Built around the 1GHz
Tegra 2 SOC, the 11.2-inch ICD Gemini should provide comparable
endurance to Apple's
A4-sporting iPad, while besting it in the grunt stakes with its glorious ability to chew through 1080p video when required. If that wasn't enough, the rest of this thing's spec sheet reads like a wishlist. Headlined by a 3G connection that allows cellular voice calls (crazy, we know!), it also includes a user-replaceable 40Wh battery, an SD card reader, FM radio, GPS, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth, MicroUSB connectivity to PCs and USB peripherals, stereo speakers,
and dual webcams -- a 2 megapixel front-facing unit and a 5 megapixel autofocusing snapper on the back. Multitouch displays will be available in both resistive and capacitive flavors, with the 1,366 x 768 resolution being filled by Google's snappy
Android OS. Oh, and did we mention it will run Flash? Because it will. Full specs and a comparison to its direct competitors await after the break, though we've yet to find out when this JooJoo killer will be making its arrival or at what price.
Update: We've come across a couple of real (i.e. not rendered) pictures of an earlier prototype for the Gemini, which looks generic as hell but should give you a good idea of the dimensions and scale of the device in question. Yours after the break.
posted April 6th 2010 2:29AM
@CavemanOOGA
One Billion Dollars!
USB connection, you say? Magical, I say, magical!
So this is kind of like the Evo 4G of tablets, I want.
MOAR HYPE
Gemini or Adam..... DON'T MAKE ME CHOOSE!
Battery life?
@VanillaSperm I dont need to predict that you're wrong with that prediction because I know it. Reason being that you obviously do not understand the technical basics behind specs such as these.
@rand0
Tegra is toughted to be very stingy with power draw, so if these specs are acurate to final product, expect 15+ hours. The notion ink adam has 16 hours and I have read that the tegra chip could almost double the Ipad battery life over the A4.
@marine6680
Tegra 2 may be more powerful, but I believe its TDP is still around 2 watts (need verification)- which may mean a heatsink (more weight and heat). The novel feature of Notion Ink's Adam is the low-power dual-mode display (LCD and E-INK), but I'm not expecting that to be remotely comparable to the iPad because of this compromise.
@cbarcus
Actually, Nvidia claims a TDP of .5 watts. Very impressive.
Now this is a tablet I might consider buying....if the price is right.
The only limitation seems to be the hard drive.
This totally Answer my technological CALL!!
And this is my new PHONe.
@VanillaSperm
Haha...funny fan-boy's sperm..with a blue-tooth headset genius! Imagine your IPHONE suddenly merged with your IPAD, and you get a phone and a tablet. Carry less, get it?
I'm a apple fanboy to the core (flame me all you want), but this sounds amazing. Now im upset that i've forked over my hard earned money to apple, and now this?. I guess people were right when they said to wait and see what others would have to offer, now i'm slapping my damn self.
now we're talking.
AND ANOTHER CONTENDER ENTERS THE RING!!!!
These tablet wars are starting to look like Royal Rumble, the JooJoo was the first to get turfed out.
I'll buy some sort of tablet/slate next year. There are too many issues with bringing this style of computer to the consumer right now.
Yet another tablet Apple will not loose sleep over. The table illustrates the problem. How much of that table is hardware features and how much is software? Apple and its consumers, demonstrated quite clearly with the iPhone what hardware feature checklists are worth.
@VanillaSperm
I understand people who only listen to songs and watching movies would like to stick with Apple, I will too, I like the designs and experience. And all the mentioned features will be included into the IPAD as time pass, and very gradually, just not before JOB make his money. But he got you poor guys so brain-washed that you are like fan-boy zombies who will listen and do whatever JOB says. Even the truth states so clearly that the 1st Gen IPAD is crap-gadget. He even make u pay for 3G function, what a tool you have to be to get one.
@VanillaSperm
I use both Mac w/OSX and windows 7. (also use linux quite a lot, more than the others probably though it is not part of this discussion) I don't find one much better than the other. I tend to find the Apple hardware and build quality superior, but I have more issues with software usability. (the Iphone OS is easy to use though, maybe too much so lol) Any apps not in the Dock are not easy to get to if you remove the "applications" folder from the desktop, and you have to search for it in menus. Which would be fine but there is no dedicated "applications" menu. I'm also not a fan of Itunes layout and its initial setup to add existing music folders. The selection window did not operate in a way I felt was intuitive, mostly involving an extra click/step that caused the folder to not add until I learned it. I'm not the first to find this issue, a friend and my GF asked me to help with this because it would not work for them. Both had been windows only users before this. My GF uses both windows and Mac quite a lot, owning a Mac Pro and a Windows desktop, and her school being A Mac only school. She complains about Mac stability issues just as much as windows. Being a graphics design major, she uses graphics programs every day. Mac is touted as being the "it" thing for graphics professionals, yet she still has issues with program stability. She has learned to save often due to this. hough I think the only real issue I have with Apple is its hand holding/controlling attitude with its products. And the dictator like rule of its app store. (you can't even use the word "android" in the app description, meaning if your app had Iphone and Android versions and also could communicate between platforms, you can't say so)
@VanillaSperm
I will agree that Windows mobile sucks. We shall see if they get their act together with WinMo 7. They will need to to compete with Iphone OS and Android. And if you think Android is just a small blip with few users, know that recent data gathered in mobile internet use (read cellular/smartphones) Shows that in the past few months (since multiple carriers/companies have released android devices) that the Android share of use has climbed from below 10% to 42% and Iphone use has decreased from over 80% to 46%. these are US figures. Android is a major threat to Apple and Iphone/Iphone OS, and they know it, hence the recent patent lawsuit. though I do find it funny that Apple is getting sued for patent infringement over multitouch, which they claim to have invented. Apparently another company came up with the idea way back in 1995/96 and recently successfully sued Synaptics over multitouch issues. So it looks like Apple will lose as well, and their recent multitouch patent will get revoked.
Isn't this thing really just another heavy laptop without the keyboard?
It's got everything but the kitchen sink, which is perfect for some users, but all this is bound to make it heavier. So it's not the tidy little thing the iPad is hopefully going to be. I expect the iPad will lose a bit of weight over the years too, which this Tegra might not. Making any product open to "tinkering", like removable batteries, is obviously going to pack on the weight of the device.
cool a another render, its almost like CGTalk here.
A+
So, remind me again how is it possible to play 1080p on a 1,366 x 768 screen?
@Thackis
"So, remind me again how is it possible to play 1080p on a 1,366 x 768 screen?"
It scales down the resolution to fit the screen. It can't actually display 1,920 horizontal and 1,080 vertical lines of pixels (2,073,600 pixels) - it doesn't have that much resolution. It only has 1,366 horizontal and 768 vertical lines of pixels, as you rightly say, which is 1,049,088 pixels. The screen can only show half the information!
However, the point is that the device can handle (decode) all the information in a 1080p file (all 2,073,600 pixels)!! Many devices can handle (decode) all the information for a 720p file, (1280 x 720 = 921,600 pixels) - such as an iPad - but not all the information for a 1080p file. It takes more power since there's more than twice the information.
And if the device has an HDMI out port (like the Gemini) it can output a full 1080p file to an HDTV, Projector, monitor, etc that's capable of displaying full 1080p. When devices claim to be capable of 1080p, they are often referring to decoding power, not necessarily display output!
Hopefully this helps :)
@TechHead2 And also a 16:9 resolution will fill the screen, unlike on the iPad, where you get black bars, meaning lower res and smaller image.
@TechHead2 Thanks for the information, but it was a remark made in sarcasm.
@Thackis It's the ability to process and downscale it that's really necessary. I have a lot of 1080p files in my media library (straight blu-ray rips) that I watch on my 1080p TV. Not having to re-encode these just so my tablet can play it would be a very big plus.
Hardware doesn't make a device thats a screen only, the software does. This is why nothing is going to compete with the iPad in the near future.
at least it wont be restricted to 98% of the internet llike the ipad thats suppossed to be the best web experiance i know put apple sign triple the price and all the apple folllowers will blindly buy anything
@VanillaSperm i did not say that i said that will go to any website that ipad junk wont how can you buy in to be told what to where to what to buy at the end of he day its stupid it must be the apple cult . i would not buy a tablet i dont think there powerfull enough i am happy with my hd2 and 18 laptop
@VanillaSperm and as for the flash arguments it my be craop but it works at the present moment give me a viable alternative to flash thats works on every site that uses flash
ENGADGET:
Can you PLEASE make these comparison pictures LARGER or at least have them linked to a larger image? The text is too damn small!! It was the same thing with the iPad and Slate comparison pic. Come on guys!
@kloan if you're on a windows computer you can press Ctrl and + to zoom in although here it makes the picture blurry. Higher res please?
If you have to wheel out a specification comparison sheet then I'm not interested. Call me boring but what I want to know is, what is the device actually like, what's the software like, and how much better is it actually to use to get stuff done? I really couldn't care less how much RAM its got, or what sort of chipset it has because what really matters is the software and how well it runs (this is dependent on the hardware but good hardware does not necessarily equal good software).
That the device runs the Android OS is good news (certainly much better than the idiocy that slapping Windows 7 on it would be) but what is necessary is software that is designed for the device itself (or at least its class) and not just those applications that were designed for a small telephone screen.
if only had the same promotion than iPad, it will completely overkill it
@gapechorin I actually don't believe that and just because it isn't Apple and is from a new company. Same hype would allow it to compete. It's asking too much for a company without brand recognition to compete with Goliath coming out of the gate.
Sounds great, but we have no launch date, no price - nothing besides specs and "official pictures."
Love it or hate it, the iPad is here now. Like anything else, it'll be trumped with time. If this Gemini baby is legit, then that'll be the next step...and on and on.
The Slate's specs were somewhat underwhelming, especially compared to the Gemini. Great PR video, but the leaked pros/cons sheet puts it down a notch.
If you want to get in on the ride now, just buy an iPad and flip it when the Android tablets arrive. No sense waiting...and waiting...and waiting.
@ECVOICE Or you could exert some control and wait for the better devices to hit.
Nobody NEEDS an iPad.
Comparison chart is wrong...if you're going to mention proprietary in one field, it's only fair to mention it elsewhere:
USB Accessories: Yes (proprietary)
GPS: Yes (3G models)
Be interesting to see the price, but I'm betting the battery life is going to suck unless they squeeze even more batteries in (and batteries ain't light or cheap).
@scoop
Being Tegra based, and from all the stats and hands on talk recently, it will have very good battery life. It was mentioned by either the Notion Ink guys or nvidia that the Ipad could nearly double its battery life if it used Tegra over the A4 chip.
@marine6680
I haven't found any information regarding power consumption of the Nvidia Tegra or the Apple A4 chip. How accurate can this be?
@Aritstan The Original Tegra sucked up less than 1W at full load. It's been reported that the Apple A4 sucks up 2.5W at full load.
The Tegra 2 (what powers both the Adam and the Gemini) will keep the same power envelope, have 4x the performance of Tegra 1, have a dual core Cortex A9, full Flash hardware acceleration, and add CUDA support.
I'm sorry, but the Tegra 2 completely kicks the A4's ass. We're talking outright murder here... not some marginal value.
Hell Yeah! That's fuckin' hot! Though I'm not going to get a slate too soon - at least there's some real alternative for the iPad pretty soon unlike after the iPhone launch ...
No weight info.
No battery run time info.
Guess why.
@naujoks It says 40Whrs battery. You can expect it to run for at least 15 hours, maybe even longer.
I'm a bit concerned about the weight, though. A 40Whrs battery must be quite heavy.
@maati
It depends on configuration of the pack. Watt hours increase with either higher amp hours or higher voltage... W=VxA The Ipad uses 2 cells running parallel which give the same volts as 1 cell (3.7V nominal) but increases the total Amp hours. If this thing uses a 2 cell configuration, then smaller amp hour batteries can be used to get the same WH rating, this means weight can be less or equal. Sure 40Wh battery will at worse be twice the weight of a 25Wh though. And many types of circuits run at greater efficiency at higher voltages, (so long as voltage regulation to lower input voltage is kept at a minimum) This could help give even longer battery life.
Let the competition begin! The realworld products that are in the hands of happy consumers right now versus the vapor products with fake specs! Who will win?
@ninja98 did you throw your money away at something already? So soon? tss tss tss Now you see how foolish being in the band wagon makes you look? ok, be well.
@fast
You are right, don't throw money at tablets this year. Wait till they have a month battery life, can play Crysis 5 and have 10 cameras positioned on each side for 10 dimensional vision. If you are pedantic, wait for them to utilize holographic storage. Can't go wrong with those.