New Tablets Drop Into The Market

By Joseph Palenchar On Nov 7 2011 - 6:01am

NEW YORK – New tablets from Samsung, Kobo and E Fun are entering the tablet fray in time for the holiday season to join the previously announced $199 Amazon Kindle Fire, which is due Nov. 15, and the new Barnes & Noble model, which will be announced Nov. 7.

A new BlackBerry Playbook, however, will wait until next February, when Research In Motion (RIM) expects to offer the next generation of its PlayBook tablet OS.

Here’s what’s coming or has just arrived in new fourth-quarter products:

E Fun: Having just expanded its Premium series of Nextbook tablets to include an 8-inch model, E Fun plans to add a 9-inch model in November or December.

Pricing on the Nextbook Premium 9 wasn’t available, but its specifications were. Like E Fun’s other Premium series devices, the Premium 9 features Android 2.3 OS, but compared to the $299-suggested 8-inch Premium 8, it steps up screen size to 9 inches and steps up resolution to 1,280 by 800 pixels from 800 by 480.

Both the Premium 8 and 9 feature 1GHz processor, and compared to the $249-suggested Nextbook Premium 7 with 7-inch touchscreen, both add 2-megapixel front-facing camera and over-theair upgrade capability.

Kobo: The $199-suggested Vox just became available with Android 2.3 OS, 8GB of internal memory and 32GB SD Card slot.

Kobo’s first tablet features Wi-Fi and 7-inch color touchscreen with FFS display technology to deliver an optimum good reading experience in bright light, the company said. The Vox comes with access to 15,000 apps and 2.5 million books through the Kobo bookstore.

Samsung: The company’s new 7-inch tablet, the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, will be available nationwide in a 16GB Wi-Fi version beginning Nov. 13 at $399 with tabletoptimized Android Honeycomb OS and 1.2GHz dual-core processor.

The tablet features a built-in IR emitter and Peel’s Smart Remote TV application, said to let users control the components of any home entertainment system regardless of manufacturer. The app also displays a local channel guide streamed via Wi-Fi.

As for RIM, the company said the new Playbook OS will add integrated email, calendar and contact apps to Wi-Fi-only PlayBooks. With the current OS, users must tether a Wi-Fi-only PlayBook to a BlackBerry phone via Bluetooth to bring the phone’s email, calendar and contacts to the tablet.