Not too long ago, if I’d written a column about one big tech company releasing a smartphone with not one, not two, but three rear cameras, and another bringing to market a tablet PC aimed at South African schools that runs on an operating system that’s essentially an upscaled web browser, you’d have thought I was pulling an April Fool’s prank on you.
But that’s just what’s happened in the past week and, far from being a joke, these are serious, pretty darn compelling products. Let’s look at that tablet first.
Acer Chromebook tab 10
Apple was the first to popularise the use of electronic tablets in the classroom and its iPads are now a common sight in schools, particularly those serving a more affluent pupil base.
In recent years, laptops running Google’s Chrome OS have made big inroads into Apple’s once dominant position in the US and UK education markets, thanks to their lower prices and seamless integration with the search giant’s ever-growing suite of cloud-bases’ products and services.
Acer clearly believes in this trend’s potential to spread into South African schools. They’ve just launched the Acer Chromebook Tab 10, which they say is the first education tablet running Chrome OS.
Early critics of the operating system slated it for being little more than a jumped-up web browser, but as Chrome OS has matured over the years and been adopted by an ever-growing fan base, not just in education, but by many general and even light business users, those criticisms have largely dried up.
“The Acer Chromebook Tab 10 combines advances in hardware and application support to enable more meaningful learning for an even wider range of students (it) encourages students to discover new ways of understanding the world around them,” said James Lin, general manager for commercial and detachable notebooks, IT products business at Acer. On paper it’s certainly an attractive proposition. Unlike some low-budget tablets aimed at kids, this Acer has 9.7-inch touch display that boasts an impressive 2048 x 1536 resolution at 264 pixels per inch. This is important for education where a crisp, clear display can make the difference between comprehension and a nasty headache.
The slim, lightweight form factor - it weighs just 550g - makes for optimal portability and, with full support for Google Play, teachers and pupils now have access to millions of Android apps, a huge plus in my books.
There’s a 2MP HD webcam on the front which, with dual speakers and microphone, will allow for chats over Google Hangouts, while the rear 5MP camera enables pupils to capture video and images.
Another big drawcard is that the device comes standard with a Wacom EMR stylus, allowing pupils to make best use of interactive apps, sketch, take notes and capture ideas. The stylus is embedded in the chassis dock for secure storage. Plus it doesn’t require a battery and is resistant to accidental drops.
Acer claims a battery life of up to nine hours, enough for a full school day, although schools with dedicated labs and wireless carts can use the tablet over several days of classroom time.
Throw in future support for augmented reality, the USB 3.1 Type-C Gen 1 port, which can be used to charge the device as well as other products, transfer data quickly up to 5Gbps and connect to an HD display, as well as the combo headphone/speaker jack and a MicroSD card reader, and this starts to look like an attractive proposition indeed.
The new Acer Chromebook Tab 10 will be available to education and commercial customers in South Africa in May with prices starting at R4999.
Huawei P20 Pro
Huawei was one of the first companies to recognise the potential of dual screen smartphone cameras and they’ve quickly become a leader in this field. So, what’s better than two cameras? Three, of course.
That appears to be the rationale behind the Huawei P20 Pro, unveiled in Paris on Tuesday. I wasn’t there, alas, but from what I hear, the three-camera set-up is more than just a clever gimmick.
To start with, there’s an improved version of Huawei’s Leica dual-camera system, which pairs a traditional 12-megapixel colour camera to a 20-megapixel monochrome one. But the P20 Pro also has a third, eight-megapixel telephoto camera below the other two, which offers a “hybrid zoom” of up to 5X.
Huawei says this enables the phone to “see brighter, further, faster and with richer colour”.
This, combined with a beefed-up version of Huawei’s AI system for the camera, which recognises objects and scenes, should make for one of the best smartphone cameras available.
Combine this with IP67 water resistance, the very latest version of Google’s Android operating system (Oreo 8.1) and a 4000mAh battery delivering a claimed two days of use between charges and you’ve got a really attractive looking package.The Chinese tech heavyweight also revealed a lower-specced P20 with just the dual-camera set-up, but with many of the other drawcards of its big brother, as well as an upgraded version of its Mate phablet, the Mate RS Porsche Design, now also featuring a triple-camera system.
I’ll know more about these products, as well as the local pricing and availability, after this Thursday’s South African launch, so watch this space.
* Follow Cooper on Twitter @alanqcooper
