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US networks T-Mobile and Verizon have announced Android 3.0 ‘Honeycomb’ tablets with 4G network connectivity with the LG-made G-Slate and Motorola Xoom.
T-Mobile USA said that it expected the LG-manufactured ‘G-Slate’ to be available ‘in the coming months’ and that as expected the tablets would be running the Android 3.0 operating system ‘optimized for tablets’.
T-Mobile also released a video teaser which appears to be a form of rebranded Android 3.0 preview video that Google briefly uploaded to YouTube. No images of the G-Slate hardware have yet been released and the company made no statement about G-Slate availability outside of the US.
Meanwhile Motorola unveiled the Android 3.0 Xoom tablet in a joint announcement at CES with US mobile carrier Verizon Wireless. Interestingly the Xoom is being marketed as a 3G device which can be upgraded to the 4G ‘LTE’ network as Verizon continues to roll out the network through the US.
Unlike the G-Slate, Motorola provided full hardware specifications for the Xoom, pointing to a 730g 10.1-inch device, the same weight but a slightly larger screen size and higher resolution (1280 x 800) than the Apple iPad.
The Xoom will be powerd by Nvidia’s Tegra 2 chipset with a dual-core processor clocked at 1Ghz. The device is said to be capable of 10 hours of video playback and is armed with 3.5mm headphone hack, USB 2.0 micro USB port, 802.11n Wi-Fi and the capability of capturing 720p video with 5 megapixel rear and 2 megapixel front facing cameras.
Curiously Motorola said that the Xoom would be launched as a 3G device in the first quarter of 2011 although this is sooner than Android 3.0 was previously expected to be released.
