The much hyped TabCo tablet has turned out to be the Grid 10 tablet from Fusion Garage, a company founded in 2008.
Fusion Garage have already released a tablet which unfortunately didn’t do so well, the JooJoo tablet. As a token of goodwill, FusionGarage will be offering one of the new Grid 10 tablets completely free. If you purchased a JooJoo tablet, then you should receive an email with details on this shortly.
Before announcing the new Grid 10, Fusion Garage’s CEO announced their very own operating system called Grid. Grid is built upon the Android kernel, but is in no way similar to Android itself.
Social Networking was a major focus in the announcement, as was web search. Social features will be built in to the Grid OS, including Facebook and Twitter, and all search API’s are built in with Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
The Grid 10 is a 10.1-inch tablet sporting a massive 1366 x 768 resolution – the highest on any tablet device to date. A dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor powers the tablet, though we weren’t told the clock speed of the chip unfortunately.
FusionGarage’s Grid OS looks to be an interesting one, the entire desktop is a grid which you can add your app and program shortcuts to. You can also categorise your apps into ‘clusters’ which are collapsible to one icon, and expandable with a tap to show all icons.
Apps will be downloadable from the Amazon Appstore and through their own proprietary Grid Shop. You’ll also be able to install Android apps onto the Grid10. Office productivity apps will be preloaded in the Grid Frames software suite.
Many parts of the Grid OS are gesture based, though some gestures seem borrowed from other systems. An interesting feature is the unlock screen, which allows you to scribe a signature using your finger to unlock.
Amazon.com will be selling the Grid10 tablet in both Wi-Fi and 3G variants for $499 and $599 respectively, with pre-orders starting today and the device being released on September 15th.
FusionGarage also announced a new smartphone, the Grid4, which will also run the new Grid OS. It will feature a 4-inch 800 x 480 screen, dual-core Qualcomm processor and 16GB storage. The device will launch in Q4 of this year for $399 unlocked, and also on various networks, which will be confirmed closer to the release.
Do you like the look of the Grid10 and GridOS? Let us know what you like or dislike via our comments system below and Twitter Page.