Fusion Garage (TabCo) Grid10 tablet - Better than you'd expect

We were honestly not very sure what to expect from the Fusion Garage Grid10 because the company’s previous tablet effort, the JooJoo, was not worth writing home about. After spending some time with the Android-ish Grid10 device, I think it’s clear to say that it’s better than you’d expect but it will still face numerous challenges.

The Grid10 features a 10.1-inch screen with a widescreen 1366×768 resolution and there’s a large bezel area to do gestures like on the BlackBerry PlayBook. That’s right, even though the GridOS is built off the Android kernal, this is something different from Google’s platform. Fusion has done a good job of creating its own spin.

The homescreen is a series of icons on a grid that you can customize with different apps and shapes – it’s familiar but not the icons in a row we’ve grown accustomed to. While there’s no Android Market, you can use the Amazon App Store to load Android apps but there may be some problems with app compatibility down the line. You’ll also be able to have your choice of other Android app stores, as well as Fusion Garage’s Grid store.

The bezel’s are touch sensitive and the gestures help you interact with the platform. Using two fingers to swipe from the top will bring you to the homescreen (with a nice animation), that swipe from the left will bring up the notification screen and lets you switch between apps and the swipe from the left is essentially the back button. The browser is a WebKit-based web surfer which uses wheels from the bottom corners to help you navigate. Zooming and scrolling were very responsive and smooth, which is much, much better than on the JooJoo.

The physical design of the Grid10 is actually quite nice, as it feels like a well-put together piece of hardware. It’s sleek and thin enough but some of you who love the brushed aluminum feel of tablets may not like the plastic-like backing. The only real physical button I saw was the power button, as volume and other features were controlled with on-screen buttons.

The video and images below should give you a good idea of what the Grid10 and GridOS are (we also played with the phone): a solid attempt at bringing innovation to this space with some new design elements. It’s more of a mashup of Android, QNX and webOS than a brand new platform but that doesn’t mean that’s a bad thing.

I fear that at the price ($499 intro), the Grid10 is going to get slaughtered by the iPad and some of the other Honeycomb tablets from the major manufacturers. It’s just going to be too tough to get the ecosystem built up to fully make the Grid10 a success but I’m very happy to see Fusion Garage get off to a good start with a good product.

About The Author

Marin Perez

Marin Perez has torture tested cell phones and smartphones for industry leaders like CNET and InformationWeek. He remembers when 4G was just a screen on PowerPoint presentations and is fascinated with the amount of innovation out there. Marin has spent a lot of time with BlackBerry and Android but he finally broke down a bought an iPhone to see what all the hype's about. He also has too many tablets.

Tyler

Interesting but looks buggy as hell. You can see he had constant issues throughout the demonstration.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=113492765344092 Hugo Pinto

Grid 10 vs Asus Transformer
Grid 10 – $499 – 16GBCPU – Nvidia Tegra II 1.2Ghz Dual Core
RAM – 512MBDisplay Type10.1″ TFT LCD (1366 x 768)
4 points Capacitive Touch Panel

Transformer – $399 – 16GB (you can get it cheaper now)
CPU – Nvidia Tegra II 1Ghz Dual Core – My Transformer is running @ 1.4GHz rock stable
RAM – 1GB
Display Type10.1″ IPS LED Backlight WXGA (1280 x 800)
10 finger multi-touch support
Scratch resistant glass – Gorilla Glass

As far as I’m concerned, the Transformer beats it on EVERYTHING including price.
The only thing the Grid 10 has that the Transformer doesn’t is 3G. I don’t need it.
Battery life is not mentioned, but I don’t believe it comes close to the 10h+ I am getting on the Transformer, Tablet only, almost double that if I’m using the Keyboard dock.

Sorry TabCo / Fusion Garage.
Your Tablet is just along list of FAIL, and I’m not even mentioning your so called OS.

You’d be better off just selling your UI as an add on (like a launcher) on Android Market and Amazon App Store.
Mvz

Hugo Pinto just sneaked a commercial on your website for another crappy tablet
http://www.tehdik.com tehdik

Whoa you got a meeting with Mr. CrunchPad! Cool.
Anonymous

Yeah, it’s relatively smooth but in order for this to even have a chance it needs to perform flawlessly. It doesn’t
Anonymous

Yeah, it’s relatively smooth but in order for this to even have a chance it needs to perform flawlessly. It doesn’t
Anonymous

Yeah, it’s relatively smooth but in order for this to even have a chance it needs to perform flawlessly. It doesn’t
Anonymous

Yeah, I’m actually a big fan of the Transformer
Anonymous

Yeah, I’m actually a big fan of the Transformer
Anonymous

Yeah, I’m actually a big fan of the Transformer
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=113492765344092 Hugo Pinto

Crappy? Have you tried it?

I compared it to the product shown in this post.
I can compare it to the iPad2 if you like. Unfortunately I have to deal with iPads and iPhones on a daily basis at work.
Yes, the Transformer is way better than the iPad2.
http://www.intomobile.com/ Simon Sage

They get points for originality, at least.