SONY TABLET P

In world dominated by extremely similar looking tablets Japanese electronics gaint, Sony have sent it a wave of fresh air. They have brought in two different form factors-first one being the Tablet S- which was not a major overhaul in terms of design and the second one the Tablet P- the world first clamshell design Tablet. Nintendo did it quite well in the gaming genre but has Sony been able to pull off something similar with the tablet P? let’s find out.

      Form fator:

                                                The most interesting form factor that is ever exited on an Android tablet so far means two things- Sony is not the mood of create iPad lookalikes and it’s trading a thin line between being outrageously creative or outrageously pointless. The second debate more or less carries forward through this review. We have this design on a portable gaming consol the Nintendo DS but the by terming it a tablet you are throwing in a lot more variable into the picture.

          In terms of plain aesthetics the tablet P has got every bit of oomph and class you’d want in your device. Smooth curves, metallic finish, few plastics, and brilliant color tones this one has stylish written all over it. However the insides are glossy black and are quite prone in fingerprints. The dual screens feel immensely small when you compare them to size of the tablet itself. When it’s shut it might just slip into your front pocket but it is not really comfortable so it is best suited for a jacket pocket. The design is quite catchy no doubt but we would have loved a slimmer and a smaller version.

Interface:

                                      The p is powered by a dual core 1GHz Tegra 2 processor and has 1GB of RAM with Android Honeycomb 3.2 onboard. It is super slick and fast and though the boot up time is not that quick you won’t find the device lagging even when you have loaded up a bunch of memory heavy applications.

          We put the P through a few synthetic benchmarks as well. In Linpack the tablet got a score of 27.926 MFLOPS in the single thread mode. It falls short of the Galaxy Tab 620 which has a dual care Exynos 4210 chipset. In our AnTuTu benchmark test it got a score of 4955 points which places it below the LG Optimus 2X and the S II but above the Amazon Kindle Fire.

Media:

                             The dual screen functionality has been nicely put to use in this section. For music all your controls shift to the bottom consists of a collage of all your album art allowing you to segregate all your favorite music without having to scroll down to find each song. There is five band equalizer with support for custom presets along with a dynamic normalize and their xLOUD technology. So you can tweak your music to suit your needs. The loudspeaker although is not as loud as we’d want it to be is okay enough for personal viewing. Music via headphones is much better just what we’d expect from a Sony product.

Connectivity:

                                                The P has quad band 3G, Wi-Fi with DLNA, Bluetooth 2.1 and GPS. Browsing is better when the tablet’s completely flipped open otherwise we viewing angles start playing an important role in deciding what’s more clearly visible to you.

          One big concern we had with our review unit was that particularly came to light while downloading large files.

Other features:

                                                The tablet P is a Playstation certified device. Sadly we could not find any content on its official app for the Indian sub religion. Secondly the tablet comes with a My Apps application that basically connects you to an online store where you can download the latest apps optimized for the Indian region. The phone comes with Crash Bandicoot and Pinball pre installed and they make effective use of the dual screens. The size of the controls can be adjusted as well so you have got the game playing on the upper screen while the controls reside on the lower one. Another problem out here is the display resolution- Crash Bandicoot does not occupy the whole screen so you will have like a minor part of a 5.5 inch screen occupied.

          The default Skype app does not work too well and Sony have their own ‘video chat plugged into Skype’ application which utilizes both screens.

Camera:  

                             The P comes with a 5 megapixel rear camera and VGA front camera. It is also capable of recording videos at 720p at a frame rate of 30 fps. There’s no touch focus so you will have to long press on the camera button to get the object into focus. The image somehow gets displayed on the bottom screen which is just puzzling.

          There is not too much details in the snaps and unless you have got a lot of light falling on the object your picture won’t appear too great. Video capture has a lot of color banding and noise. Again not impressive.

Battery life:

                                      The tablet has a 3080 mAh battery and Sony claims that it has a battery life of about 7 hours. In our video test the P played a 720p video nonstop for 6 hours 20 minutes before shutting down so they are holding true to their claims which is quite nice. Under average usage you will easily crank up to a day’s juice. P for power, eh?

Verdict:

                             The Sony tablet P is priced Rs. 36,990. This makes it compete with the top notch Android tablets and the ipad as well. The P makes for an interesting design but whilst doing so it limits your functionality greatly.