While browsing through the IFA halls, we stopped by ViewSonic stand and we must say there were a lot of news from their side. Tablets are definitely in, not as much as 3D, but once Apple made their point with iPad, everyone followed. Viewsonic showed us their version of tablet device called ViewPad 7. As you can guess from it’s name, the screen is 7” in diagonal, and it is something between smartphone and full size tablet device. As we understood, it’s a small multifunctional device you can use to browse the Internet, make calls (it even has built in microphone), enjoy in multimedia and do all the stuff you do while you are traveling.

Because of the screen resolution capable of reproducing only 480p (480x800pix), they used Snapdragon processor running on 600 MHz which ensures longer battery life, which is from 3-6h, depending on how you use it. When it comes down to software on ViewPad 7, we came a bit surprised. It runs Android 2.2 (Froyo), but with no Adobe Flash support. As the matter a fact, they told us that you can choose between Froyo with and without Flash support. So, although we think that there will eventually be a way to go around this software limitation, we are not so sure how big impact will it have on hardware part.

After ViewPad 7, we played with a little bit serious device – ViewPad 10. The concept is completely different: this 10” marvel packs 1.6 GHz N455 Atom processor, 1 GB DDR3 and a 16 GB SSD drive. It’s main aspect, display, has 16:9 ratio and has the same resolution as Samsung Galaxy Tab – 1024x600 pixels. Unfortunately, it utilizes capacitive display, not Super AMOLED as we hoped for, but the responsiveness is really good that we can forgive them for now. The interesting thing about this model is that it’s a dual boot, and that you can choose between Windows 7 and the old Android 1.6, again no explanation why not Froyo or even Gingerbread. The thing is that the both OSes work great, mostly because of the fast SSD, but the time needed for Android is very short, so in dependence of work you need done you can choose your OS. There are also several connectors: 2 x USB, DP, audio, microSD, just as much as you might need for your something-in-between-netbook-and-tablet device. And it really is a device that is here to make you say: „I don’t need a netbook, I need this“. And if you think about it, the only thing that can be a problem is only 16 GB of storage. Once you install Win 7 with all the updates, and Android... then what? You’ll just add a SD card as an additional memory? We all know that SD cards aren’t meant for these things... But when you add the fact that the price will be under 500€, it starts to make sense.