Ultimate Tablet Is a 15.6-Incher with OLED And Special Scroll Wheel

There might be a fair resemblance between tablets today, but it seems at least one electronic product designer has a different idea about what the ultimate model should look and act like.

Even by throwing just a passing glance over the IT market as it is now, one can easily notice that tablets are here to stay and flourish.

What one may also notice is that, save for a few design tweaks and logos, they look more or less the same.

In fact, even their hardware is similar, since there aren't many platforms besides Tegra 2, and the Android OS is dominant among non-iPads.

Still, it appears that, though companies are playing it safe, more or less, designers have no such fetters.

More specifically, German designer Volker Hubner created the concept for a slate that is both larger and feature-packed than what we can see today, though, true enough, it is aimed at designers and developers, not common consumers.

The first thing that jumps into view is the screen size, 15.6 inches, which is quite beyond the 10.1-inch and 7-inch form factors of today.

Another thing to notice is that, while multi-touch functionality is present, there is also a side panel with a scroll wheel and nine fixed buttons, for functions like space, escape, shift, control etc.

What's more, instead of an LCD (liquid crystal display) the Ultimate Touch tablet, as it is called (well, its actual name is m • pad), an OLED panel is employed.

Another interesting tidbit is the fact that the aforementioned buttons are actually screens themselves, very small e-ink panels to be exact.

Those buttons supposedly shift form and function depending on context (what a user happens to be doing on the slate at the moment).

“[The] m • pad is a Tablet PC that is optimized for the needs of designers and developers,” says the posting on Yanko Design.  

“It combines the advantages of intuitive multi-touch operation with the precision of a pressure-sensitive pen.”