The Sony Tablet P was something of an anomaly in the tablet world upon its release last year and now that it’s just gotten its ICS update it’s jumped to the forefront of our attention all over again. With two screens instead of one, its clamshell form-factor more closely resembles an oversized spectacle case than a tablet, and indeed, once you open it to reveal the dual 5-inch displays, it doesn’t lose its novelty factor.
To refresh your memory, the Sony Tablet P was originally released with Honeycomb and packs a dual-core 1GHz processor. With 4GB of memory on board, it’s expandable by micro SD card slot and comes in 3G and Wi-Fi versions, perfect for anyone with a decent cloud storage solution.
The interface is customised to accommodate the dual-screens in a number of ways. Being PlayStation certified, when playing PlayStation games for example, the top screen turns into the main display while the bottom screen acts as the controls. In addition, the bottom screen delivers an optimised keyboard and a host of shortcuts for your homescreen which include a floating calculator and web browser window.
As far as the innovations that Ice Cream Sandwich brings with it, these are pretty simple for the most part familiar to anyone who’s used an Asus tablet or a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. These include widget access through your apps drawer, swipe out notifications and the stock ICS task manager. Sony have also adopted Android’s stock horizontally scrolling apps drawer however have opted to replace the standard black background with a white background.
So in the face of a heavily customised user interface, no doubt users will be happy that their Tablet P has finally gotten its Ice Cream Sandwich. While you may grump when comparing Sony’s update timing with the likes of Asus, with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 still rocking Honeycomb 3.2, Sony aren’t doing all that badly, at least not on their tablets.
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