The T-Mobile Yard-Slate is an Android iii.0 Honeycomb-powered tablet computer built past LG. In fact, the device is a most clone of LG's 3G-capable Optimus Pad, which I first saw at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year.

The Grand-Slate features a slightly smaller brandish than the Apple'south iPad and Motorola's Xoom, which makes it lighter and thereby easier to hold to a certain extent. Information technology also sports a great industrial pattern and can record 3D 720p Hard disk drive videos with its dual-5 megapixel cameras. All of this is powered by a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor that hums along at 1GHz, making sure that even 3D games run smoothly on its high-res touchscreen display.

Apart from the continuing lack of tablet-aware Android applications, and a pretty high total cost of ownership (on contract, at to the lowest degree), there's very little to dislike about this device. In improver to a full write-up on the tablet, you'll find two videos of the T-Mobile G-Slate in action below, courtesy of MobileBurn'due south Michael Oryl.


Hardware

Similar most tablets on the market today, the LG-congenital T-Mobile G-Slate looks like a big black slab when viewed from the forepart. The design is dominated by the eight.nine-inch, 1280 10 768 pixel resolution touchscreen display, which offers a widescreen xv:nine aspect ratio and rests next to the frontward-facing 2 megapixel camera. The Grand-Slate's brandish is pretty bright and precipitous, merely could use a flake more than color oomph in my stance. Still, information technology seems to respond accurately to touches, then there's little to mutter about.

Dissimilar the Motorola Xoom for Verizon, with its hard edges and metal seams, the T-Mobile G-Slate is soft to the touch and very comfortable to hold. The corners and edges are rounded, and the back cover has a dark bronze soft-touch blanket on it that offers both grip and comfort. The top portion of the encompass is removable to provide access to the SIM card slot that allows the device to function on T-Mobile'southward 3G network.

The edge of the G-Slate is made up of a gray metal similar material that accents the device well, equally does the metal "with Google" strip that is found on the rear encompass, between the 3D capable 5 megapixel cameras. The edge of the M-Slate is also home to various controls and ports.

The volume control sits in a somewhat inconvenient spot on the acme of the device, when held in landscape manner, next to a pocket-sized microphone hole. The left edge is domicile to the smallish power button, a speaker, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and the proprietary charging port. A number of small metal contacts flank the micro-USB and mini-HDMI ports that sit on the bottom of the tablet, and nothing but a pair of speakers are to be found on the right edge.

People accept been debating which display size is best for tablets. For my money, the 8.9-inch display on the T-Mobile Chiliad-Slate is sitting in the sweet spot. I appreciate the slightly more holdable size it offers while still being big enough. I practise wish that the left and right hand bezel that surrounds the display (in landscape mode) were narrower, though, since that would have made dual-thumb text input much easier when holding the tablet. Either mode, it'due south still easier to hold than a Motorola Xoom or an Apple iPad.

The T-Mobile G-Slate weighs 630g (22.2oz), which is 100g lighter than the Motorola Xoom and about the aforementioned as an Apple iPad 2, and measures 242.8mm x 149.4mm ten 12.4mm (9.56in x 5.88in x .49in) in size. LG did an all effectually great job on the hardware.