Thriving market
Toshiba's 10in Android 3.0 'Honycomb' tablet became available, and was been pulled almost as swiftly from, from pre-order in the states yesterday giving us a sneak peak at not only its price but also at its official name: the Thrive.
The now redacted listings on website of e-tailer J&R saw the Thrive up for sale and listed as "coming soon." No doubt the removal is a result of Toshiba's reluctance for consumers to know just how soon that will be. J&R were offering pre-orders for the 8GB and 32GB models respectively for $450 and $579 - notably more than other Andrid 3.0 tablets, such as the Motorola Xoom.
For that money the Thrive offers a 10.1in 1,280 x 800 pixel display, an nVidia Tegra 2 processor and 1GB of RAM. That's in addition to the tablet's HDMI output, 2MP and 5MP front and rear facing cameras, and, of course, its use of Android 3.0 - the first version of Google's mobile OS specifically designed for tablets.
These specs, the observant will notice, are exactly the same as the Motorola Xoom, from the processor and RAM down to the camera pixel count. The potential for a custom UI revolutionising the Honycomb experience aside, we're left wondering how Toshiba justifies the increase.
The Japanese equivalent to the Thrive - there dubbed the Regza AT300 - is set to become available in June, making it likely for the US version to appear back for pre-order, if not outright sale, fairly soon and we'd hope to see UK sales shortly thereafter.
