14 DAY TRIAL // Although Vizio is not focusing its production on the Android smartphone and tablet market, the company recently released its first Android product, the VIZIO 8” Tablet.
However, the tablet runs an older version of Android instead of the latest Honeycomb platform, which has yet to make its debut on smaller touchscreen tablets.
Vizio's tablet is powered by Android 2.3.2 Gingerbread operating system and comes with a proprietary V.I.A. Plus user interface.
It features an 8-inch LCD capacitive multi-touch display with support for 16 million colors and 1024 x 768 pixels resolution.
Both price and specs sheet suggest that this is a budget tablet, but for what it's worth, the manufacturer seems to care a lot how it fares on the market.
According to Vizion, the first software update for the tablet is rolling out as we speak, probably in stages, and promises to fix several bugs and to improve the overall performance of the device.
With only 512MB of RAM and 2GB of user available storage, it's hard to tell how well the Honeycomb platform will run on this slate, if any at all.
Until Vizio announces anything regarding the Android 3.0 Honeycomb upgrade for its first tablet, users can download and install the latest software update, which will bring VIA Plus (Vizio Internet Apps) custom interface to version 1.2.
Even though this is a minor update it's important to install it as soon as it becomes available, as it will improve the speed of the launcher and adds QVGA video support.
New features included with this update are detailed below:
- Improved touchscreen: smoother scrolling, faster launching of apps, quicker touch response; - Updated remote control database; - QVGA video support. Those who are yet to receive the notification regarding the availability of the update can check for it manually by going to Menu / Settings / About Tablet / System Updates.