14 DAY TRIAL // Pantech's Honeycomb tablet appeared for the first time one month ago at FCC (Federal Communications Commission) with LTE support and AT&T radios
A marketing material has also been spotted one day ago in an AT&T corporate store, which confirmed the slate’s upcoming launch at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), in Las Vegas.
Today, the tablet was officially announced by AT&T along with 5 other LTE-enabled smartphones. According to the carrier, these will be released in early 2012, which means that AT&T might unveil other LTE devices in the second half of 2012.
Dubbed Pantech Element, the tablet is expected to arrive at AT&T stores and online on January 22 and will be available for purchase for $300 with a new two-year agreement.
However, for a limited time, customers will be able to buy the Pantech Element and Burst, another LTE-enabled smartphone announced at CES 2012, together in contract and get the former for only $249.99 and the Burst at no cost.
Pantech Element is one of the few rugged tablets announced this year and features IP57 certification, which makes it both splash- and water-proof.
The slate comes with a medium size 8.2-inch capacitive touchscreen display at 4:3 ratio. It runs Google Android 3.2 Honeycomb operating system, but hopefully, it will get the latest Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade later this year.
The LTE-enabled tablet is equipped with a powerful 1.5 GHz dual core processor, 16GB of internal memory, 1GB of RAM and microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB).
There's also a 5-megapixel rear photo snapper with LED flash and 4x digital zoom, as well as a secondary 2-megapixel front-facing camera for self-portraits and video calls.
Although AT&T has yet to announce the Pantech Element's no-term price, rumor has it that the tablet will be available for purchase for a suggested retail price of $450.