A Taste of Honeycomb

Remember our jaunt with the Motorola XOOM? Well its Mini Me offered the same Android 3.0 Honeycomb goodness. The T-Mobile G-Slate was yet another reason not to go back to an older Android device, thanks to its exceedingly intuitive interface. But let's get the specs out of the way first. The tablet utilizes the same NVIDIA Tegra 2 Dual Core processors (1GHz at each core) as the XOOM, though we experienced a more fluid performance from the G-Slate. For some reason, the XOOM loved to Force Quit applications unexpectedly, but we only went through this on rare occasions with the G-Slate, primarily in the Android Market. The T-Mobile G-Slate also has Wi-Fi, Stereo Bluetooth 2.1, 4G (HSPA+), 3G, and Edge networks.

If you haven't had a chance to play with Honeycomb yet, it improves upon the uniform feeling we attainted from the previous versions of Android. First off, controls are less obtrusive. We have simple Back, Home, and Menu touch controls in the bottom left corner of the screen. We can bring up a menu of recently used applications in one touch, or summon our Applications control panel by tapping and holding on any one of the 5 Home screens. Customizing Home screens was a snap, as we were given a tabbed menu system containing all of our Widgets, Applications, Shortcuts, etc. and could drag them onto any one of the home screens located above in a diagram format. Not only was Honeycomb a sight for sore eyes, but it specialized in efficiency, getting us in and out with ease.

Unlike the XOOM, the G-Slate's battery performance was not as impressive, lasting less than a day before needing a charge. This was with mild Internet browsing, camera use, gaming, and standby time, so be prepared to throw the charger in on a nightly basis.

Internet

The T-Mobile G-Slate's Flash support made browsing almost as functional as what we would expect on our MacBook Pro. Videos could be played right from within the browser, and we had the option of popping out to YouTube if we needed more of a video fix. Browsing was very quick, and certain pages loaded just as fast as our laptop machines. We even had the luxury of multiple windows arranged in a tabbed structure, giving us the ability to alternate between open pages. The Forward, Back, and Refresh buttons reminded us that we were a world apart from the tiny, cramped smartphone screens of today, and we could even search for keywords on web pages, view page info, History, and add Bookmarks with ease.

As a dedicated Internet tablet, the G-Slate hits a home run with the same ferocity as the XOOM. If you live within HSPA+ zones, it'll whipcrack pages with lightning speed, though we were stranded based on our location, and could only take advantage of Wi-Fi. This is crucial, expecially for those that travel frequently. If 4G connectivity is limited, then so is your Internet access, and ultimately your productivity on the road. Ask yourself how much you'll be traveling with it. If Wi-Fi is the main focus, then the G-Slate would be great for anyone.