ViewSonic To Show 4G Tablet/Phone At CES?

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A few days ago, I wrote a post outlining five things I expected to see at CES this year. When I tweeted the link to that article on my Twitter feed, the ViewSonic corporate account replied to me and said that I’d be able to see almost all my predictions at their booth. I scoured my list and tried to figure out which ones it wouldn’t be. I assumed, no 4G phones, after all, ViewSonic is just a monitor company. Not so fast – the Wall Street Journal is reporting that ViewSonic is going to introduce a 4G Android tablet/phone at CES next week.

The Wall Street Journal calls it a hybird phone/tablet, but the alleged 4-inch screen size really isn’t anything to write home about, considering we’ve seen bigger phones and tablets. In addition to that ViewSonic will be showing two other tablets, according to the WSJ. ViewSonic introduced their 10-inch G Tablet this year, an Android tablet running on NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 technology. Despite an appealing price point, many seemed to be discouraged by the user interface on the device. While ViewSonic isn’t a brand name (outside of monitors) like a Sony or Samsung, the fit and finish of their tablets has gotten high marks from critics.

Further, the WSJ article says that the tablet will connect to 4G networks. Apparently, the source didn’t specify if it was Verizon’s or Sprint’s (or T-Mobile’s) 4G network. The folks at IntoMobile seem to believe that could mean the ViewSonic tablet could do 4G for multiple networks. That would be crazy, and I sort of doubt it.

I think a lot of people may dismiss ViewSonic as a company that’s trying to cash in on the tablet market by slapping Android on some cheap hardware. But, the build-quality of their first-gen tablets was well received and I think they could be a player in this market, for example, they’ve already gotten their tablets at a nice price and featured in stores like Office Depot and other places that ‘regular’ people shop. We’ll be stopping by the ViewSonic booth next week when we’re at CES, and if they’ve got this 4G tablet there, we’ll report about it. Keep us in your RSS feeds for the latest.