LAS VEGAS - Continuing our “Count the Tablets” coverage of CES, we bring you eleven different Android tablets from three companies, Feihong, VG Media, and Ontop. They range in size from 5.5” to 10.1”, though none of them were actually turned on.
Better yet, the Ontop folks stopped us from photographing the real tablet devices and gave us two cardboard mockups we could shoot instead, one for a 7” model and one for an 8” model. We found that such bizarre behavior for a company showing their products at CES, a massive trade show open only to industry people and the media, we’re going to start with it.
 | (Note that the specs for both sizes are essentially identical) Ontop 7” & 8”Android Tablets
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VG Media had many and more tablets on display, though all of them were wrapped in plastic and turned off. The company’s booth had a variety of specs on display, as well, but as none of those specs were tied to a specific model, we’re presenting five of the (turned off) tablets below, with the accompanying general specs.
 | Five VG Media Tablets
VG Media also plastered “Support Word, Excel, PPT, PDF, MSN, Skype” on the marketing materials on display at the booth, but these are Android devices, and neither Word, nor Excel, nor Power Point run on Android. The company likely meant that there are Android apps that can open and work with those file formats — and since there are such apps for Android (and iOS), we’re happy to give the company the benefit of the doubt. |
It may be hard to tell in the photo above, but you can see clearly in the photo below that the VG Media tablets were wrapped in plastic.
Plastic wrapped tablet from VG Media
Lastly, we bring you four plastic-wrapped tablets from Feihong Industry Co., Ltd (two each of 7” and 5.5” models). We were unable to find out anything about the devices, as no one at the Feihong booth would supply us with specs or other information — remember, these are among the 80 tablets that some folks were all excited were being introduced at CES.
 | Feihong Tablets
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 | Feihong Cybertec Tablets
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Stay tuned for many, many more tablets direct from CES.
Jeff Gamet contributed to this article.
10 Comments Leave Your Own
I really don’t get the tall skinny ones. Seems like there’s nothing useful to be done on those screens in landscape mode.
Are you purposely picking the worst of the bunch? or are they _all_ this bad?
@hangtown. I think that landscape you could at least watch wide-screen movies.
-Jon
Well yeah… but you can do that on the 4:3 form factor as well, and it looks fine. And then when you’re NOT watching movies, you actually have a screen you can do something on!
Using a keyboard in landscape mode on a tablet that’s tall and narrow is ridiculous. It covers everything.
Yes! We have tablets, but we won’t let you try them lest you discover they’re just empty shells.
The new version of vapour ware!
Well, you _can_ watch a 16:9 film on a small, 4:3 screen, but you lose a lot of screen real estate—the “letter box” effect. But I agree with you re: the onscreen keyboard—and with the whole idea of a 19:6 tablet in the first place. Give me 4:3 any day.
-Jon
I suspect that the designers to he tall skinny ones are looking for a good form factor for reading ebooks. I personally think that’s a mistake—the Kindle (or even the Nook) makes a far better dedicated e-reader.
I can see it might seem that way! We’re publishing them as we can, and I’ve put up everyone that I have. Jeff has more that he’s still going to send me, however, and surely some of them will be more polished?
That said, this is, to me, the reality of having an open system like Android. You get lots and lots of crap from folks with just enough imagination to be dangerous, but there should be something that shines.
At lease a little.
What is up with vendors not wanting you to photograph their products? What secrets are you going to reveal? I’ve run into this exactly once at a prior Macworld show, with a vendor of a multi-speaker sound system. Of course, this is one situation where having a camera with an extended optical zoom comes in handy.
Trade secrets. Have to stamp out industrial espionage at this industrial display show. Apple may want to steal their ideas - and then they’d be compelled to either sue…or steal from Apple in retaliation.
Well you guys made it to twenty so far; is even one of them likely to be for sale any time soon (or even now?). Really pathetic for the most part.
Wrapped in plastic? Not turned on? No specs?
How do we know they even have a motherboard or other innards?
When they have actual products that can be tested for performance—including battery life—and specs, such as weight, storage capacity, wireless capability, and OS, then there’s something to talk about.
But for now, it seems a lot of these companies are just hoping, perhaps desperately, that they don’t miss the opportunity to have a piece of the action, even a little one.
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