14 DAY TRIAL // With the tablet craze in full swing, makers of mobile devices and PCs alike are doing their best to bring out a suitable competitor to the Apple iPad. Virtually all major IT players have shown off or announced a variety of slates. Some of them are powered by the ARM architecture, while a few make use of the Intel pine Trail platform. Texas instruments has now decided to join the fray, though the way it did it may just set a new standard in terms of feature variety.
The company unleashed the Blaze tablet. This product is powered by a 1GHz OMAP4 application and multimedia processor IC. This platform is backed up by 1GB of low profile DDR2. Additionally, the configuration includes a 32GB eMMC V4.41 storage solution.
The XVGA display itself has a diagonal of 10.4 inches, a native resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels and a touchscreen interface, as all slates must. In this case, the touch panel is of the projected capacitive variety and supports multi-touch inputs.
The user interface also features three tri-color LEDs that act as backlight for the OS button, as well as a pair of unbalanced mass vibration motors. As for connectivity, a WLAN 802.11a/b/g/n module is present, as is GPS. The range of capabilities that the tablet can have does not end here, however.
Texas instruments' creation stands out more than most because it has a large number of components and functions that can be added, depending on user discretion. The list of possibilities includes a LTE, 3G or even an FM modem. Finally, it should be noted that the Blaze development program was designed with the goal of maximizing software compatibility, which means that content shouldn't be an issue once retail availability ramps up. Unfortunately, this won't happen until August (price of $2,259) but interested parties can sign up for a notification e-mail via this page.