Is Adam coming to your home this year?

CMN Correspondent

BANGALORE, INDIA: New year means a lot for everyone of us. It is time to start things afresh, with new wishes and new resolutions. So where do you stand, when it comes to a new Tablet PC?

In the past one year, Indian customers were introduced to a variety of Tablets, the latest being Adam Tablet by Bangalore-based Notion Ink, which is yet to hit the market. Today we would take you through a journey of the product, understanding the need (demand) verses the commodity (supply).

A Tablet PC, as described in the PC Mag encyclopedia, is a portable personal computer that has a touch screen as the input device, networking and other option available in any PC. According to it the revolution of Tablet started in 2001, when Microsoft came up with its XP version for Tablet, and then iPad happened.

For the customers iPad was an extension to their music player, especially for those who were using Apple's iPod. It has entertaining, information, web browsing and reading capabilities, and from a utility perspective it played a bridge between a PC and a music player.

A need (demand) was generated. But since iPad is still not officially available in India, the supply is yet to meet that demand. In the meantime a few other gadgets like Samsung Galaxy Tab, Dell Streak, Motorola Quench XT3 and OlivePad  made their way to the Indian market, while a few others had set the stage for their arrival. One of them is Notion Ink's Adam.

As reported earlier, Adam is a 10-inch Android-based Tablet, which would be formally launched in the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to be held in Las Vegas from January 6, 2011, as the company is all set to enter the market nearly 13 months after it was announced in December 2009. An early prototype of the gadget was displayed at CES 2010.

Adam's size  is comparably similar to Apple's iPad (9.7 inches), while Galazy and Olivepad are 7 inches and Streak 6 inches. While 10 inches is considered  bigger to carry, and 5 inches too small for a Tablet, 7 inches seems to be the preferred size. So a smaller Adam could be a bigger hit.

Another comparison of Adam is that it has got a few things that Apple's iPad hasn't — like camera, expandable memory, but all the other products have it. However, Adam gets an upper hand in this comparison as it has an (ergonomically) well-positioned swivel 3.2 MP auto focus camera which rotates 180 degrees.

While Streak has a 5 M auto-focus rear camera and also a VGA front-facing camera, Olivepad  comes with a 3 megapixel rear camera and a VGA front camera. On the other hand, Galaxy sports a 1.3 M front camera, with a 3 M rear camera.

Coming to the operating systems, today, the choice of operating system is not only determined on the basis of the user experience but the host of application that users get.

And when it comes to OS, Apple, with the release of iOS 4.2, aimed to beat all the competitors betting on multi-tasking, unified inbox, new  security features, but as Wired reviews, 'All this doesn’t mean iOS 4 is ahead of Android'.

From Adam to Streak (alphabetically) all the tablets are based on Android 2.2 (Froyo) operating system.

While Apple has 200,000 iPhone apps (iPad works with all of them), Android has  around 50,000 apps.  Adam  could use Android, Ubuntu and Chromium too.

Since we are talking about the Indian market, which by definition is a price-sensitive one, we cannot ignore the pricing factor too.

In this category, if iPad becomes dearer (ranging of $499 to $829 ), and Motorola Quench falls in the most affordable category with $300, whereas Adam falls in the range of $375, while the high-end 3G-enabled model would cost $549.99. Galaxy starts at $500, and Streak at  $549.99. So Adam still stands as a value-for-money product compared to many others.

Now, looking at the product as a whole, apart from the aforementioned specs, Adam gives 16-hour battery life on browsing, and has Optional Pixel Qi display. And if at all it matters then, before buying you can also consider the fact that it is 'made in India'. The company had commenced taking pre-launch orders in partnership with payment processing partner, CCAvenue.

There is lesser idea of the number of products sold, but within weeks it was declared to be 'SOLD OUT', though no one has seen the final product yet. The company, following the paths of Apple, is highly secretive and prior to the pre-orders, it did not offer the product for reviews by experts.

The company could not share their thoughts as the team is gearing up for their global showcase at Las Vegas CES. The response post that launch would set the course for the product and company, but the question would still remain is that 'Is Adam coming to your home today?'.