Earlier this week we reported that Lenovo was going to release a 10 inch Android Honeycomb tablet with ThinkPad branding in July. It looks like that wasn’t the only leak to come out from Lenovo, now we’re hearing that there’s going to be a 7 inch model as well; ThinkPad enthusiasts be warned, this tablet is for consumers and belongs to another product family. Said 7 inch device is supposed to pack a dual core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor inside and it’ll have the same 1280 x 800 resolution screen that many 10 inch tablets due to come out this summer will have. If you’re a pixel density whore, then prepare to salivate. No word on how much it’ll cost, and the release date is a bit vague sounding, “end of Q3, start of Q4”, but hey, if you want something that’s smaller than the 10 inch standard that the mobile industry is crowding around, then you’ll wait however long it takes to get this puppy.
If we had to give you any advice on tablets in general however, we’re going to say skip Honeycomb for now and wait to see how Google is going to improve it. Remember when Android shipped in the fall of 2008 and how it was appallingly bad? It took several versions for it to get even remotely user friendly, and today it’s become on the most popular smartphone operating systems. The same is probably going to take place with Honeycomb, which is a first try at making an iPad competitor, but falling a bit short. If you absolutely need a tablet, and that word “need” is pushing it since you only really need a mobile phone and computer and none of this third screen business, then pick up a used iPad off eBay, unless you’re loaded, then get a brand spanking new iPad 2.