The Android operating system developed by Google Inc. has been making waves due to its immense community of software developers writing applications that expands the functionality of certain devices. Android tablets have been sprouting year after year, comparing screen sizes and processing powers. Let us take a good look on the 5 best Android tablets of 2011:
CES provided a tableau of what buyers can expect in tablets, nearly all of them evolutionary hardware improvements over the currently-shipping iPad, none of them available now, and most of them, predictably, clones.
The tablet tease is finally over. Even if nothing new has shipped, if pricing and availability have yet to be revealed, if mobile operators are still being courted, and if a viable underlying tablet platform (besides iOS) has yet to be made available, there is little left to learn, other than the answer to that pesky question about which device will dare challenge Apple’s relentless success, or at least emerge as the leading also-ran. Motorola is the early favorite, but there are equally compelling competitors, including Asus, Toshiba and RIM; and a few cool twists, like dual-screen devices, slide-out keyboards, and 4G connectivity.
Most new tablets will run Android, but since Google hasn’t shipped version 3.0 (aka Honeycomb) — the version that promises a better tablet experience — it’s best to focus on hardware. The iPad exceeded consumer expectations despite plenty of griping about what else should have been possible (like cameras). Almost a year in and there’s no sign the device is wearing around the edges. But the next wave of tablets does offer significant hardware improvement: dual-core processors (1 GHz), both front and rear-facing cameras (the latter at 5 megapixels; 2 megapixels for the former), 1GB of RAM and at least 16GB of storage (how useful more storage will be in a web application world can be our next debate), USB (mini and regular) and mini HDMI (for video out). Hold out for everything.