There have been some great Android tablets to hit the market lately and they have all been attempting to take down the rival Apple iPad and each one is getting closer to that goal. Recent tablets like the ASUS Transformer Infinity and the Nexus 10 have come out with powerful hardware and the best specs on the market. They have blended speed, power and design to give the iPad a run for its money. Recently announced the Fujitsu Arrows AR70B is the updated version of the tablet announced last year under the same name and has the specs and screen to give the iPad a true run for its money… if it can deliver on price and function.
It is equipped with a 1.7 Ghz Tegra-3 Quad-Core Processor, 2 Gigabytes of RAM, a whopping 12-core graphics processor, an abundance of storage space, with the available 32GB of onboard memory and the expandable SD card slot there is plenty of room for media. Also, this tab will pack tons of connectivity options with Wi-Fi A/B/G/N, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, and Wi-Fi direct and also has a waterproof and dust resistant coating. Unfortunately, at the moment there is no word on a wireless carrier option but there is always hoping. There is one truly unfortunate part to all of this Hardware goodness… it only comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich! I just don’t understand why companies are putting out such awesome hardware with yesterday’s software; this choice will really hurt this tablets appeal unless the price is right.
The real strength of this tablet will be two things, its impressive screen which is going to be on par with the top tablets out there and it’s impressive battery that could end up beating everything else on the market. At 1920 x 1200, the Arrows resolution isn’t on par with the iPad or Nexus 10 but it is still a very impressive screen and as long as the components hold up will definitely be impressive to look at. The battery is a huge piece of the appeal to this tablet, at 10,080 mAh this battery could last forever and that is huge when it comes to mobile computing. With the boon of large battery devices like the Razr Maxx or the Note 2’s 3100 mAh this could be a real selling point. The battery is rated to last 14 hours of use and a crazy 2900 hours of standby. With this size of battery you might think this tablet is going to be pretty heavy but you may be surprised.
Though the Arrows is slightly thicker than the iPad or Nexus 10 (9.9 mm vs 8.9 vs 9.4) it still runs lighter than both. The Arrows is a 10.1″ tablet and weighs a slight 599 grams. This is a nice weight and is lighter than both the iPad and the Nexus 10. The iPad with wi-fi weighs in at 652 grams, the Nexus 10 weighs 603 grams, and the Transformer Infinity is the closest HD tablet in weight at 598 grams, just slightly lighter but with a smaller battery (not counting the dock). This could mean that the Arrows is either put together well and is engineered to be light or it is made of plastic and feels cheap in the hand. Personally, I would rather carry a tablet that feels premium and weighs a little bit more than sacrifice durability for weight. Unfortunately, I will have to wait to get my hands on this guy to tell and with no price or U.S. release confirmation that may never happen.
When these types of releases happen and no price or release details are given that usually means that the gadget won’t get widespread release. This could mean that this pretty tablet might never make it it the USA and could only have a release in the Fujitsu home country of Japan. I hope this isn’t true because even-though Fujitsu isn’t the company you might think could release a great tablet, if the specs and usability hold true than this could be a great choice for people. Though it only comes with Ice Cream Sandwich if the price is reasonable this could be a great contender for the tablet space. We will just have to stick around and see what happens with this hardware beast.