Jumping the gun on its presentation at the IFA trade show in Berlin, ViewSonic has unveiled its ViewPad 7 tablet, and Android-running 7-inch touchscreen tablet that the company hopes will give the Apple iPad a run for its money during the end-of-year holiday buying season. The ViewPad 7 will reportedly run Android 2.2 “Froyo” and offer full phone capabilities in addition to tablet computing functionality—although we can’t imagine most people will want to cart around a 7-inch tablet as their primary phone.
ViewSonic is still being cagey about the device’s specifications: according to reports, the screen will offer an 800 by 480-pixel native resolution and sport a 600 MHz ARM processor under the hood, along with front- and back-facing cameras (VGA and 3 megapixel resolution, respectively), Wi-Fi headphone jack, a microSD slot for removable storage, assisted GPS, and a slot for a full-sized SIM card with support for both voice and 3G data services. ViewSonic says the device will also support handwriting recognition as input.
ViewSonic has not unveiled pricing or availability information, but industry reports have the company saying it expects the UK pricing to come in at around £350 (about US$550), with a retail launch around October.
