Couple months ago I decided it was time to go away from carrying a laptop or netbook in my day to day life and get something a little more portable. Several people said I should get an iPad but I am not one to subscribe to the cult of Jobs nor want to have a device that is locked down as an iOS device. So initially I was looking for a windows based tablet. While there are several available most of them where under powered and lacked multi-touch capability.
My next option was an Android Tablet. I started looking and found that there was a large and varying ammount of different tablets around, most chinese made and of poor quality. I orginally settled on an Archos 7″ tablet as it seemed to be of the best quality and a resonable price. But then a friend told me about the ViewSonic G-Tablet. I started to do some research and it has some stout hardware but all the reviews pointed to a lack luster UI and poor preformance because of it. I continued to look around and see if there was any way to make it better and of course the first place I looked was XDA-Developers.org!
XDA-Developers is the place if you want to modify your mobile device and I have used them many times in my windows mobile phone days. Sure enough when I started looking around they had a forums section dedicated to the G-Tablet. I started looking into the development section and found that their was 4 different and Stable ROMS for the G-Tab from the bare bones Android 2.2 (VEGAn TAB) to a better version of TNT (TNT Light 2.x). Finding this plus how to maket full on android market work along with a few other choice apps and I was now dead set on getting this device.
I bought the G-Tab after getting my Tax Return and appeasing my wife with some mad cleanup skills, brought it home, and the first thing I did after charging it was flash VEGANn on it. This was painless and only took about 5 minutes! This put me into pure Android Bliss! I have access to all the same apps a regular android users plus with a little digging found several HD versions of apps I use every day. So here now Are my pro’s and con’s of my device
Pros:
nVidia Tegra 2 Hardware
WiFi and Bluetooth
No need to root the device before flashing
10+ hour battery life even on WiFi
Full USB port for use with thumb drives and keyboards.
Micro SDHC slot for support for 32GB cards on top of the 16GB onboard
Dock port on the bottom for charging, sync to PC, and outputting 1080P video.
Cons:
No built in GPS
Lack of 3G/4G support
Default interface
Local availability
Overall this is a great device and would reccomend it to anyone that is looking for a great 10″ Android Tablet.