The Iconia Tab A200 Android tablet

Acer has been a little busy these last few weeks of 2011. They've put out the word that they remain committed to more Android tablets with the Tegra 3 processor in 2012. We've also seen a video pop out before an announcement of a new Iconia Tab in a very feel good 'Apple-esc' style of marketing. Now, Acer has put out an official Press Release for the all new ICONIA TAB A200 Android tablet.

The Acer ICONIA TAB A200, is running Android 3.2 Honeycomb, with an Android 4.0 ICS available upgrade in January 2012. It has a couple of tricks up its sleeve on why you would want this tablet over the currently released A500 or A501 tablets in stores. We'll get to those reasons in just a minute. The ICONIA TAB A200 comes with 8GB or 16GB sizes, a choice of Titanium Grey or Metallic Red color panels, 10.1 inch capacitive multitouch screen with 1280 x 800 resolution, 1GB RAM, 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor and a front facing 2 megapixel camera. It has an approximate 8 hours of battery life as well as the usual Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 and USB.


The reasons why you would buy this over the existing A500 or A501 (with 3G) tablets:

1) The ICONIA TAB A200 comes with only a front facing camera. There is no rear facing camera. Why is this a good thing? Honestly, if you've ever used a rear facing camera on a tablet, you'll already know how ridiculous it is to hold a 10.1 inch tablet (or any size tablet) up in the air to take photos. If you have a tablet, you most likely already have a smartphone with a perfectly capable camera on it, which probably looks better than the ones you'll take with a tablet, especially an iPad 2. Acer has really thought this through, and I applaud them for it. There is really no need for a rear facing camera on a tablet. But there is a need for a front facing camera for video chatting. Another reason I love not having a rear camera, is that you don't have to worry about scratching the lens up from setting the tablet down. The front of the tablet is what matters, not the back necessarily.

2) The ICONIA TAB A200 has something called the "Acer Ring", which adds nothing but greatness to Android's stock UI. The Acer Ring is a widget essentially, which offers shortcuts to your favorite apps like your Gallery, Browser, Search functionality and Camera app. It's got a little icon that remains in the bottom task bar for easy access, adding quick starts that Android Honeycomb never had. It's truly a perfect compliment to the Android OS, and I hope that other tablet manufactueres learn from this. Lenovo already has.
There's hasn't been any official launch dates announced, but with the video out, along with the press release information, and the holidays season in full shopping tilt, I'm sure it'll be out prior to December 25th to bank in on tablet shopping mania, and will likely cost the same as the A100 at $299 for the 8GB and $399 for the 16GB models to keep them an attractive offer against the ASUS Transformer Prime