Acer shows laptop lid look tablet

Iconia avoids iPad-alike styling of rivals

MWC 2011 Acer has unwrapped its iPad alternative, the ten-inch Iconia Tab A500, which features the now de rigeuer Android 3.0 Honeycomb.

Due in April, the A500 is powered by Nvidia's two-core Tegra 250 chip running at 1GHz. The 10.1in screen has a 1280 x 800 resolution, but you can also play content through the tablet's mini HDMI port.

Wireless connectivity? 2.4GHz 802.11n W-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 - it's "upgradeable" to 3.0, Acer said. And some models will incorporate quad-band HSPA 3G.

There's a gigabyte of Ram on board, plus a choice of 16GB or 32GB storage, to which you can add Micro SD cards of up to 64GB capacity.

The A500 sports a 5Mp camera on the back and a 2Mp camera on the front.

It has a 3260mAh battery - around half the capacity of the one in the 10in Samsung Galaxy Tab, though, at 700g, the Acer weighs more.

Pricing will be announced in due course, Acer said. ®