Acer showcased Honeycomb-powered Iconia A500 tablet

Last week at an Acer mega-launch, we saw the Android Honeycomb-powered Iconia A500 tablet. We saw the Iconia Tab W500 before which was powered by Windows 7, the A500 is its slimmer and lighter brother that runs on the latest Android OS (3.0) made specifically for tablets.

The Acer Iconia Tab A500 is a 10-inch tablet running on a dual-core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor. It has a 1280 x 800 screen resolution on its capacitive multi-touch display that can track up to 10 points. I don’t find it as vibrant or sharp as that of the Playbook or iPad though. Or maybe it’s because of the bland-colored Honeycomb UI.

It’s lighter than the Iconia W500 at 730 grams but still heavier than the original iPad (680g). It has an industrial-looking design with slightly tapered edges and a fingerprint-loving screen. A stark contrast from the fun and casual design of the iPad.

Ports include a full-size USB, a micro-USB, a mini HDMI, a microSD, stereo headphone jack and a high-speed charging port and a docking port. At the back of the A500 is a 5 megapixel camera and two rear speakers and there’s a 2-megapixel at the front as well.

The fresh UI design of Android 3.0 is a welcome sight from Froyo tablets such as the Galaxy Tab. Acer introduced their own version the iOS’ folders here on the A500. Commonly grouped items for Media, Games, eReading and Social have their own set of screen with a bookshelf UI.

Android doesn’t have a lot of games yet that’s made for larger displays but with what little they have, the dual-core Tegra 2 processor can play really well. Multi-tasking is also supported by the way but I found out that transition from one app to another is not as fast or smooth as that of the PlayBook. I think it’s an Android 3.0 thing.

Now you would want to know, is this a worthy competitor to the iPad? Well, one thing’s for sure is that in its current state, Android 3.0 still has a lot of minor flaws that needs to be fixed by Google. Compared to other Android tablet though, this one is probably the cheapest at P21,900 for the 16GB WiFi version.

Acer Iconia Tab A500 Specs:

• 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor
• NVIDIA GeForce GPU
• 10.1 inches 1280 x 800 capacitive touchscreen display
• 16GB internal storage with support to up to 64GB microSD
• 5-megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash
• 2-megapixel front camera
• Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Compass
• Bluetooth 2.1, WiFi
• Micro HDMI out
• microUSB, USB 2.0
• 3260 mAh battery
• Price: 16GB: Php 21,900.00 | 32GB: P 23,900.00