Acer Iconia Tab A100

Acer Iconia Tab A100 (8GB)

Life is all about choices and trade-offs. With the Acer Iconia Tab A100, the capital accommodation is in size. This 417g tablet, the aboriginal to run the Android 3.2 operating system, is too big to be a smartphone and too baby – at a 7-inch awning admeasurement – to watch movies on. It fills a baby alcove for those who demand an ebook clairvoyant that additionally runs apps.

For some, the anatomy agency ability be aloof about right. While the HTC Flyer is now assuming signs of age, both tablets fit into the aforementioned mould: both action a bunched 7-inch screen, the Tegra 2 processor active at 1GHz and 1GB RAM. The Acer Iconia Tab A100 is absolutely 3g lighter, but you won't notice.

However, there are a few differences amid the two pocket-sized tabs. We say pocket-sized with a beam – you absolutely charge appealing ample pockets for that to work.

The Acer Iconia Tab A100 runs Android 3.2 out of the box, admitting best HTC Flyers accept to be adapted to 3.2.

This adaptation of the operating system, alleged Honeycomb, supports awning ascent to run apps fabricated for smartphones. However, on the 7-inch awning the resizing for smartphone apps isn't that noticeable.

The Acer Iconia Tab A100 additionally provides a few absorbing apps. One is alleged Planner and it presents a accessible all-in-one appearance of contempo news, your email, agenda and notes. Like the Acer Iconia Tab A500, the A100 uses an app categorisation arrangement for alignment apps into bins for amusing networking, ebooks, amateur and so on. Sure, it's annihilation added than an added home awning system, and doesn't attending that great, but at atomic we're not talking about apparent boilerplate Android here.

• The Acer Iconia Tab A100 additionally provides a 5MP rear-facing camera and a 2MP front-facing babble camera. The HTC Flyer's babble camera is alone 1.3MP.
•  Most critically, the HTC Flyer uses a single-core CPU while the Acer Iconia Tab A100 stays accepted with contempo 10-inch tabs by alms the Tegra 2 dual-core chip.

In truth, best of the added differences compared to the HTC Flyer are cosmetic, or accompanying to account and the awning technology acclimated on the two tablets. However, the Acer Iconia Tab A100 gets the nod over the HTC Flyer if alone for including a new adaptation of Android.

We should acknowledgment the BlackBerry PlayBook, alike admitting abounding book users accept abandoned it exists. There are still no able apps on it to allege about, but the PlayBook additionally has a 7-inch screen. We can't acclaim it unless you absolutely charge the business aegis appearance or already use a BlackBerry smartphone. Both the HTC Flyer and the Acer Iconia Tab A100 are bigger buys because of the boatload of Android apps available.

Oh, and there's still the first-gen 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab, which shares some affinity in admeasurement but uses the earlier Android 2.2 Froyo operating system. It enables you to hire movies, but contrarily its apps are all advised for smartphones.

The Acer Iconia Tab A100 8GB archetypal we activated costs alone $330 in the US, and £299.99 in the UK. The HTC Flyer is priced at £480. That makes the A100 the bigger buy. But the absoluteness is that 10-inch tabs aren't that abundant added expensive, not that abundant added – the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is alone 148g added than the A100 – and bigger ill-fitted to watching movies and arena games.

And there's a acute fold-open case for the Acer Iconia Tab A100 area you can set it about vertical on a desk.