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These days, just about everyone has their own tablet coming except for Sony. That’s typical: Sony can be slow to jump on new computing trends. Consider, for example, how long it took them to enter the netbook market with the radically different Vaio P even after basically creating the ultraportable notebook range with their Vaio series of slim, tiny laptops.
No surprise, then, that Sony intends on releasing a tablet of their own a little later than the competition. It’s called the S1, and like the Vaio P, it’s a very interesting new take on traditional tablet design.
According to Engadget, Sony tentatively plans to ship the S1 in September. It’ll cost $600, and like the rest of the tablets coming out of this year’s Mobile World Congress, it’ll be a Honeycomb affair. Hardware-wise, the S1 is a 9.7-inch affair boasting a 1280×800 display, a Tegra 2 processor, a built-in USB port and just two physical buttons for volume.
Where things get interesting is Sony’s new “wave” design, as seen in the strange “curl” in the above image. The idea here is that typing on a tablet sucks without a case, because the display’s not inclined enough to see. Sony’s wave design tries to get around that by giving you an improved angle for typing on a flat surface. Supposedly, because it also shifts the center of gravity, it also makes the S1 feel lighter in the hand.
As for software, Sony’s been doing a lot to synergize its products with the Xperia Play and Sony PlayStation 3, so expect the S1 to ship supporting PlayStation games, the Bravia Media Remote and Qricocity.
It looks interesting, but Sony’s engineers sometimes allow their imaginations to get away from them. Right now, though, it’s not official… it’s just a sketch. We’ll have several months of rumor mongering ahead of us before we even see anything close to a real announcement.
