iPad Mini? How about 13 Inch Tablets?
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In the past few months, we have heard a lot about Apple’s plans to release a smaller iPad to the market. A 7 inch iPad could put pressure on Samsung, Amazon, and B&N. What we don’t hear a lot about are over 11 inch tablets. As someone who still considers Kindle DX the best e-reader around, I would like to see larger screen tablets make their way to the market. Toshiba is planning to release such a tablet in Toshiba Excite 13:
The Excite 13 is what we see as a home tablet … The larger size makes it an ideal kitchen tablet. You can watch how-to videos while you’re cooking, or look up recipes. And then later, you can bring it into the living room to watch videos with the kids, or to look at family photos with friends.
Jared Leavitt, a Toshiba spokesman, told Wired.com. The Toshiba Excite 13 has a 13.3 inch screen and will run Android 4.0. It will have a quad core processor inside. The device is pretty thin and will weigh only 2.2 lbs.
Not everyone is sold on the idea behind these large tablets though. Many experts consider this tablet to be too huge. Jared Spool, the CEO of User Interface Engineering, a usability research firm, does not believe this tablet will be successful:
what this comes down to is that it’s not the specific technology in a tablet that makes it exciting. It’s the user experience. And there’s just a lot less to do on an Android tablet than an iPad. And what there is to do is much clumsier because the screen sizes and specs for Android tablets are all over the place. A 13-inch screen and a bunch of top specs do nothing to change that.
The Toshiba Excite 13 may not become an iPad killer. It is too huge to pull it off anyway. But there is no reason 11.6 or 12.1 inch tablets can’t be popular. We would love for Apple to release larger iPads. But that does not seem likely at this point.
Your turn: would you like to see Apple release larger iPads? Is Toshiba Excite 13’s screen too large?
