CSE January 2010:Adam, the touch screen tablet

Android interface,Pixel Qui display: The new touch screen tablet which looks much smaller than others but does much bigger things than others.

So,what exactly is Adam? To quote one of its creator's:"It is a smartpad, small enough to be carried anywhere and big enough to do anything.It is a brainchild of Notion Ink, a Hyderabad start-up launched by seven Indians (six IITians and an MBA graduate), who left lucrative careers to realise their dream of designing a next-gen device at an affordable price. And if the 67 patents filed for the product in various categories are any indication, they have come a long way.

Weighing,770 grams, the 0.6-inch thick, 10.1-inch scratch-resistant touch screen device comes loaded with features that are likely to impress Eve.

Pixel Qi Display

The device will be among the first to feature Pixel Qi display, a low-cost, power-saving screen that can operate in three modes. Besides the LCD mode, it can run in a low-power, basic colour trans-reflective mode and a very low-power, sunlight-readable e-paper mode that mounts no pressure on the eye. The screen comes with fingerprint-resistant oleophobic (oil repelling) and anti-glare coating.
“We are the only ones to use Pixel Qi screens for Tablet technology. It consumes one-tenth of the battery compared with conventional LCDs,” says Rohan Shravan, founder, and director, Creatives, Notion Ink.

Tegra system-on-chip

The company reckons that the integral Lithium-ion battery will hold good up to 48 hours standby,eight hours of high definition video playback or 16 hours of Internet surfing  over WiFi.At its heart will be NVIDIA's powerful,yet energy-saving,eight-core Tegra system-on-chip,which will drive the system at astonishing speeds while ensuring battery longevity.

Android interface

“We wanted to adopt an OS which would make our device ‘talk’ to any other device. And we chose Google’s Android,” says Rohit Rathi, another co-founder.But, Android’s interface would appear stretched on the smartpad’s screen as it was originally designed for mobile phones, and this issue will have to be resolved.Notion Ink is talking to telecom providers (in India and the U.S.) to test the device for connectivity issues on delivery of the first batch of 60 Adams.

Best price

The best part: price. Notion Ink promises it will be Rs.15,000 when it is out in the U.S., European and Indian markets in June next year.“We collaborated with the best in the industry to provide days of computing,” says Sachin Ralhan, another co-founder.

The device will almost be entirely manufactured in Taiwan. TPK Touch Solutions (Xiamen) Inc. has been roped in for touch screens, and talks are on with major Original Device Manufacturers (ODMs) for the final product.

Squeezed into Adam are water, ambient light and proximity sensors, accelerometer, assisted GPS, digital compass, built-in speakers and microphone. However, it will be loaded only with Flash memory (16 or 32 GB) augmented by Secure Digital (SD) card support.

It will have three interfaces: the touch screen, an on-screen virtual keyboard and a track pad located behind the screen, allowing users to manoeuvre the cursor from the front or the rear. A rotatable three megapixel camera at the top can effortlessly take pictures or videos within a 180 degree angle.

The developers were assisted by the National Institute of Design (Research and Development campus, Bangalore) in elements of next generation operating system (OS), user interfaces, usability issues and product concepts. For starters, Adam will support gesture control, thanks to the Android user interface.