Taiwanese tech firm HTC has dabbled in the tablet market but never quite measured up to the big boys. Now new leaked photos show that a tablet created by the company is getting set to take on Apple, Motorola, Samsung and all comers.
The HTC Puccini is the device in question, a large tablet which will feature a 10.1 inch touchscreen display, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage space. The real news is that the Puccini will apparently have a 1.5GHz dual core processor, faster than anything else on the market. HTC phones have already featured 1.2GHz dual core chips, but this will be a powerful step in the right direction which separates tablet performance capabilities from the way a mobile phone deals with number-crunching and app operation.
The images posted online show the HTC Puccini is ready for launch, bearing the logo of US network provider AT&T and promising that it will support LTE networking Stateside. Android 3.0 is the operating system of choice for the Puccini, although as with HTC phones there has been quite a bit of tinkering with the software and interface to make sure it feels unique and fresh compared to the other Android-based tablets out there.
HTC’s only previous attempt at conquering the contemporary table market was the Flyer, a seven inch Android 2.3 device which only had Wi-Fi and slower 3G connectivity and was thus a little more limited than the Puccini when it comes to mobile internet speeds. A single-core 1.5GHz CPU also meant that the Flyer was not quite up to scratch in the performance category. The Puccini will have two cores operating at this speed, which is great news for those concerned about tablets being underpowered compared to netbooks and laptops.
Having said that it looks like HTC is not giving up on the Flyer and is in fact creating a Wi-Fi only edition which will be cheaper and thus more attractive than the full 3G version. With LTE currently unavailable in the UK it may be that the Puccini emerges as a scaled down version of its American counterpart, similar to the route taken with 4G HTC phones ahead of their release on UK mobile phone deals. Next-gen networking is on the way, so a simple software update might unlock LTE on the Puccini tablet once enough providers have their infrastructures up and running, but until then it is in the US that the device will truly be able to stretch its legs. Whether or not it will be able to knock the iPad 2 from its position of dominance is an entirely different matter.
This article is sponsored by: Expansys.
