New Gadget 2011

While the market is already flush with 10-inch Android tablets, a new generation of scaled-down models have been looming for quite some time. Following in the footsteps of the BlackBerry PlayBook, these new Android tablets will arrive bearing 7 and 8-inch displays and Android 3.2, the Honeycomb update designed to make the tablet experience resolution-agnostic en route to Ice Cream Sandwich’s promised land of complete screen size independence. One of the first you’ll find on retail shelves in the U.S. is the brand new Acer Iconia Tab A100, a 7-incher sporting Android 3.2.

So what else has Acer packed inside the slightly smaller A100? Pretty well the same internals you’d find in a 10″ Android tablet: a dual-core NVidia Tegra 2 processor running at 1GHz, 1GB RAM, 8 or 16GB of internal storage, 5MP front-facing (with autofocus and an LED flash) and 2MP rear-facing cameras, 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, microSD expansion with support for cards up to 32GB, MicroHDMI and headphone output, digital compass, accelerometer, and a proprietary dock connector. The 7-inch display packs 1024×600 pixels and retail pricing for the A100 starts at around $329. Surprisingly, the 16GB version is listed at just $20 more — which looks like a mistake, noting what other Android tablet makers have been charging for boosted internal storage capacities.