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Lenovo Thinkpad business Android tablet officially announced [video]

This is definitely the Lenovo day of tablets, as we already wrote about the Ideapad P1 Windos 7 tablet and now we’re at the Lenovo ThinkPad business tablet, leaked in official photos yesterday together with the Ideapad K1, which we’ll talk about again later during the day.

So, let’s see what Lenovo thinks an Android business tablet should be like. First there’s simple look that reminds of company’s Thinkpad laptops. This is a love or hate design. Personally I like it a lot, but make no mistake, this is no consumer tablet, that’s for sure, so the iPad 2 is safe.

Lenovo Thinkpad tablet specs

Once you open up the box of the Lenovo Thinkpad you’re greeted with a black square design, very familiar to Thinkpad owners. The 10 inch tablet spots the same specs as the majority of tablets sold today with Honeycomb: 1280 x 800 pixels IPS screen, Tegra 2 CPU @1 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 16/32/64 GB storage options as well as two cameras (2MP front and 5MP back capable of 720p recording). But from here we start to see some major differences: Gorilla Glass protective layer with an N-trig screen digitizer (the optional stylus is pressure sensitive), a full size USB port together with microUSB, mini HDMI and micro SD slot plus options SIM slot.

Lenovo ThinkPad tablet with optional stylus

There are even 4 dedicated hardware buttons for Android 3.1 Honeycomb, the version installed on the Thinkpad Tablet. A 24.1 Watt hour 3250 mAh battery is said to offer almost 9 hours of battery life with WiFi turned on. WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS are your wireless connectivity options with 3G to be added later on. The 14 mm thick tablet weights 715 grams, while another 15 grams will be added by the 3G modem. A dock connector on the bottom will be use to dock the tablet in a charging station that apparently adds another USB port. For $99 you’ll be able to get a Keyboard portfolio case with a full size keyboard (chiclet variety similar to the one on the Lenovo Ideapad laptops) and an optical trackpoint. The keyboard docks via the USB port mentioned before and the angle of the screen can be adjusted in a few predefined positions.

The Portfolio Keyboard Case for Thinkpad tablet

Lenovo’s custom apps and app shop for the Thinkpad tablet

Each tablet manufacturer likes to personalize its product with some kind of apps, and the ThinkPad tablet is no different, as it comes with quite a few useful third party apps, some of which very good. Here’s a short list: Documents to Go (suite for editing Word, Powerpoint, Excel file and viewing PDF files, $30 value offered for free), MyScript Notes Mobile (notes taking and handwriting conversion to text, finally), USB Data Transfer Utility (copy files to/from USB flash drives connected to the Thinkpad Tablet), Lenovo Launch Zone (customizable shortcuts widget), Lenovo Social Touch (suite of widgets for PopMail, Google Maps, Google Calendar and a few others), Favorite Apps (displays some kind of carousel of most used apps), User Data and SD card encryption (self-explanatory) and WiFi Import and Export (transfer utility for Windows 7 systems).

Besides those apps there’s Lenovo’s App Shop, basically an Android application store with titles tested by Lenovo for compatibility and security. If you want piece of mind and are afraid of all the nasty malware apps you can download from the Google Android Marketplace you might want to limit yourself to download only apps from the App Shop. Probably in the future Lenovo will add its own business apps there.

Lenovo provides a few accessories to choose from

Pricing and availability

Preorders for the Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet will start on August 2nd and shipping should begin later the same month. There will be three versions: 16, 32 and 64 GB, all WiFi, starting at $499. The active digitizer stylus will set you back another $30. If you want the 3G versions you’ll have to wait a little bit more, but Lenovo didn’t provide any estimates.