Notion Ink Adam or why am I waiting for the New Year
First of all, I have to say that I have nothing to do with Notion Ink. This post is generated by the desire, first of all, to break the information vacuum on the hub that has formed around the Adam tablet, which has been developed by Notion Ink over the past year. Among the audience of Habr, as it turned out, there is a fairly large number of people who are interested in acquiring a tablet, but who know nothing about anything except the iPad and do not want to consider anything else as a candidate for purchase. Well, of course, this post is a kind of response to this post and a desire to express their indignation to the aspects indicated there as fundamental in choosing a tablet.
A bit of history
The prototype was first shown at CES 2010, where the release date for Q2 2010 was announced. There was also a post about this.on a habr. However, shortly afterwards, the company began to experience difficulties with investors. While the company was holding a prototype almost ready for launch, the investors decided to change the OS to Windows 7. After some time, the plans changed again - this time the company's engineers were given the task to develop a smartphone. However, the CEO of Rohan Shravan was ultimately able to find other investors who also agreed to cover the costs of breaking the current contract. The result of all these overturbations was, on the one hand, a six-month delay (the tablet should go on sale this month, according to some rumors - within a week), and on the other, extra time to “lick” the product. How much this happened, we will now see.
Specifications
As is customary in such cases, I cannot but give the specifications of this tablet.
- Dimensions: 191x269x14mm
- Weight: 700 grams
- Platform NVIDIA Tegra 2, Dual Cortex A-9, hardware acceleration of video, audio and 3D
- Android 2.2 update to 2.3 soon
- 1Gb DDR2 667MHz
- 1Gb fast SLC flash memory
- 8 + Gb flash memory (depending on model)
- MicroSD slot
- 10.1 "1024x600 Pixel Qi Matte Multi-touch Display
- 3.2MP AF PTZ camera
- Communications: Wi-Fi b / g / n, BT 2.1 + EDR, 3G HSPA (not on all models), IRDA
- 3.5 headphone jack, built-in microphone and speakers
- 2 USB 2.0 connectors in host mode, 1 MiniUSB connector
- 1080p HDMI output
- GPS, digital compass, light sensor, accelerometer
In my subjective opinion, this tablet has practically no analogues in functional equipment.
Screen, video playback
The screen is one of Notion Ink Adam's most noteworthy features.
Firstly, it is matte and scratch resistant . These are not just words, Notion Ink’s blog contains the following photo:
For comparison, it looked like the coating that was originally selected after a strong impact on it with a screwdriver (the coating in the upper image was subjected to exactly the same test)
Secondly, the Adam screen is made using Pixel Qi technology (however, it is also expected to release a version with a regular screen at a lower price). A feature of this technology is the ability to work without backlight in the “electronic book” mode with an almost colorless screen, consuming an order of magnitude less energy, with backlight. In addition, it is this technology that allows the screen to remain the screen in bright light (the iPad is turned on in this video, which can be seen from some angles):
Thirdly, Adam is able to play FullHD video (desync in the video is an artifact of a coding curve):
... and HD flash video (this is a prototype with a glossy screen):
Notion Ink also made great efforts (and received 9 patents in this area only) in order to make the frame around the screen narrower. The result of this work was a 16mm wide frame - for comparison, the iPad has 22 millimeters of meaningless black around the screen.
Another area that took away a considerable number of human hours from Notion Ink workers was fonts. Android was developed for phones with, in general, aboutLarger DPI than tablets. The direct transfer of Android to large tablet screens results in imperfect hinting and subpixel rendering errors in portrait mode (in which the pixels are physically rotated). Antialiasing helps, but at the same time kills the sharpness of the outline of letters. Notion Ink spent a lot of time fixing this, and the result of this work will be available to everyone very soon.
Battery life
Most of the current in Adam is consumed by the screen. It is followed in descending order: Wi-Fi, 3G, speakers (in maximum volume mode) and only then CPU / GPU. Such a distribution honors the engineers of ARM and NVIDIA - after all, this means that 3D games will not significantly reduce battery life. Also, obviously, turning off the backlight should significantly increase battery life. It should also be noted an unusually large share of speaker consumption - it becomes understandable if we take into account Rohan's statements that Adam's speaker quality was one of the development priorities.
If we talk about specific numbers, Rohan talks about a real lifespan from 2 days to 15 hours with normal tablet use (what Apple calls “browsing”) and a minimum working time of 6 hours (continuous playback of 1080p at maximum brightness with output to speakers; continuous playback of YouTubeHD via WiFi / 3G; HD video recording with simultaneous streaming via WiFi or 3G).
The battery in Adam also has the function of redistributing mass.
A plate whose center of gravity is closer to the hand obviously seems easier. In addition, this arrangement of the battery allows the use of more capacious standard "notebook" round "banks" - being located along the edge, they do not increase the thickness of the tablet.
UI, Software
Notion Ink is developing its own shell for Androida, using hardware acceleration to render the interface. In addition, the UI developed by
Notion Ink is really very different from the usual and found on other tablets or desktops.
The first thing worth mentioning is the unique implementation of multitasking. At its center is the concept of “panels”.
“Panels” are slots for running applications. 3 of them can be simultaneously displayed on the screen (and, of course, executed); 3 more are in standby mode and can be called at any time. Also, any application can be deployed in full screen. The software written by Notion Ink uses this to switch modes: for example, the mail client, working in the panel, provides only basic functionality; being deployed in full screen, it turns into a fully functional application for working with mail. Another advantage of such a screen arrangement is that mobile applications will not look too unpleasant on the big screen - the resolution of one panel is slightly different from the resolution of some mobile phones.
Some applications (such as the file manager) can be launched in several instances in different panels, which allows, for example, working with several folders at once and transferring files with a simple swipe of the finger:
There is also an analogue of the tray in the interface. An application can notify of an event, like this twitter client, on the side of the screen:
... or provide some kind of interface in the form of a "thick" notification, like this player:
Of course, these screenshots are not a release version of the interface. Nevertheless, Adam’s interface, which is unusual against the already traditional “glass”, “water” and glare, is noticeable on them. Another example is a teaser of an application that has become the fruit of a collaboration between Notion Ink and Comics distribution company LongBox:
Or a calendar combined with a task scheduler (Rohan claims that a recording of the type “Meeting with Nikolas Tesla in Missouri on 10th July 1856: High Priority” is created in 6 tapes with your finger):
Finally, another killer-feature of Adam is support for Adobe Flash and AIR.
Prices
According to Rohan, the most expensive version (with 3G and Pixel Qi screen) will cost about $ 500, which, in general, is a very impressive amount compared to other (especially Chinese) Android tablets. However, it seems to me that the price is quite adequate for this functionality, especially against the background of the Samsung Galaxy Tab and Apple iPad. The release of the tablet is scheduled for December 2010, that is, the wait is very short.
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