Gadgets galore
Display-maker ViewSonic has been trying to diversify its offering for some time now, and the growth of Android seems to have provided the best opportunity yet to do so. In an exclusive interview series European marketing manager James Coulson talked us through ViewSonic's rapidly expanding range of Android devices.
Having launched its first Google-certified product at IFA last year, ViewSonic now has four more additions to the collection. The ViewPad 10s is a ten inch, Tegra 2, Android 2.2 tablet that costs under £300. That's obviously a lot cheaper than the latest generation of similarly-specced Honeycomb tablets, such as the Xoom, so you have to wonder what's missing to enable such a low price.
The other tablet Coulson had on show was the ViewPad 10Pro, which has a couple of distinctive features. Firstly it's one of the first devices we've come across to contain Intel's new ‘tablet chip', codenamed Oak Trail but now called the Atom Z670. While it will be interesting to see how this chip performs compared to, say, the Tegra 2, it also allows the 10Pro to run Windows. Not only that, but it also comes with Android 2.2 and you can switch between the two without any rebooting nonsense.
The last of the shiny things on show were both Android smartphones - ViewSonic's first. There's a high-end four inch one with all the bells and whistles, and a dual-SIM phone that allows you to access two separate networks at once.
This is the first of a three part series of interviews with Coulson. Stay tuned for the next bit in which we talk about what it's like working with Google on Android.
