Acer Iconia A500 10.1" Honeycomb Android Tablet Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,473 words · ~7 min read
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So today we'll be doing an unboxing of the Acer Iconia Tab. Now this one is
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actually from the NCIX inventory. And the reason that I am unboxing this
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particular unit is that the customer who purchased it asked me to unbox it before
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they picked it up. So here I am. All right. So why don't we have a look at
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what we've got in terms of features. So we have a wide viewing angle. Okay,
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Wi-Fi certified, Bluetooth, GPS, a 5 megapixel camera, HDMI, and micro SD.
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So, that gives us a couple of hints in terms of the overall feature set that
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we're going to see with the Iconia Tab. Now, this is a Honeycomb NVIDIA Integra
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2 tablet. So, it's going to have a similar overall spec to what we've seen
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with many of the other tablets that I have recently unboxed.
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Did I drop something? No, I dropped my pen. No big deal. All right. And what
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else do we have on the back here? Okay, here we go. So, it uses Android um
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Honeycomb Android. So, it comes with 3.1,
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I believe. Uh it doesn't matter cuz you can upgrade it later. It has a dual core
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1 GHz Tegra 2 ultra low power GeForce GPU. This is a 32 gig, this particular
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one here. Um although it is available in other capacities. We've also got a 10.1
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inch LCD screen, two megapixel rear camera with two megapixel front, five
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megapixel rear camera with two megapixel front camera. Also, the rear camera has
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autofocus and LED flash. Uh, Wi-Fi N,
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Bluetooth, micro SD, rechargeable lipo battery, and oh, look at that. They put
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a millah rating on it. So 3260 mAh just so you guys know because remember power
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consumption is going to be fairly similar between tablets with the same
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spec, the same screen size, the same general hardware specifications.
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Okay, so the box inside we have black
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box materials. We've also got a little tab here which will allow us to lift up
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the Iconia tab. So I'm going to go ahead and show you guys what we have in terms
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of accessories. So first start information here.
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Something about plugging something into something. Okay. Oo, it comes with a
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cleaning cloth. Look at that. They call it a notebook cleaning cloth, but I'm
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sure you can clean your tablet with it, too. We have a quick start guide as well
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as a passport. So, I guess the passport,
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you know, I'm not going to worry too much about that. Quick start guide. Really, um, as far as Android goes, you
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can find any information you're going to need online in terms of how-tos and, uh,
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setup guides, all that good stuff. Okay.
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We've got an included AC adapter. So, you can see it comes with the North American plug which goes into one of
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these universal guys. I'm starting to see more of these versus
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uh having specific AC adapters per region. So, I mean, personally, I think
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it's smart. It's less waste. It's less tooling. And then you can just use these
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little uh these little clips in order to make them compatible with the walls in
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the various regions. So, here we have a USB cable. So, that's your data cable.
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And then yeah, data and power is covered with those two adapters there. So here
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we go. Here's the unit itself. And let's see if there's anything that we have to
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add here. So Dolby Dolby Dolby mobile.
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Okay. Wide viewing angle. That's good to know. Megapixel micro SD. Okay. So let's
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go ahead and take off the protective plastic. Hopefully the customer won't mind since he asked me to unbox it.
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Hopefully he knows that, you know, that means I will,
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you know, open it. I mean, I guess he
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could complain, I guess, but that would be sort of
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a strange thing to do.
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Overall, the uh the build of this one
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looks quite nice. So, here, let's start with the locations
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of everything. So, here is the front camera. All right. Here is the screen.
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So, it is an Android tablet. So, that means you are going to be using a
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software screen. So, unlike the iPad 2,
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which I like having out here, just for context, which does have one hardware
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button on it, none of the Android tablets have like a hardware home button
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or anything like that. It's all going to be in software here. All right, let's
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move along to the side. So, there's our power button. I've tried pressing that a couple times, but it looks like this
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particular tablet does not come with a charge on it. Oh, no, there it goes.
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It's turning on. There's our headphone jack. There is a What's this one called?
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I think this is micro HDMI. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that one, but
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this is not mini HDMI. This is the other more differenter HDMI. All right. On the
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bottom, we find a dock connector.
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On the side, we find a hard reset switch. This right there, that little
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switch could end up being worth its weight in gold. I actually had one of
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the other Android 3.1 tablets do a hard lock on me. Fortunately, it was the
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Toshiba Thrive, which has a removable battery. So, I was able to take the back
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panel off and remove the battery in order to hard reset it. But this one
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actually has a hard reset. So, even though you can't pull the battery, you
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do have that option there as well. So, that's really good to see. Uh, we've got
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a full-size USB port. That's pretty nice. As well as the, uh, USB port for
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transferring data to the tablet. Next, we have our DC power in. and let's move
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over to the top. Okay, on the top we're
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going to find what is in all likelihood where the micro SD card goes.
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Yep, there we go. So, there's your micro SD slot down there. And finally, that's
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the that's pretty slick, actually. That goes in. That blends in really nicely.
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Finally, we have um I guess that's a
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screen orientation lock would be my guess. I haven't seen this switch on any
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of the other Android tablets. And then finally, we have a volume rocker. So
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process system is not responding. Okay. Force close. So there it is. I don't
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want to get too far into the user setup process because this actually will
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belong to someone. But uh oh yeah, where's the uh yeah camera? Sorry I
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didn't show you guys the camera. So there's the 5 megapixel camera on the back. There's the flash. And finally the
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back speaker. So we do have stereo speakers on the Iconia Tab. And let's
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see. So normally I would hold it like this if I'm using it in landscape mode.
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So let's see if those speakers are covered. they are not. So, even though
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they are rear-mounted speakers, the fact that you do have two of them is going to
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help a lot in terms of the audio quality compared to something like the iPad 2,
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which has a measly one back speaker that
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is, you know, in the top right and uh is
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not that comfortable to listen to. So, here, if you can come down and uh get
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down to about table level here, I just want to show you guys the general form
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factor of the Iconia Tab. So, it's not one of the thinnest tablets on the
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market by any stretch, but you know what? I'm going to grab one other one for you guys so that you can just see
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um as a basis of comparison here. This
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is the Toshiba Thrive. So, this is the thickest of the Android tablets that
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I've had a look at so far. So, you can see it falls right into that middle
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ground. So, uh so there's the iPad,
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there's the iPad 2 as well, just so you guys can compare. So, the Iconia Tab is
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the one we're left with here. And I think that's pretty much everything I
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wanted to say about it. Thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Iconia
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Tad A500. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings,
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reviews, and other computer videos.