Hands on With the Acer ICONIA A500 Tab

Here’s one addition to the tablet clan that’s heading our way and promises to offer quite a functionality at a sensible price. Where have I heard that before? And I’m sure that I’m not the only tech loving human out there who thought so, after hearing the big news of Acer’s ICONIA Tab A500’s big Indian debut. I was at the launch, heard the schpeel and waited patiently to get a short but intimate crack at the tablet, a quick look under the magnifying glass so to speak. So having done that, here’s a quick relay of hands on experience with the A500.

Design
I’ve not been particularly fond of Acer’s overall design form when it came to mobiles, although I will admit, the Liquid E Android device did come off as quite a funky looking handset. Their handsets since then aren’t the kind that usually stand out in a crowd but I have a really good feeling that the A500 is the exception to this rule. Of course it’s far from just an extra extra large mobile handset and far sleeker than any of the existing Liquid series handsets. The brushed metal, slick rear panel and curved edges make for very comfortable handling. Being just 13.3mm in depth, it’s no iPad 2, but it still manages to be quite easy to grip for one hand usage.

Comfy to hold in one hand

It’s equipped with a 10.1-inch capacitive LCD panel with a display resolution of 800 x 1280, making it just a little bit sharper (262K colors) than the iPad 2. I did notice, although it was a tad reflective in direct light. It was nevertheless clear enough to view if you adjust the brightness levels accordingly or set it to auto. It’s got a 5 megapixel camera with an LED flash strapped onto the rear and a 2 MP camera in front for video calls. The two speakers strategically placed at the bottom (when in landscape) seemed to provide quite decent audio output.

So needless to say, in the looks department, the Acer ICONIA A500 Tab is just as smart as the iPad 2, which is its biggest rival as of now.

Elegantly designed right down to the button

Features
Under the hood beats a 1 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor combined with an NVIDIA GeForce GPU, 1 GB DDR2 RAM and Flash 10.2 support. This baby is designed to make functionalities from daily usage to multimedia and tablet gaming as smooth as the Fresh Prince’s one liners on the ladies, pardon the analogy, but I’m sure you get the idea. The prototype ran quite smoothly with a few minor hiccups. I expect that of course, I can tell you more when we’ve got a test piece.

It's quite slim

Honeycomb is going to be a truly enriching Android experience. I’m not sure how it will be for the mobile handset but suffice to say, tablet users will not be disappointed. Acer has also customised the UI to an extent, offering a very neatly laid out specialised interface for your multimedia and other content and Acer’s Social Jogger app allows you to stay connected to Facebook, YouTube and Flickr simultaneously. The onscreen keypad has not been customised and so is the stock Android Honeycomb version, which is nothing to take issue with. It’s large and conveniently designed for typing.