The scramble to take the new flavor of Google's Android operating system for a test drive has been pretty intense since the source code was released in the middle of last month. The first commercial hardware products running on Ice Cream Sandwich, though, will not hit the shelves until early in the new year. One of the first to break cover was Acer's Iconia A200 tablet, which is now going to have some company. New York's Coby Electronics will be launching five new Android 4.0 tablets at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this coming January.
Unfortunately, Coby has revealed very little about its new batch of capacitive multi-touch tablets but here's what we can tell you. The five tablets will be available in 7-, 8-, 9-, 9.7-, and 10-inch form factors and will all be powered by an ARM Cortex A8 processor running at 1GHz, supported by 1GB of system memory. It's unclear how much onboard storage will be included (existing Coby tablets have settled on 4 GB) but there will be microSD expansion available.
Also up for speculation at this point is whether the new tablets will be additions to the range or replacements for older models, which currently run on Android 2.2 or 2.3. There will be built-in Wi-Fi and an HDMI out port supporting 1080p output but beyond those few details, Coby is remaining tight-lipped.
The company has hinted that the new Android 4.0 tablets will be easy on the wallet but hasn't revealed exactly how budget-friendly they'll be when they are made available during Q1 2012. We'll keep you posted.
