Notion Ink's Adam Android Tablet Said To Ship This Week 78
junaidslife86 writes with news that the Notion Ink Android tablet has gotten the regulatory go-ahead from US authorities, and should soon be shipping. From the article: "That's right, after several delays the tiny startup will finally condense its occassionally vapory molecules into a solid slab of shipping tablet starting 'around Wednesday' after the hardware receives its FCC tattoo. A tablet good enough to earn a Best of CES 2011 honorable mention at an event absolutely flooded with tablets from a who's who of consumer electronics companies. While our first impressions of the production unit were positive, we're holding off on making a final judgement until we've had the chance to perform a full review." The Notion Ink feature that grabs the most attention seems to be the optional Pixel Qi screen; Brad Linder of Liliputing has a hands-on video with the device from CES which (despite the bad lighting conditions) shows that screen in action.
Confusing summary (Score:1, Insightful)
stop messing with the Android UI (Score:5, Insightful)
I have yet to see anybody who didn't screw up badly while messing with the Android UI. Furthermore, those "enhancements" mean support, update, and documentation headaches.
The specific changes on that device looked questionable, and their claims that you can't interact with widgets are out of date. In effect, they have duplicated work on the main branch of Android and come up with an incompatible solution.
No wonder that they are shipping late; they should have shipped a minimal adaptation of Android earlier and taken any spare time fixing bugs in their drivers and hardware.
I won't buy a heavily customized Android device, and I recommend against it. Android gives manufacturers the freedom to do this, but as customers, we don't have to buy the stuff.