Joojoo tablet hands-on (video)
By Ross Miller 
posted December 8th 2009 7:10AM
posted December 8th 2009 7:10AM
The device itself is thin and lightweight. It's not much of a stretch to label the design of it "oversized iPhone," and of course with it we're reminded that an all-glass front panel tends to attract enough fingerprints to satisfy any aspiring gumshoe. The 12.1-inch display boasts 1366 x 768 resolution, and in the time we had last night, the viewing angles are very forgiving. Ports are minimal -- one USB 2.0 input, one power input, and some audio / headset jacks. External keyboard, mice, and headset are supported via USB and Bluetooth.
The home screen is a series of large shortcuts and a side bar for settings,search, and the ever-vigilant timekeeper. The background changed colors about every minute, and Rathakrishnan explained that you could instead just have it set to one color -- that green tint is not something set in stone, no worries. Getting back to the screen is a simple matter of pinching when you're in a browser window -- and be sure to keep that in mind, pinching does not in this case zoom out. Pinching from homescreen takes you to a series of open tabs you can skim through before you make a final pick.
On hand was also the near-final packaging. It seems almost ridiculously long, about thrice the length of the tablet itself, but we do give points for the clever design. Inside is also the power brick, but that's it for included supplies -- even the documentation is to be written on a translucent sticker for the display cover.
Our two major concerns with Joojoo right now are ones Rathakrishnan promises will be fixed before launch. First one is home screen notifications, which we were unable to see -- having a screen of shortcuts is nice and all, but if Apple has taught us anything, the least we can want is some form of numerical indication that our favorite social networking site has new messages for us. We're told it can be implemented by developers using the API. The other one is a biggie, and it's something very noticeable in the videos: touch sensitivity is pretty bad. Using the virtual keyboard proved to be far too painful, and we're pretty sure it wasn't multitouch-friendly. Worth noting is a built-in webcam for video conferencing but at the moment no Skype support since there isn't a more Webkit-friendly client.
Rathakrishnan was kind enough to answer a few questions about the Arrington-shaped elephant in the room. He remains adamant that the TechCrunch founder and company did not contribute any code to the project, and that their involvement was virtually nonexistent. What he wouldn't talk about, unfortunately, was what's actually powering the machine -- that'll be announced in "due course," but we do know it has a dedicated GPU and, based on what we saw, it does its job very well. Storage isn't expandable, but at the same time there isn't much here that you'll be able to save locally anyhow.
At $500 and a with web-focused design, the Joojoo's biggest rival seems to be mid-range netbooks like the Asus Eee PC 1201N, and until we can see the specs inside, giving up a physical keyboard is a bit of a challenge here. Cautiously optimistic is the best way we can put it for now, but we are itching to get some more time with it. The first shipments should be going out eight to ten weeks after the initial December 11th pre-orders, and international territories sometime early next year.
Update: Gizmodo says they saw the bootup sequence, which revealed a 1.6GHz Atom, but we still don't know what kind of chipset and GPU is in there -- the smart money is on NVIDIA Ion, but we've yet to see a shipping Ion machine run HD Flash as well as the Joojoo.
@iPhoneMessenger
Very cool!
@Vcube that $465 price is only to get you in the door/click on customize. It's a Celeron and that's just bad news. If you want a machine that can do anything right, you're gonna need to upgrade to the core2 duo or the midrange processor that sits in between that and the celeron. Great ultraportable, but it's not as cheap as dell would have you believe.
first
What's with the background color? Who's going to want that? It IS a color screen, right?
@Ryan Trevisol Are you blind?
@(Unverified) Yes, look at his hands.
@(Unverified) I get it, it's a color screen, but the first picture:
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2009/12/joojoo-hands-1-dsc_0090-rm-eng-1260271696_600x398.jpg
Is clearly showing a black-and-white image on the display. . . an interesting choice for the home screen of your device.
The whole background-color thing, I get that you can turn it off, I just wonder what kind of drugs they were doing when they thought that anyone would want to surf the web with a color changing background.
LSD, right?
@Ryan Trevisol
High-contrast low-backlight for outdoors web-browsing?
@engadgethead On whose wifi? Not mine. I'll be chasing all JooJooheads off my lawn, to be sure.
@Ryan Trevisol
you better not live in NYC with that pottymouth.
@Ryan Trevisol
Yeah, the color screen changing idea is one of the things that if you suggested it to Steve Jobs, you'd be fired.
@Wesscoast: I know! This is one of the issues I have with this product, it's bound to offend someone with that name. I didn't mean it in a derogatory manner, but it does make a good point.
@Ryan Trevisol
Ummm.....LSD
@Ryan Trevisol So from crunchpad and now JooJoo is this the new pseudoname of Mr. Arrington of TC? lol, It's not overpriced hardware, considering that a netbook isn't much cheaper (at least one with ION runs you about $399 + tax at HP). If you took the same hardware and slapped on an Apple OS with fit and polish, people would be clamoring for the device like zombies. Another JooJoo POV: http://bit.ly/joojoo-who-tablet
What is this? seriously!
@LowestRanked Specs? 500$ seems a like a nice price.
@LowestRanked Not with compared to that sweet new Dell that popped up today.
@NikAmi Whats called?
@LowestRanked a refrigerator magnet!
Voodoo Mama Joojoo?
$500 is a nice price for an Atom-powered computer with no keyboard running some hokey custom OS with a shitty touchscreen?
Dare we ask what you paid for your HDMI cable?
@petepete
I peed myself when I caught that Office reference. You FTW!!!
screen looks fairly unresponsive
@sargentr
I'm not defending the machine or company it builds it, but i think that's because he is not in front of it when showing it to the camera. Viewing angle is therefore very strange to type on... Later when he opens the video, then he is quick..
@Tomino
I think he means unresponsive to the touch. Like typing etc. Seems like every second key pressed does not register which would piss me off majorly.
Apart from that and the mono home screen, not bad.
Sounds like he said, "I have the doo doo in my hands".
The colors are incredibly bland and really do not scream "Buy me". Yes, yes I saw the full color browser but seriously, the green is retro done bad.
@SimonCousins he did mention you can change your background colour
this thing is sooooo promising, but that's the problem, it's promising but it doesn't deliver, they need to really work on the screen. but at least they're getting an API together so that should solve some of the questions people had. the keyboard could be made more user friendly as well. the only thing that matters to me, is if i could connect it via usb to act as a cintiq type machine, that would be really awesome.
@Chuuchdizzle
Lions are smarter than I am.
I actually think that they've miss an opportunity to make a great product... a browser-only device is not-so-powerful. also UI it's a lttle bit messy
way TOO big and it does NOT look slim or light to me
Shame. I have serious reservations about devices that rely almost completely on web applications and storage. Especially at the price they're asking for it.
The design looks elegant, the user interface is good minimalistic design, but it must be more user freindly (like the keyboard). Overall it is a great device!
still some work to do...
Too bad Mike Arrington is on their bad side. I hear he wanted to buy one of these a couple years ago.
I hope Mike Arrington wins his litigation. What Fusion Garage did is just criminal. I will be boycotting this product for sure.
@gabereiser What Arrington does on a daily basis is criminal: at least I am glad that now that the shoe is on the other side, he will have the decency of shutting the hell up already.
@(Unverified) He had his chance to buy one. He would rather them do all the work and him take all the credit.
This is another completely unsurprising case of Arrington being full of shit. No one familiar with the tech-journalism world would be at all surprised by this. Heres a guy who talked about this project like it was some partnership between tech crunch and FG, but its clear now it was just a product that FG had already been developing, and TC was just reporting on it.
It was like if Engadget started reporting on the boxee beta as if they were actually somehow involved. TC should thank FG for allowing them to pretend they were at all involved in any way.
This could become a sort of hybrid browser/tv/ebook at some point (that'd be awesome to have around the house). I have a feeling the next iteration will be more appealing though.
While I admit that aside from the touch response it looks like a pretty nice device, I just can't see paying the price they want for this. It just feels like there's not a lot there for $500. This is especially true when they are asking me to trust a company that's not proven, has no major backer that I know of with TechCrunch out of the picture (and I'd argue the 'major' part of that to begin with), and could potentially end up in legal troubles. Seems like a lot of faith to offer something that I can get else where; more so when Google's Chrome OS is a year out.
@Zelgado
So true. It is a decent device, but it just doesn't provide enough usability for the consumer to be worth $500
@LowestRanked WTF? LOL!
The bezel is too big, seriously it just makes the device unnecessarily bulky and less slick looking. They also need to hook up a better touchscreen .. seems like it doesnt register clicks. Also, how come there was no URL completion when typing the URLs into the browser?
Also, for $499 .. it doesn't have 3G ? seriously? WTF?
@JS
3G means they'd have to pass the FCC and it'd get real expensive REAL quick.
@JS
> The bezel is too big, seriously it just makes the device unnecessarily bulky
Actually with a tablet you need something to hold onto. . .
@JS I agree. The lack of 3G kills any interest I had in this thing. Plus the lack of a responsive touch screen. If you're paying 500 for a browser. It needs to have 3G, otherwise no one will want this. I know I won't
@JS
I agree. The bezel is too big. If you need something to hold on to, make a large bezel on one side (to hold with either hand) and make the other sides' bezel smaller.
On a side note, is bezel a countable or noncountable noun?
@Jeff Kibuule
Adding a 3G radio costs about an extra $130, but having to get an approval through the FCC wouldn't add anything to the cost. But basically, the JooJoo and the iPad (without 3G, but with 4x the storage) cost the same.
"On hand was also the near-final packaging. It seems almost ridiculously long, about thrice the length of the tablet itself, but we do give points for the clever design. Inside is also the power brick, but that's it for included supplies"
Thrice the length for only a power brick as extra? Where's the clever part?