With just a few days off until IFA Berlin 2010 starts up, Viewsonic officially announced the ViewPad 7 (which we’ve talked about already), a 7 inch Android tablet running software version 2.2. Viewsonic prides itself with the full phone functionality of the ViewPad 7 (full SIM card also supported), but I have to question this, as I already know a 5 inch tablet is too big to act as a phone without a bluetooth headset, which is not offered by default with this tablet.

    Another thing we must question is the 600 MHz ARM CPU and the slightly lower screen resolution (800 x 480 pixels) compared to that of the iPad. I have to admit that the tablet looks great in the press photos below, but design might not be enough for ViewSonic to secure significant market share.

    One other thing I’m sure you guys are curious about is pricing. Viewsonic didn’t comment precisely on this matter, but say their ViewPad 7 tablet won’t cost more than 350 £ (~540 $). Even if the ViewPad 7 packs WiFi, 3G, along with A-GPS , USB and Bluetooth plus accelerometer for screen rotation I bet that won’t be enough to compete with the iPad. Only time will tell if I’m right.

    Nice design for ViewPad 7

    Nice design for ViewPad 7

    Looks nice in hand

    Looks nice in hand

    Update: And here we have a short video hands on with the Viewsonic ViewPad 7, which shows a pretty nice put together tablet:

    Update 2: You can preorder it right now from Amazon