Jen-Hsun's Tablet unveiled: Android-powered ICD Vega
11/13/2009 by: Theo Valich
Earlier this week, a media storm was focused around a mysterious tablet that nVidia's talkative CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang was carrying with himself. Today, that mystery has been revealed.
Start-up company Innovative Converged Devices, i.e. ICD unveiled the Vega, a 15.6" tablet oriented towards home use. To us, it looks like ICD is a product sandbox for nVidia Tegra products, but we'll refrain from commenting until we hear back from the company. The idea behind this tablet is to replace the cook book in the kitchen and become your home assistant. In order to create this sleek device, ICD brought a lot of innovative features which we would argue - warrant an utter success on the global market. Do note that Jen-Hsun's version was built for T-Mobile, thus it featured a magenta-red [pink?] glowing button, while this version is operator-branding free.
In 373x254x16 millimeters [14.68 x 10 x 0.62 inches] and a mass of 1.3 kilograms [2.8 lbs.], Vega features a 15.6" resistive touch-screen with a 1366x768 pixel resolution [this is a 6-bit only panel, folks - forget about movies, since color banding is present everywhere]. The top side of the tablet packs a 1.3 MPixel camera and two noise-isolating microphones for better voice clarity.
The slim body hides nVidia Tegra SoC processor, 512MB DDR DRAM and 512MB NAND Flash memory - we hope to see ICD expanding the amount of local storage by offering a higher ASP model. Storage expansion is available though - you have to purchase MicroSD card with up to 32GB capacity. Connecitivity is perhaps the best part: Vega comes with support for Bluetooth 2.1, Wi-Fi up to 54 Mpbs [802.11b/g] and an option for 2.5G [GPRS], 3G [EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA, HSPA] connections with a SIM card.
The backside of the ICD Vega tabled shows a dock-mount and four magnetic dots for charging
Tegra is known for long battery life, this seeing a single cell Lithium Ion battery [1100 mAh] offering four hours of autonomy sounds standard for a house appliance. The way how to charge the device is however, a geeks' dream and an attention grabber. Vega comes with a magnetic dock for wireless charging, or you can use the regular 110-240V power adapter.
When it comes to style and design, I personally have to take my hat off - I want one of these! ;)
This tablet packs Google Android 2.0 "Eclair" operating system. The best part is that we learned that some telecom operators already selected this device and it may be coming to a store near you. If not, we hope that a progressive e-tailer will pick this one up and offer it in quantity.
Tags:
Jen-Hsun Huang, nVidia, nVidia corporation, NVDA, Tegra, SoC, System on Chip, Google, GOOG, Android, 1366x768, touchscreen, touch-screen, capacitive panel, multitouch, ICD, Vega, Innovative Converged Devices
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