Lenovo, the world’s fourth largest smartphone maker according to Q3 numbers from top research firms is not resting and wants to do wonders in the tablet market too. Just the other day we took a look at its newly announced low cost Miix 2 8 inch Windows 8.1 tablet. They weren’t going to sit there and let the Android tablet market fall in the hands of other players. They’ve hired ‘Jobs’ actor Ashton Kutcher to be not only a face of their products through commercials and stuff but an insider too, a product engineer. In fact he’s said to have helped with the design of the new Yoga tablets. What about the new Yoga tablets? They’re gorgeous and guarantee us that we’ll think much better about Android tablets after seeing them.
Simply named Lenovo Yoga tablets, the 8 and 10 inch tablets boast of having the best battery life on an Android tablet (16-18 hours on a single charge). Did you have a look at some old Dell laptop models or some Sony Vaio laptops released over the two years? In case you didn’t then perhaps you know of Apple’s keyboard. Yes that’s a form factor the Lenovo Yoga laptops have taken.
Here’s a quick run-through of the Lenovo Yoga tablets (8 and 10 inch)
- They weigh 0.88 pounds and 1.34 pounds for the 8 inch and the 10 inch respectively. For comparison, the 9.7 inch iPad Air and the 7.9 inch iPad mini weigh in at around 1 pound.
- Have a built-in kickstand that also houses the battery (6000mAh and 9000mAh respectively)
- They run a heavily skinned Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, one that looks more like iOS than Android. It does not have an app drawer, you have to swipe to another screen to access your apps (just like on an iPad).
- A not so 2013 display resolution: 1280 x 800
- To cut down on costs, Lenovo went for a MediaTek chip with the MT8125 SoC said to be powering the tablets. Its a quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 processor.
- 1 GB RAM
- 16 GB internal storage expandable via a microSD card
- A 5 megapixel main camera and a 1.6 megapixel front facing shooter
- Front-facing dual speakers
- Thanks to that cylindrical battery that shapes the built in kickstand, the tablets can rotate 135 degrees thus being capable of being used in three different modes i.e Read mode (just like an ordinary tablet, with the kickstand closed), Stand mode (with the kickstand open) or a Tilt mode (where the tablet lays down face up with the cylindrical battery keeping the device propped up a la Apple keyboard style making it easier to type using the screen other than a keyboard accessory).
