Meet the ViewSonic “G Tablet” (Review)

ViewSonic is the latest manufacturer to announce an Android-powered tablet that will compete with the popular Apple iPad. The ViewSonic ViewPad G Tablet boasts a 10 in capacitive touchscreen, and runs the latest 2.2 version of Android which is designed to be consumer friendly. The 10-inch G Tablet has strong specs: a bright 1024 x 600 display, a front-facing webcam, and a powerful dual-core Tegra 2 CPU. Pricing $ 399

ViewSonic has another 10-inch tablet — the ViewPad 100 which dual-boots Windows and Android. The reason ViewSonic G tablet doesn’t have dual-boot Windows and Android is because of its Nvidia Tegra 2 processor.

At 10.5 x 6.8 x 0.5 inches, the G Tablet isn’t the smallest slate on the block by any stretch. At 1.55 pounds, it weighs as much as the iPad. It’s much bulkier than the iPad and the 7-inch Galaxy Tab, though. The glossy black plastic on the front and the matte black on the back look and feel a bit cheap. We could hear the slate creaking in our hand when we picked it up.

Viewsonic  supports the G Tablet with a one year limited warranty on parts and labor. The company offers both online and phone support.

On the left side of the G Tablet, you’ll find a headphone jack, a mini USB port for connecting to the PC, a full size USB port for attaching USB drives, and a microSD card reader. But you must have a dedicated AC adapter that connects to its own jack on the slate, as it doesn’t allow charging through USB. A docking port on the bottom of the G Tablet is designed to support HDMI output

About screen and tochscreen,The ViewSonic G Tablet has a 10.1-inch capacitive touchscreen display, 1024×600 pixel resolution screen, which  provide sharp images but colors seem muted. When the slate is resting flat on its back, you must be right on top of it or images wash out completely. Unfortunately, there’s no kickstand to prop up the device. We also noticed that the G Tablet picked up lots of fingerprint smudges, more than the iPad. The screen supports two-fingered multitouch gestures such as pinch to zoom with little noticeable lag. The built-in accelerometer isn’t as responsive

One of the only features of the proprietary Tap n Tap UI that we actually like is its split virtual keyboard. When in landscape mode, the keyboard gets cut down the middle at the line between the G and H keys so you can to type with your thumbs and not have to stretch too far to target those middle keys. When in portrait mode, the keyboard doesn’t split, but does have nice, large keys.Unfortunately, the G Tablet does not support haptic feedback on the keyboard or anywhere else, so you won’t feel any response when you tap the keys. Those who like the Swype keyboard that can use on the Galaxy Tab and other Android devices are also out of luck.

Unfortunately, you won’t find any of Google’s apps on the G Tablet, so forget about Google Calendar, Google photo gallery, Gmail, YouTube, or Google Maps. Instead, the preloaded software build includes a few mediocre apps with low-tech designs.

The News app provides the same feed of headlines you get from the desktop news widget. The Weather app provides a large, graphical display of the current and upcoming weather in your area with giant images of a sun or clouds. Es File Explorer allows you to browse files and folders on the internal storage or external SD card. The To-Do app allows you to create post-it notes that appear on one of the desktop screens.

The Grocery app lets you create a shopping list of things to buy when you go to the store that you can even share via e-mail, but you can’t check things off your list as you buy them. The calendar app allows you to enter your appointments and have them appear on the desktop widget of upcoming appointments, but it doesn’t sync with cloud applications like Google calendar

The Photos app allows you to view and organize your pictures, The camera app allows you to shoot photos or videos of yourself with the 1.3 megapixel front-facing lens, but since there’s no rear lens and the app doesn’t do video chat, it seems a little useless.

Unfortunately, you won’t find any of Google’s apps on the G Tablet, so forget about Google Calendar, Google photo gallery, Gmail, YouTube, or Google Maps. Instead, the preloaded software build includes a few mediocre apps with low-tech designs.

In addition, there’s no way to see a list of open apps. Where in regular Android, you can task switch by long-pressing the home button; that doesn’t work on the G Tablet–you must return to the home screen and then reopen an app to switch to it. This extra step is particularly annoying.

The UI looks friendly on the surface, but its sluggish performance and lame preloaded apps drag the entire device down. Though the G Tablet is powered by Google’s Android 2.2 OS.  The status bar area of the screen looks different than on a typical Android device. In the upper left corner is a Tap n Tap [a Software]logo that looks a little bit like the NBC peacock. When you touch it, you are transported back to the home screen.

Where most Android devices have up to seven desktops on which you can put custom widgets or shortcuts to apps, the G Tablet has three screens, each with a series of widgets you can’t remove or customize.

One screen contains a list of favorite contacts, a clock, and a small headlines widget that updates itself dynamically with the latest news. Tapping on this widget launches the Tap ‘n Tap news app, which shows a larger swath of headlines and allows you to choose between different categories of news such as U.S., World, and Sci/Tech. You can use setting Button to set a custom news tabs for key word.

Another home screen has a to-do list widget, a list of events from your calendar, and a widget that shows how many unread e-mails you have. Redundant in its features, the third desktop shows a larger news widget, a clock widget, and a smaller favorite contacts widget.

Since Google hasn’t certified the G Tablet as eligible for its apps, the slate doesn’t come with the official Android Market. However, it does have a shortcut that links to the Handango web site, where you can download several good apps. Such as Facebook, the Dolphin HD browser, Raging Thunder 2 (a racing game), Pandora, Twitter.

Users could be confuse since the Handago’s download process is not tailored for the G Tablet, to download an app, we have to search for it, then choose the “Download to PC” option on a list of choices that includes “Email to Phone” and “SMS to Phone.” Once started download there is no status indicator of downloading file, You have to tap on the orange alerts icon in the status bar to see the download progress and then tap on the download’s name to install it. Since the download status is hidden in the alert menu, most users will have a hard time figuring this out.

If you look at Video play back,You’ll have to bring your own unprotected media files to the device if you want to watch or listen to anything since there is no YouTube app or video stores. It’s too bad that there’s no HDMI-out port to output all the hi-def goodness to a large screen. As stated above, the viewing angles were decent when the tablet was propped up, but there’s no kickstand and everything washes out when you lay the device flat on its back.

Where as at the E-mailing and chatting,Tap n Tap client allows you to add all kinds of e-mail accounts, from Gmail to POP3, IMAP, and Exchange, Unlike the Galaxy Tab e-mail client, which takes advantage of that device’s hi-res screen by offering you a two-pane design, the inbox is just a single column that gets covered over by a message as soon as you open it. The only good thing we can say about the mail client is that, if you get a new message, an icon appears in the e-mail area on the desktop.  And note that there is no Gmail App in it

G Tablet doesn’t have instant messaging or chat software preloaded. Even though there is a front facing camera, it seems to be useless since there is no obvious way to make video chat

To say about performance, On the one hand, the dual-core Tegra 2 CPU got decent marks in synthetic benchmarks and played video flawlessly. On the other hand, the albatross of the Tap n’ Tap UI slowed everything to a crawl.

However, no matter what we did with the software or interface, everything seemed slow, laggy, and unstable. As we switched tasks, launched apps, or just tapped links in the browser, the G Tablet’s had trouble keeping up. Worse still, we constantly saw error messages stating that the browser or the Tap n’ Tap app (which you cannot get rid of) had stopped responding and needed to be force-closed. When it came to games, the racing game Raging Thunder II appeared to drop frames while Angry Birds presented us only with a blank screen when we tried to load it.

About Battery ,Using our web surfing test, which involves continuous surfing over Wi-Fi, the G Tablet lasted a whopping 11 hours and 17 minutes, about much longer than the Galaxy Tab (8:30) and the iPad (9 hours). That’s the longest battery life we’ve seen on any tablet, and there was still 6 percent left in reserve.

Anyway, the Viewsonic G Tablet contains a few things as its own, Such as long battery life, access to popular apps through Handango, and relatively low price. However, it’s hard to recommend this tablet because of its listless performance, limited Tap n Tap UI.  We have heard about users hacking the device and installing regular Android 2.2 with good results. If you’re up for that, you can turn the G Tablet into a better slate. However, we simply can’t recommend something that performs poorly out of the box. If you’re looking for a media slate, either spend the extra money for the iPad or Galaxy Tab, or wait until better tablets ship in 2011