SONY XPERIA TABLET S

The Xperia Tablet S represents Sony’s second foray into tablet manufacture, with software upgrades and a few technological tweaks improving on the design of the more simply named Sony Tablet S.

The Xperia is a bit slimmer than the Tablet S at dimensions of 9.45” x 6.87” x 0.35” (24cm x 17.4cm x 0.1cm) and lighter, with a weight of 1.26 pounds (0.6 kg). Sony also upgraded the operating system to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, design and planning having apparently taken place before 4.1 Jellybean was released. The 1280 x 800px touchscreen is typical Sony quality; the NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor plus 1 GB of RAM are decent enough for most users and up to 64 GB of storage is available upon purchase.

The focus of the Xperia Tablet S, however, is it functionality with not only Sony smartphones and electronics, but the vast majority of electronic devices in the home. The embedded “Universal Remote” app allows one-click operation of TV, stereo and the like, while the “Watch Now” app includes a viewing guide and recommendation feature. And if using one bit of software, the “Small Apps” feature allows the simultaneous running of another application.