Notion Ink Adam Tablet Pre Order Finally Here!

Some of us have been dreaming about the Notion Ink tablet for over a year. It was one of the reasons I started this website actually. Why? Because the specs make it a powerhouse, the developers are original, innovative and tapped into a very important technology to build the Adam.

The NotionInk.com website has all the details of the Adam tablet, but I want to give a few here. It’s running Android operating system, and in the past 3 days we’ve learned that it will be the most recent Android, 2.3, dubbed by Google as Gingerbread. It’s a faster system  that will support features in newer phone and tablet hardware.  If you haven’t been following, mobile operating systems have been very dominant on current and upcoming tablets because their codebase is lighter than a full blown desktop OS, their touch interface and lower power consumption also make them the right choice for tablets.

From screenshots we’ve seen the Adam sporting a few custom applications designed for it, and part of the GUI skinned over Android to fit those applications. To highlight a couple, there will be an email app as well as a file browser.

The Nvidia Tegra processor in this tablet enables a high resolution video playback, 3D and low power consumption. Unlike many tablets out now and the near future, the Adam even has an HDMI output port for sharing your screen to a larger 1080 screen.

The onboard swiveling camera is one of the most fun and creative features of the Adam. Rather than having no camera like the iPad and compromising with either a front or back, or putting both, this camera is going to suit all the tasks, from doing video chat, recording a movie of yourself or capturing your environment. Along with the camera are also USB ports for extending the device with peripherals. It has a removable battery, SD card slots and will support Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and 3G if you choose the options.

The biggest issue with tablets and ereaders are choosing the one that will be personally right for your habits. People really like the readability of the ereaders such as the Kindle or the Kobo. They sport e-ink screens that have a look of real paper. Tablets like the iPad or the Samsung Galaxy Tab are more capable computers. They can play back video have more responsiveness and can surf the web better.  They also read ebooks, but the battery consumption and the glowing video screen is off-putting if you’re more of a book reader than a couch surfer.

The great thing about the Notion Ink Adam is the screen because it pulls the worlds of tablets and ebook readers together.  The screen is made by Pixel Qi. It’s a very unique dual-mode technology.  With the backlight on, it’s an LCD with the refresh rate the speed you want. But turn the backlight off and you get a reflective mode that is nearly the experience of epaper.  For me, I’ve been really looking at what is worth the money. The iPad though beautiful was always too expensive and not an ebook reader. Since I stare at computer screens all day, it’s the Adam tablet that seems right for me. You can read it in brighter sunlight or with a lamp and the monochrome image is actually sharper in reflective mode.

Unfortunately, though the day has arrived there is just one problem.  Though there have been plenty of videos of the Adam in prototype form now one has seen it working as a polished system.  The mail app, the browser, the custom skinning all have been presented as screenshots. We don’t know the responsiveness of the touch screen or really how you can interact with it.  This makes buying one give you a twinge. Dropping $400 – $500 without seeing a video demo is a hard one to do. Without a video, you really have to trust. But we might see some videos popup on Youtube soon enough.

Many of us have appreciated the passion of Notion Ink. Rohan Shravan the inventor and developer has led us all the waythrough development on the Notion Ink Blog. Lately he’s been inserting some enticing mysteries to help keep us all in suspense. The preorder date was actually encoded many days ago in binary form on the website, right in front of us all along.  I’m not alone in being captured and fully believing in this device as the right kind of tablet. Good choices appear to have been made in every part of the design.  So the concern is really just the execution. Many of us feel we have a stake in the Adam succeeding, so if the software is shoddy or the hardware unresponsive, it would be a real let down.

At this writing, the actual preordering is still a few hours away at least. It is by invitation as far as we know. And the delivery date has not been confirmed.  More to come.  Take a look at the Notion Ink Website for the full tech specs.  There’s still a mystery feature we don’t’ know about. Many think it’s Near Field Communication (NFC) sensor which is a new capability of the upcoming Android OS.

My feeling is that this will be a very useful flexible and extensible tablet. I have a feeling that the software may need some tweaking in the short term as it gets into the hands of more of us. The community so far is very strong and there is going to be a dedicated developer section and app store called Genesis.  As long as that ball gets rolling, there should be plenty of reasons to be very excited about the Notion Ink Adam.  Let’s just hope we can place our order(s) swiftly and not get crammed at the end of a waiting list.