Most tablets are of a similar design: they’re a slab of metal, plastic or glass, typically arranged with the control buttons around the edges but not necessarily. Over the years, we’ve seen some manufacturers try something a little different – most notable Lenovo with the YOGA line of tablets, which have a different design including a built-in kickstand. The tablet market is starting to become saturated, that is, most people who want a tablet have one and so sales have dwindled. We are seeing a number of tablets being designed and sold to those people seeking to upgrade from their older model and one of the ways that a company can differentiate their product is by the design. Another is by the specification, but for what most people use their tablets for, upgrading the processor and screen has a relatively little difference. That many tablets are sold without contracts means that people are upgrading them much less often, plus because of their design they tend not to be dropped in the same way that smartphones are.
Perhaps it’s with this in mind that Alcatel OneTouch have just officially announced the OneTouch Xess, which is a large tablet. By large, I do not mean 10-inch, or even the 13-inch of the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro; instead, Alcatel have opted for a 17.3-inch device. As you can see from the images, the OneTouch Xness has a built-in kickstand, much like the Lenovo YOGA tablets. The kickstand can be set at three points; 30-degrees, 50-degrees and 70-degrees, depending on what the customer is doing with the device and of course, also ensuring that one does not need to hold the tablet whilst using it, as a 17-inch tablet is much heavier than smaller models. The Xess also comes with a stylus, which slips into a holster at the back of the device: no word if the stylus fits into place both ways around yet! Alcatel’s features don’t end here: the tablet comes with dual, large and maximum output 3 watt speakers, and these give the back of the device a distinctive shape and appearance – the JBL speakers are designed by Harman no less. Furthermore, Alcatel have given the device gesture support, which means one doesn’t have to touch the screen in order to control it – this should be ideal for people following recipes or perhaps sitting at a distance too far from the screen to be able to easily control it.
As regards the specification of the tablet, that 17.3-inch screen is of a 1080p resolution, or full high definition, 1,920 by 1,080 pixels. The device is powered by a MediaTek MT8783T processor, which has eight 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 application cores clocked at up to 1.5 GHz and includes the Mali-T720 GPU. The processor is backed up by 2 GB of RAM and the device ships with 32 GB of internal storage plus a MicroSD card. It’s kept alive by a 10,000 mAh battery and runs Android 5.1 Lollipop.
Alcatel OneTouch spokesperson, Stan Hu, said this about the new tablet: “Xess is one of our favorite new products because this big format is really family-oriented and has a multitude of uses at home or at work.” And it’s an interesting product; we don’t yet know the release markets, date or price but as soon as we know, we will let you know.
