According to Engadget, the hunchbacked S1 isn’t the only funky form factor Sony’s bringing to the tablet race this year.
Above is a rough sketch of the clamshell S2, a Tegra 2-powered cylindrical tablet with front and rear-facing cameras. The tablet will run Honeycomb, but with tweaks that take advantage of the two screens: in Gmail a list of messages might appear on one screen while your selected email would appear opposite. The bad news? Apparently people at Sony hate it internally, probably because it doesn’t make any sense to make a thermos tablet and sell it for $US700?
There’s also a reported 9.4-inch Windows 7 slider that sounds similarly doomed, given its netbookish Atom processor and $US800 price tag. Both devices will lean heavily on Sony’s Qriocity content delivery service, which doesn’t have much of a presence in the US currently.
Look, I get it. Sony’s falling behind in the tablet wars, and the way to make up ground quickly is to do something no one else has thought of. But swinging that big gets you either a home run or a whiff – and at least at first blush these two models feel like two major strikes. Assuming they ever see the light of day in the first place. [Engadget]