Honeycomb Tablet Has 4G and 3-D - New Android Contender

For the many companies designing tablets based on Google's Android operating system to compete with Apple's dominant iPad, there are twin challenges. The obvious one is to convince consumers to buy something other than the iPad 2. It's the G-Slate, built by Korean electronics giant LG and sold by T-Mobile.

The G-Slate uses Google's standard Honeycomb software—the version of Android especially created for tablets—and is the first Honeycomb tablet in the U.S. to offer 4G cellular data speeds and 3-D video Hp dv2000 battery creation and viewing. It sports a screen size—8.9 inches—that falls between the 10-inch dimension of the iPad and the Motorola Xoom, and the 7-inch dimension used by the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Research in Motion PlayBook.

I've been testing the G-Slate, and in my view, it performs pretty well overall—about as well as the first Honeycomb tablet, the Xoom. The 3-D feature, which requires the use of 1950s-style colored glasses, seems like a parlor trick to me. One reason for the iPad juggernaut is that the base, Wi-Fi-only, 16-gigabyte model costs just $499.

If you buy the G-Slate without a phone contract, it costs $750. The comparable iPad 2, with the same 32 gigabytes of memory offered by the G-Slate, both Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity, plus its bigger screen, is $729.

The least you can pay for the G-Slate is $530. But that price requires a two-year cellular data contract at a minimum of $30 a month, which boosts the total cost to $1,250. The iPad 2 isn't sold with a contract and doesn't require a mail-in rebate.

Another drawback to the G-Slate, and to all other Honeycomb tablets so far, is a paucity of tablet-optimized third-party apps. Apple claims 65,000 tablet apps.

This isn't to say the G-Slate has no pluses. I continue to believe that Honeycomb removes many of the rough edges and extra steps that characterize the phone versions of Android. The Honeycomb browser, unlike the iPad's, has tabs, like a PC browser.

Also, unlike the iPad Toshiba pa3465u-1brs battery , the G-Slate can handle Flash video, though not in every case I tried. It comes with a free hot-spot feature, which allows it to create a Wi-Fi signal that can power other devices, like laptops.

Its front and rear cameras are much better for still photos than the iPad's. It has stereo speakers, which the iPad 2 lacks, and another feature missing on Apple's tablet—a built-in port, called HDMI, for connection to high-definition TVs.

In my tests, with Wi-Fi turned off, the G-Slate averaged 5.79 megabits per second for downloads and 1.28 mbps for uploads. By comparison, an iPad 2 with Verizon 3G built in managed only about a fourth, or less, of those speeds over its cellular network.

The G-Slate generally performed smoothly and speedily in my tests, and handled well every app I tested. Video was smooth and vivid, though audio seemed a bit tinny and soft, despite the stereo speakers.

I like the idea of the 8.9-inch screen, which made one-handed operation easier than on a 10-inch tablet. But the G-Slate was clumsy to use in portrait mode because it is long and skinny. It's about 20% narrower than the iPad 2, but is actually a tiny bit longer, making for an odd shape.

T-Mobile and LG listed different, and inaccurate, weight specifications for the device on their websites and press materials. The heaviest iPad 2 is 1.35 pounds.

In my tablet battery HP pavilion dv6000 battery  test, where I play videos continuously with the wireless features turned on and the screen brightness at about 75%, the G-Slate lasted 7 hours and 39 minutes. That's much less than the 10 hours and 9 minutes the iPad 2 delivered in the same test. T-Mobile claims 9 hours of continuous "mixed use" of various functions. I couldn't replicate this vague type of test, but found that in light, intermittent, mixed use, the G-Slate lasted a couple of days between charges, though its screen was off much of that time.

Emailing the videos to a standard computer didn't preserve the 3-D effect, even with the glasses on. T-Mobile says a 3-D TV can display the 3-D videos, but I wasn't able to test this. Because of the glasses and the sharing limitations, I feel that this 3-D feature is mostly a marketing tool.

Bottom line: The G-Slate isn't as good a tablet as the iPad 2. I'd only recommend it for people who want the higher cellular speeds, or who prefer Android.