It took almost half a year for Lenovo to
bring IdeaTab S2110 from the reveal at CES to the shelves and it’s almost
unchanged. But regardless of the loud fanfare, at the beginning, the company
chose to make the way for this tablet to the market silently, even before the
official release at IFA. At that time, Asus had succeeded in releasing a new
hybrid tablet, Transformer Pad TF300 – a competitor having custom keyboard providing
similar 10-inch, 1,280x800 screen and Android 4.0 experience, along with
quad-core Tegra 3 microprocessor.
While the model of Lenovo might not have 4
cores or the full version of Ice Cream Sandwich, it has 4-core S4 inside which
is very modern, running at 1.5GHz and supported by 1GB RAM. Besides, the tablet
also equipped with 1.3MP camera on the front and 5MP camera on the rear which
are capable of recording 1,080p video. Other technical specs include radio for
WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0, battery which is evaluated up to 10 hours of browsing (up
to 20 hours when connecting to dock) and 16GB or 32GB of built-in storage. With
430 USD for the basic model, it’s arranged as a high-end alternative for TF300.
Added with dock and full storage, you’re looking at 580 bucks. So, is this a
“too little, too late” case of Lenovo? Can S2110 be able to entice the hesitant
customer from the models having the same technical specs? Stay tuned when we’re
trying to answer all of those questions.
It
took almost half a year for Lenovo to bring IdeaTab S2110 from the reveal at
CES to the shelves and it’s almost unchanged
Hardware
S2110 can be best described as simple. You
don’t necessarily like the hardware, but that doesn’t make it faulty. On the
other hand, the unknown appearance of the tablet creates a mistaken impression
about the relative lightness and hardness. In simple words, the tablet of Lenovo
seems like it’s going to be heavy, but in fact it surprises us with the 0.34-inch
thick (8.69mm) and 1.28-pound (580g) frame – more compact than TF300, which
thickness is 0.38 inch and weight is 1.39 pound. It even beats Samsung Galaxy
Tab 2 10.1, with only-0.01inch thinner appearance. It will be good news to any
customer who wants to make this thing become an essential part of the living
room, because it’s easy for normal hold and use.
S2110
can be best described as simple
In terms of industrial design, this tablet
has the same thing of a crew-cut hair style. The neat front is completely suitable
with the utilities of the back. There’re lots of bezels surrounding the 10inch
screen which will keep your big toes sitting comfortably at the position they
belong. However, in terms of security, working safety and effectiveness,
they’re mainly missing. The rough, comfortable back suddenly ends at the edges
instead of curving slightly to the front, creating hard lines pressing against
your palms. It’s an annoyance that become noticeable when you use it in
portrait mode, but fortunately it’s a tablet which is made for holding in landscape
mode or using with dock. Along the end of the device is the place you to find the
micro-USB port reinforced on the sides by the rectangle slots for the custom
keyboard dock. Above this one, and siting at the center under the screen is the
logo of Lenovo, while 3.5mm headphone jack, mini-HDMI and fake SIM slot whit
cover (unavailable for the American model) sit on the left of the tablet. Volume
rocker sits on the opposite side and the power button is on par with the tablet
frame on the top left.
In
terms of industrial design, this tablet has the same thing of a crew-cut hair
style
Turn the tablet belly upside down and you
will face a hard plastic layer making room for a piece of Lenovo brand and 5MP camera
module of the tablet. If you’re wondering where the speaker of S2110 is,
they’re placed quite privately at the edges of the tablet – just slots sitting
on the place where your hand will sit in landscape mode. We prefer to see this
settings facing forward, and thanks to that, heading the sound toward users,
but the volume isn’t weaken much.
S2110 has IPS screen with excellent viewing
angle. Yes, there’s dazzle on that 1,280x800 screen and it attracts lots of
dirty finger slim, but not as much as on other tablets we recently saw. You
will have to max out brightness to see the content of the screen while in
direct sunlight, but you should find shady places to have full clarity.
Software
While its closest competitor, TF300, entertains
users by vanilla on Android, Lenovo expects to see users choose S2110 instead
of its brand, and the optional experience works pretty well. Building on that
is LeLauncher: a collection of rectangle utilities arranged in 4x2 grid which
embraces hot fields like Life, Social, Games, Media, Tools, Business and some
others. They mainly work as big-sized, customizable folders for classified apps
that will expand when tapping. Honestly, it doesn’t add much beside the private
folder function of ICS, though it creates clearer and neater demonstration.
Maybe it’s a lighter stroll on Android rather than what Lenovo tested on the Android
tablets before.
What you will realize almost immediately is
the 3D-cube animation which is deployed by Lenovo all over the OS. Every transition
is marked by a slow transition which makes the tablets seems to be paralyzed.
It’s unnecessary and can be ignored if it’s not also used in app drawer. Unfortunately,
there’s no option to disable it from the inside of settings, so if you buy this
tablet, you’ll be stuck with it.
What
you will realize almost immediately is the 3D-cube animation which is deployed
by Lenovo all over the OS.
When mentioning “custom experience”, we’re
actually mistaking the technological terminology. Spam software, Floating software.
Whatever you like to name it, S2110 is full with it. Maybe the company
considers including 28 pre-loaded apps is the way to increase its value. One
third of these apps are games – not the attracting ones which have PS Mobile certificate,
but the games such as Solitaire, Hearts and Vendetta Online. The rest is a mess
consisting of Zinio, AccuWeather, SugarSync, Shazam and News Republic, vv. (Curiously,
the company also pre-loaded Lenovo App Shop regardless of stopping that service
at the end of the past September). Disappointedly, they can’t be uninstalled,
just disabled and hidden from our view.
