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In a move that will certainly irritate many people, ViewSonic has taken to its Facebook page with an official word on the gTablet, future support, and whether or not it will ever officially see Honeycomb. As you may have already guessed, the simple answer from ViewSonic to the latter is "no," with very little reasoning behind the decision.
It looks like eBay's Daily Deals feature may become the go-to source for Android tablet shopping - just last week they had the Motorola XOOM Wi-Fi for $100 off, and today, the Viewsonic gTablet has found its way onto the site for a mere $250 with free shipping.
Update: It's up for sale yet again today, Saturday, May 7th.
For all 5 people who are actually using the gTablet's stock UI instead of a custom ROM that is miles ahead of it in features, ViewSonic released a new over-the-air (OTA) update that finally adds Adobe Flash, along with external docking station and USB keyboard/mouse support and a few other things. The full list, found on ViewSonic's news page, is reproduced below:
Some of you may remember that daily deal site Woot marked the Viewsonic gTablet down to just $280 (twice). Amazon (Woot's parent company) has decided they'd like to do the same, so for the third time in just a few weeks, you can score the dual-core, Tegra2-rockin' tablet for only $280. Although it's sold through Amazon, the order is fulfilled by Woot.
There has been a lot of confusion regarding this post on NVIDIA's Tegra developer forum that was misconstrued as vaguely implying NVIDIA would stop supporting the "Harmony" generation of Tegra devices going forward (ViewSonic gTablet, Notion Ink Adam, ViewSonic ViewPad 7, Advent Vega, and others) and would instead only stick to the "Ventana" generation. Rather than panicking and freaking out, we pinged our contact at NVIDIA to get a straight answer and held off until we heard the official response.
With the wave of Tegra 2-powered phones and tablets that is already on its way, there lay a potential of a fragmented Android Market: those apps that require NVIDIA's new dual-core processor, and those that don't. Frustrating time spent searching the Market in vain could have loomed on the horizon. Thankfully, somebody was thinking ahead, as the Tegra 2 search engine Tegra Zone has arrived to help avert such confusion.
Over the past couple of weeks, I spent countless hours debating whether I should wait around a few months and see what tablets come out or get one now. In the latter case, which tablet was right for me?
The ViewSonic G Tablet is the most powerful Android tablet on the Market today, sporting a dual core Tegra 2 processor and dominating benchmarks, albeit after some tweaks that turn it into a beast. ViewSonic managed to screw up on the software side, which is fixable by the aforementioned tweaks, but the hardware is top notch, making it one of the hottest tablet gifts this holiday season.
Although we already knew it had some serious potential, AnandTech has pitted the Viewsonic G (running nVidia's hot Tegra 2 dual-core mobile CPU) against a bevy of other mobile CPUs. The competition: three devices utilizing the Snapdragon (Nexus One, G2, and EVO), the Hummingbird found in the Galaxy Tab, the TI OMAP found in the Droid 2, and the Apple A4 from the iPhone 4. The results: the Viewsonic G tablet and its Tegra 2 CPU pulled heavy wins in 4 out of the 6 tests.
Like so many of you out there, I have been holding out for an Android tablet that would be well worth my saved pennies, one that I could be proud to stack up against the uppity iPad owners that loiter around the local Starbucks. I'll be the first to admit that this year has been disappointing to say the least – cancelled devices, resistive touch screens, underpowered hardware, and carrier only options have plagued the community thus far, and even while optimistic for 2011, it was clear that I needed a tablet now.