ViewSonic Enters iPad Territory with 9.7-Inch ViewPad 97a Tablet

ViewSonic has been producing Android-running tablets sporting 10.1-inch and 7-inch displays for quite some time now, but now the manufacturer is entering iPad territory with the new ViewPad 97a slate sporting a 9.7-inch screen.

Besides featuring the same display size as the original iPad, and the iPad 2, ViewSonic’s tablet also uses a similar IPS panel with a 1024x768 resolution and 4:3 aspect ratio as its Apple competitor.

On the inside however things are a lot different as the ViewPad 97a is based on a slower SoC as the one found in the iPad 2 since this includes a single Cortex A8 core running at 1.2GHz in comparison with the 1GHz dual-core Cortex A9 design used by Apple for its tablet.

As the Shanzai Website has revealed, the SoC is paired together with 1GB high speed DDR3 and supports Flash 11, and 1080p video playback either on the tablet’s screen or on an external display that can be connected via the provided mini-HDMI connector.

All of these are powered by a 20Wh battery that ViewSonic says it can deliver “excellent battery life,” although no estimate regarding the running time of the ViewPad 97a was given.

Weight wise, the 9.5mm (0.37-inches) thin metallic body of ViewSonic’s creation tips the scale at only 520g (1.14 pounds).

As far as software is concerned, it is rumored that the ViewSonic tablet will actually run the 2.3 version of Google’s mobile operating system, even though the leaked pictures show an interface that is extremely similar with that of Android 3.2, aka Honeycomb.

The ViewPad 97a is expected to be launched in China by the end of this month and will be available both in a WiFi-only and a Wi-Fi plus 3G model. Sadly, ViewSonic hasn’t mentioned if the 9.7-incher will ever make it out of China.