Olivetti Olipad 110
Olivetti is taking another stab at the Australian consumer market, this time with an Android-based tablet.
Olivetti. Gosh, that's a name we haven't heard since the '80s.
It's still around, though, with POS equipment, interactive whiteboards, commercial printing hardware and, interestingly, notebooks and netbooks that we're pretty sure have never hit this country.
The Italian company is now making a new bid for consumer relevance with its Olipad, a 10.1-inch Android 3.1 tablet, with some notable differences from the pack.
The release sent our way contains the usual guff about Flash and Micro HDMI ports, a 1280x800 screen, 16GB memory onboard, a (working) MicroSD card slot and a mini-USB port.
What is interesting, though, is the standard USB port, which should make life easier for people. Ignore the capacitive buttons along the side in the images — the pictures are from the Olipad 110's predecessor the 100 — we're still waiting to see what the 110 looks like. At under 600 grams, there's obviously been some fat trimmed along the way.
There's also custom apps from Olivetti geared towards the business market, covering POS preparation, Salesforce management tools and a digital signature tool for corporate documents, showing that it's not abandoning its enterprise core — but we're more interested in what appears to be a heavily customised Android 3.1 experience.
The Olipad will use a VA panel like Motorola's Xoom, and is expected to hit Australia in July. Price is unknown; Europe has its predecessor, the Olipad 100, for €399. It's mostly the same, except for its 1024x600 screen — so fingers crossed that the price stays low for when the 110 hits the Aussie market.