Review The G-Slate Is A powerful but expensive iPad Competitor

Jahangir350

Another day, another iPad killer. This week, the G-Slate from LG and wireless carrier T-Mobile is the first 4G-capable tablet running Google's awesome Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) operating system. The G-Slate is the second major competitor to try to topple Apple's iPad dominance, following the release of the Motorola Xoom on Verizon in February. The G-Slate, released Wednesday, is $529.99 after a $100 rebate and a two-year contract with T-Mobile. The tablet is $749.99 without a wireless contract. SHORT WORDS It's a great widescreen package, as we've come to expect from these Android tablets. Quick. Strong. Features The G-Slate has two 5-megapixel cameras that allow for 3D or HD video recording, a front-facing camera for video chat, 32 GB of internal memory, and an NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core 1 GHz processor.

The 3D video recording is more of a gimmick than anything else executive database but it's fun. The tablet comes with a pair of 3D speakers for viewing your videos. Video can also be sent to an HD TV via HDMI. The G-Slate will connect to either the carrier's WiFi network, which it calls 4G, or T-Mobile's HSPA+ network. The carrier's flexible 3G network will make download speeds faster. When I tested T-Mobile's HSPA+ system, I saw download speeds in metro Detroit approaching 4 or 5 megabytes per second, a significant increase from standard 3G speeds. Verizon's superfast 4G network is coming soon to the Xoom via a free hardware update that will bring speeds of up to 15 megabits per second. One downside I found with the G-Slate hardware was that it felt heavier than it actually was. At 1.3 pounds, it's only .03 pounds lighter than the iPad, though the footprint is significantly smaller.






FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE However, the Android tablet ecosystem lacks significant, flashy software. Since the release of the Xoom, the number of tablet-optimized apps has increased quite a bit, but don't expect more than a dozen. This is even more impressive compared to the Apple iPad, which has more than 65,000 apps designed for the tablet's larger screen. The general experience of honey is still very intense. Home screen widgets, first seen with the Xoom, are a great way to see information at a glance. Things like e-mail messages, calendar events, and web bookmarks are displayed directly on the home screen, with one or two clicks to see what's inside. One of my main beefs with Android is still very much on the G-Slate: the Gmail inbox is defined as a separate app from other email accounts. The G-Slate supports Adobe Flash video after downloading the software, but the experience is often a bit clunky.