After circulating rumors, leaks, and photos of the alleged oversized Samsung tablet we were officially greeted today with a… 17.3 inch Alcatel tablet? The French OEM took the time at IFA to show off their upcoming Xess tablet. This is not the first slate to come with a crazy dilated screen. Microsoft and Lenovo have products in this space as does the lesser known Fuhu with screens as large as 65 inches. Most of those seem suited for commercial use in kiosks, stores, newsrooms, and episodes of CSI. Alcatel may be betting on a more in-home product with the Xess, making some design and cost cutting choices that would make it more attractive and practical for the average consumer.
Besides the massive screen, the Xess has some other compelling features: It comes with dual 3 watt JBL speakers, a 10,000 mAh battery, stylus, 2 USB ports, a 5MP front-facing camera, and magnetic charger. On the software side, we get Android 5.1 Lollipop with some minor additions including some neat gesture controls, allowing the user to manipulate things like video playback without touching the tablet. The Xess also has a built in stand which can be adjusted to various angles for different viewing angles. It even doubles as handle to make it easier to carry this behemoth around. And let’s be honest, the thing is a looker.
Beyond that, the device is fairly disappointing. The screen is large and is HD, but only at 1080p (1,920 x 1,080); hardly impressive at that size. It’s being powered by a lower end 1.5GHz octa-core MediaTek MT8783T processor with 2GB of RAM. The 32GB of storage is pretty standard however and there is an SD slot on the tablet to increase storage capacity. Although the model on display was not running the final software build, the tablet is reportedly sluggish and laggy.
So what we have a is a really good looking consumption device that could double as a small smart television. One could assume much more than that would bog the Xess down. There is also little doubt that all the unimpressive specs are there to keep the cost down in order to hit the rumored $700 – $800 price point, fueling the argument that this is in fact meant to be a consumer device instead of one meant to be written off as a business expense.
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[button link=”http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/hands-on-alcatel-onetouch-xess/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Digital Trends[/button]Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
