LAS VEGAS - Since Microsoft managed to avoid mentioning anything about Windows tablets during CEO Steve Ballmer’s CES keynote, we are kicking off our “Count the Tablets” coverage of CES with two Android tablets from Sharp being marketed under the name Galapagos — 5.5” and 10.8” models are being shown at the trade show.
The 10.8” model features a resolution of 1366 x 800 (higher than Apple’s iPad, which is a 9.7” display at 1024 x 768), and the company is billing the ability to share content between multiple Sharp Android devices as a top feature. Sharp also said that it is a low power consumption device, though the company wasn’t specifying battery life.
The 10.8” Sharp Galapagos
In addition, Sharp said that users will be able to stream video content from the Galapagos to a TV through a proprietary technology. Some Sony TVs will come with built-in support for this technology, and Sharp is planning to release some kind of adapter kit for use on other TVs.
The company is also pushing a technology called XMDF for ebooks and other content that Sharp said will automatically reformat said content for the particular device it is being displayed on. This will be particularly handy for the Android world, which lacks anything resembling standards for display sizes or other elements of the devices.
Galapagos devices are scheduled to be released in the U.S. sometime in the second half of 2011, and Sharp hasn’t yet announced pricing. Jeff Gamet, on hand in Las Vegas at CES, found the devices to “feel cheap.”
The image below is the 5.5” model, which Sharp is intending to feel more like a book than the larger “home type” (the company’s words from a press release in September, 2010) 10.8” model.
The 5.5” Sharp Galapagos
Stay tuned for many, many more tablets direct from CES.
Jeff Gamet contributed to this article.