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NEC's dual-screen LifeTouch W tablet shipping in Japan this June
NEC caught our attention at CES with a dual-screen Android tablet / e-reader that, at the time, it was calling the LT-W Cloud Communicator. Well, it's since been rebranded the LifeTouch W and it will officially hit shelves in Japan this June. Under the hood nothing has changed -- it's the same pair of 7-inch, 800 x 600 resistive touchscreens, 384MB of RAM, and Cortex A8 CPU of unspecified speed we played with in January. Sadly, that also means we're looking at the same dated Android 2.2 OS and paltry five hour battery life. No word on cost or whether this will ever appear outside of Japan, but we'd be surprised if this ugly stepsister of the Kno actually makes its way across the Pacific.
NEC dual-screen Android Cloud Communicator LT-W hands-on
At CES, NEC's showing off the hinged Android tablet it teased last month, pitching it as a great way for third parties to... well, do awesome stuff. They're kind of leaving the doors wide open as to how (or to whom) it'll be sold, suggesting it could make a great e-reader, a digital notebook for students, a scrapbook, or whatever devs dream up. The "Cloud" part of the "Cloud Communicator" name means that NEC thinks the LT-W would be great for generic cloud services, but really, it's just an Android 2.1 tablet with WiFi, Bluetooth, and optional 3G -- there's nothing special in here that makes it particularly well-adapted for magically pulling data out of the cloud. Unfortunately -- cloud or otherwise -- we didn't come away with a very positive impression of this thing. Our very first red flag was the stylus, which matches up with a pair of 800 x 600 resistive touchscreens that don't seem particularly bright or contrasty. Some of NEC's sample apps (which you can see in the video after the break) make decent use of the dual display setup, but nothing blew us away -- and more importantly, everything seemed just a little too jerky for a Cortex-A8 core. If NEC were to remix this with a Tegra 2, two capacitive touchscreens, and Honeycomb, we might be singing a different tune... but for now, this seems like little more than a Courier gone wrong. %Gallery-112919%
NEC gets official with dual-screen 7-inch LT-W Cloud Communicator
Is it an e-reader? A two-faced tablet? Something else entirely. Hard to say for sure, but just as it promised, NEC has furnished a boatload of details surrounding its heretofore mysterious LT-W Cloud Communicator. This dual-screen Android 2.1 device shares a pair of 7-inch resistive touchpanels, both of which have a non-glare (huzzah!) panel and an SVGA (800 x 600) resolution. Under the hood, we're looking at an ARM Cortex A8 processor, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, a three megapixel camera, optional 3G, SDHC card slot, a single USB 2.0 connector, an ear-ratting monaural speaker and a bundled stylus pen. There's also an internal accelerometer, GPS sensor and a battery that's good for up to five hours in ideal conditions. It seems as if NEC is aiming this at folks looking for a more sophisticated e-reading device rather than those looking for a quirky alternative to the cadre of slates already on the market, but there's no word yet on a US price and release date. Needless to say, we'll be digging for both here on the show floor. One more look is after the break.
