NEC LifeTouch Tablet Renamed as Smartia, Targets Consumers

With all the hype surrounding the slate market, it was only a matter of time before NEC also joined in, and its seems that its solution is the refashioning of the previously-launched LifeTouch tablet.

NEC has had the LifeTouch so-called 'cloud communicator' tablet ready for a while now, essentially a highly-portable ARM slate running Android.

Still, since the media slate market is actually meant for consumers, the company had to make some changes and marketing choices in order to try to grab a slice of it, now while it is still emerging.

Thus it was that, as NetbookNews has it, the LifeTouch was renamed as the Smartia, which will be release in Japan in partnership with ISP Biglobe.

Unlike other consumer-oriented products of this type, it uses neither the Pine Trail platform nor the NVIDIA Tegra 2 SoC (system-on-chip).

Instead, it can be said to have a more modest feature set and performance level, so as to focus more on connectivity and portability.

Its configuration is centered around the ARM Cortex-A8 processor, which is backed up by 384 MB of RAM (random access memory).

There is also an SDHC card slot, for flash storage, plus a 7-inch display with a native resolution of 800 x 480 pixels.

Furthermore, NEC threw in USB connectivity, an accelerometer, 802.11 b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS and a 3 megapixel webcam.

Finally, all of the hardware is kept operational by a battery that can last for up to 8 hours on a single charge.

NEC pre-loaded the Smartia with the Android 2.1 operating system and intends to start sending it to consumers starting next month, on December 6, 2010 to be exact.

Those interested will have to pay the equivalent of $510, though availability will only exist in Japan. Meanwhile, information on the device can be found here.