Fusion Garage is back! September 15 is the official date for the launch of the Grid 10 tablet from the erstwhile makers of the JooJoo tablet PC. Pre-order booking for the device has already started at the official Fusion Garage site, while orders can also be placed at Amazon.com. The starting price of the tablet is $499, which is for the Wi-Fi only model, while the same featuring 3G modem will set one back by $599.
However, the Grid 10 is quite unlike the plethora of Android tablets we have become accustomed to. The tablet runs on a customized operating system named GridOS, which is basically a derivative of the Android OS. The operating system is capable of running Android Apps, but the company insists that it’s not just a skinned down version of the Android OS. The GridOS has a very unique feature which can be considered to be gesture and wheel based. A tap on the screen will launch a wheel from which various options can be launched. In fact, it isn’t known what version of Android lies underneath, nor is it necessary given the heavy customization that the company has resorted to. While that is not a bad thing, per se, you risk errors cropping up if it is not done well, which the last thing that both its makers and consumers would like.
Also, while the official Android Market remains off limits, Fusion Garage has made available some custom applications for email, media playback, web browsing, and office document editing. Users can avail of Android apps from the Amazon app store. There is also the Grid Shop service to source apps from. Also, the default search engine on-board Grid 10 is Bing.
The other outstanding feature of this tablet is that the display has 1366 x 768 pixels which is more than found on most other 10 inch tablets that run Google Android Honeycomb. The rest of the specs include a 10.1 inch display, 1.2 GHz Tegra 2 dual core CPU, 512 MB RAM, along with 16 GB of internal memory, which again is further expandable by way of MicroSD cards.
Among the other features the Grid 10 will come with include 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR, a 1.3 megapixel camera at the front, HDMI output, GPS, accelerometer, optional HSDPA support, while it’s battery comes with 5,800 mAh capacity
Fusion Garage has been the company that made the JooJoo, which had met quite a disastrous end. The Grid 10 also is high in price when compared to the other Tegra 2 based tablets. Another factor that consumers have to be wary of is that the Grid 10 also comes with an OS that is a lot different from the Android that we have come to know. All of this is a bold move indeed for a company whose first innings in the great tablet game have never been memorable.
As such, it will be interesting to see how consumers react to the new Grid 10.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.
