Andrzej from Tabletblog.de gives us a quick look at the Viewsonic ViewPad 7e, a budget Android tablet that should be available in Europe for around 150 Euros. No word yet on US release date.
Some quick specs:
- 1 GHz, A8 processor
- 7″ resistive touchscreen, 4:3 aspect ratio, 800 x 480 (likely)
- front- and rear-facing cameras
- micro-SD slot, micro-HDMI (?)
- Android 2.3.1, Gingerbread, no Android Market support
At first I was quite surprised that the tablet has a resistive screen, but looking at the demo video, it seems that performance and sensitivity were pretty good, not like the very first tablets with resistive screens. Andrzej didn’t need to press down too hard to scroll through the home screens. The screen even supports multitouch as demonstrated when Andrzej used a pinch gesture to zoom in and out on a photo in the gallery. The ViewPad 7e runs Android 2.3, but has no Android Market support. There is a little skinning on top of Gingerbread, most noticeably, the ViewScene 3D launcher that is controlled by a scroll bar at the bottom and presents the home screens on a rotating carousel for quick access and home screen switching.
Viewsonic intends this budget tablet to be geared for e-book readers, likely to compete against tablets like the Barnes and Noble Nook and the Amazon Kindle. In fact, the Android Kindle app is reportedly included with the other stock apps. And the screen aspect ratio is 4:3 instead of the typical 16:9 ratio of many Android tablets. In that regard, the ViewPad 7e does offer some nice Android tablet features for people who would mainly use it as an e-reader, but use the web browser, check e-mail, or play games occasionally.
