Related Articles
Sony is working on a successor to its Tablet S it seems, after plans were submitted to the FCC, the US phone governance body, for a tablet with the designation ‘SGPT1211’.
The filing, spotted by Xperia Blog, doesn’t cover just one device, but six. Three for the US, and three for Canada, named SGPT121, 122 and 123. The original Tablet S was named SGPT111, 112 and 113, which referenced the internal storage and network capabilities, including 16GB, 32GB and 3G respectively.
Though the documents don’t reveal much in the way of design, they do reveal some simple facts. It’s labelled as a ‘Tablet Device’, and will be made of AL5052, an aluminium-magnesium alloy. It’ll have a sandblasted, anodised finish.
With most Android slates being made of plastic, I’m really looking forward to seeing how this comes out, as my favourite tablet to date is the Asus Transformer, mostly because of its solid, aluminium construction.
The filing also states that the FCC is testing the device for
dual-band 2.4GHz/5GHz 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, so we can probably expect to
see this in the final product, if not in others.
It hasn’t been confirmed that this is a successor to the Tablet S, but given the device names, I would be very surprised if it isn’t. The S, which we reviewed back in January, had a snazzy design but wasn’t exactly overpowered, and was saddled with crusty old Honeycomb Android.
The operating system hasn’t been disclosed, but we can probably expect Ice Cream Sandwich with an upgrade to Jelly Bean. Updates to Jelly Bean will hopefully roll out quicker than ICS given the minimal differences in code, so if you’re eager to get the latest version, it shouldn’t be too long!
How does this device sound to you so far, and do you prefer aluminium or plastic for your slate? Scratch a comment in the box below or doodle on our Facebook page.
Image credit: US Federal Communications Commission
