Toshiba to announce its new Android Tablet "Thrive"

Toshiba is soon going to launch an Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet named "Thrive". The tablet was being advertised for pre-order at JR.com, but has suddenly and inexplicably been pulled down as of the time of filing this report. You can still viewed the Google Cache copy of the page over here. The price quoted was US$579, which is about Rs.26,200 - not bad for what is on offer.

Powered by a 1 GHz Dual core Tegra 2 processor, this 10.1-inch tablet sports a capacitive multitouch screen with 1280x800 pixels resolution. This screen features Toshiba Adaptive Display technology, which adjusts the brightness and contrast to suit the surrounding lighting conditions, practically allowing you to use this laptop even in sunny weather. Adobe Flash support with hardware acceleration is present for an enriching web browsing experience.

Along with a 5 Megapixel primary camera with Auto-focus, Digital zoom and 720p video capture at the back, there is also a 2 Megapixel HD camera at the front for video calling. HDMI output lets you hook up this tablet to your HDTV display using an HDMI cable and watch movies on the big screen in 1080p Full HD resolution. Thanks to the Toshiba Tablet's Resolution+ technology incorporated in this device, even Standard Definition (SD) video content is upscaled neatly, with no details lost.

The tablet features on-board, a GPS, an accelerometer and a digital compass, helping to pinpoint its exact location and motion. Even the battery is the user-replaceable, which is something every consumer would want, and no tablet manufacturer wants to give. This allows you to carry a second battery pack and replace the battery on-the-go when the first battery runs out of juice. Connectivity is taken care of by Wi-Fi (with hotspot capability), USB 2.0 (with one full and one mini USB port) and Bluetooth. No mention is made of GSM connectivity, so that is probably not going to be available in this version at least. An SD memory card slot is also provided to augment the 32 GB internal memory on-board the device.

Toshiba has been delaying the launch of this tablet, and may delay it to the third quarter of this calendar year. The launch date is therefore not clear. We must note here that Toshiba has already launched the Prot g 12-inch tablet in India, so this tablet may be launched soon too.