Pandigital Readies SuperNova Tablet For Release

By Doug Olenick -- TWICE, 10/7/2011

New York -- Pandigital released its flagship tablet PC, the SuperNova.


The SuperNova came about as a direct result of Pandigital's customers requesting a full tablet experience, something more than the revved up e-readers the company had been offering said, Jason Tofel, Pandigital's VP marketing and product development.

The Wi-Fi SuperNova has an 8-inch color touchscreen, 4GB of internal storage, 512MB of DRAM, 23GB SD card slot and a 1GHz Cortex A8 processor.

The device is running on Android 2.3, but Tofel said it will be able to handle an upgrade to the Android Ice Cream Sandwich OS when it becomes available later this year. However, the company said an upgrade will depend upon the new OS meeting Pandigital's standards.

Pandigital said it was originally planning on using a new version of Honeycomb for the SuperNova, but that OS never appeared as Google focused its efforts on Ice Cream Sandwich and because this the device does not have access to the Android App Store. Instead Pandigital has placed a link to the GetJar app store.

Tofel believes the SuperNova is well-positioned to compete in the tablet market this holiday season despite the competition from Apple and the new Kindle.

"Not everyone can afford an Apple," he said, adding Pandigital has experience selling its own e-reader products against Amazon's Kindle.

Tofel thought Amazon's presence in the tablet market will be helpful as the online retailer will bring its marketing muscle to bear and hype the category.