HTC, the once-impressive Android smartphone maker, has a surprise tablet to accompany its strange, metaverse-focused Desire 22 Pro. The new A101 is an Android tablet with a 10.1-inch display, basic specs and a design that’s straight out of the middle of the last decade. The device, which we spotted via AndroidPolice, appears to have been quietly announced last month – according to the Wayback Machine – and is aimed at the African market. It follows the A100 tablet, which was launched in Russia last year to a similar lack of response.
Given that the tablet seems to be marketed exclusively in emerging markets, I don’t want to be too snarky about its specs or design. But it’s still just weird to see HTC — the makers of literally the first Android phone and the company Google once entrusted with creating a Nexus-branded tablet (Nexus 9) — produce forgettable devices like this. The A101 even runs 2020’s Android 11 out of the box, instead of Android 12 or the big-screen-focused Android 12L.
It even works with an old version of Android
Internally, the HTC tablet is powered by a Unisoc T618 processor, with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage expandable via microSD. It has a pair of cameras on the back, a 16-megapixel primary camera with a 2-megapixel ultra-wide. There’s a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, 3.5mm headphone jack, 7,000mAh battery, and face unlock support on both models.
All in all, a very odd release from HTC. This is a company that once went toe-to-toe with the likes of Samsung in the flagship Android market. But now, in 2022, it can quietly reveal a completely unimpressive tablet on its website and most of the world won’t notice until days later.
Meanwhile, the smartphone design talent that HTC sold to Google in early 2018 has gone from strength to strength over the past few years. While the Pixel 4 is now considered a misstep, the Pixel 5 was a very capable mid-range phone and the Pixel 6 was a competitive flagship (albeit with seemingly more than its fair share of software bugs). In contrast, it’s getting harder and harder to tell what the rest of HTC’s smartphone division is working towards beyond vague buzzwords like “metaverse.”
Update July 5, 11:35 a.m. ET: Updated to note that the A101 tablet is new, but that the A100 tablet was released last year in Russia.
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