0 sometime in the following week. In addition, the Acer Iconia Tab A100 7-inch tablet and Acer Iconia Tab A500 10-inch tablet will both receive the same over-the-air update to Android 4.0 within the next week. Customers will be alerted that their system is ready to be updated to Android 4.0 OS and can either accept it immediately or postpone it for a future date.