Sony S1 and S2 Android Honeycomb tablets go official in pics

The whispers of an Android Honeycomb tablet from Sony have just turned into a full-on banshee howl -- two full-on banshee howls, to be exact. Sony did all the screaming at a press event in Tokyo today, Engadget reports, where it outed the S1 media tablet and the dual-screen clamshell S2.

Sony is curiously late to the tablet party, but the time has been spent forging devices that take their own path in a market where every device resembles the one that came before.

The S1 looks like no other tablet we've seen, thanks to a 9.4-inch screen and a wedge-shaped chassis that's curved back on to itself like a wide-open paperback book.

The user experience should differ wildly to most tablets on the market, too. It's designed specifically to run Sony's Qriocity platform, which allows users to buy video and music on demand, as well as ebooks.

The S2 sports an even wilder design. It features a pair of 5.5-inch, 1,024x480-pixel displays and a chassis that's hinged in the middle. This approach allows for some interesting usage scenarios, particularly in Sony's ebook reader app, which presents books two pages at a time -- like those old-school tree-based data-storage devices our grandmothers used to read.

Both the S1 and S2 run Nvidia's Tegra 2 chip and are PlayStation Certified, so they'll run PlayStation games like their Sony Ericsson Xperia Play cousin. Both feature front and rear-facing cameras, DLNA plug and play compatibility, plus Wi-Fi and 3G.

The S1 and S2 are scheduled to ship this autumn with the S1 expected to cost in the region of $599 (£360). The S2's dual-screen shenanigans mean its price is bumped up to $699 (£425).

Have a gander at the video below, which comes courtesy of Network World, and the official pictures in our photo gallery above.