We haven’t heard from Notion Ink in a long time, ever since they launched their first Adam tablet in 2011, which held a lot of promise back then, but unfortunately ended up pretty disappointing when it landed on the market, both from a quality point of view and a software point of view. Will things change with the Adam 2?
It seems the Adam 2 is taking a different direction than the Adam 1, and it seems like it will have a completely different interface from before, which looks like stock Android 4.2.2, the latest version of Android (at least until Google I/O). The device doesn’t seem to have much better specs than the original version, but it should be significantly cheaper, with its price rumored to be around $220, or 12,000 Indian Rupees.
A dual core 1.5 Ghz Cortex A9 processor, and 1280×800 resolution for a 10″ display are not exactly mind blowing, but if the quality of the device and display is high enough, and if the software is bug-free and fast, it should be a decent offer for the money you are paying, especially if you prefer a 10″ tablet instead of a 7″ one.
One interesting feature is a second smaller display on the side of the tablet, that will most likely provide contextual information and notifications. This seems to be replicate the text you see on printed books, but I’m not sure if this serves that useful of a purpose that it needed to be its own separated screen.
Who’s really looking at the side of the tablet? And even if they say it you could see notifications from the side, it might be hard to do that when you’re not at an angle that allows you to see what’s on that screen, especially if the viewing angles for that screen are not that great.
I doubt the Notion Ink Adam 2 will do very well in western markets, but their brand should be more popular in India, and it could probably do well enough enough to sustain a start-up like Notion Ink. The price also seems more suited for the Indian market, so if the tablet is high quality enough and works well, they shouldn’t meet too many obstacles in selling enough of them.
[Via Engadget]