While tablets may be all the rage this year, these devices still aren’t as functional as your everyday laptop. While some operating systems are optimized for touch from the ground up, it’s just easier to have a physical keyboard to get your work done. Sure, there are mounds of accessories you can buy for your new purchase, including keyboard docks, but what if the device had a keyboard built right into it? That’s exactly what Dell is doing with the tablet you see above and it actually doesn’t look terrible.
There’s very little known about this prototype above since all specs, including operating system, are unknown. While having a sliding physical keyboard on a 10 inch tablet may be too much, finding one on a 7 inch tablet may be just what the doctor ordered. 7 inch tablets are much easier to handle and are lighter than any 10 incher out there, so the extra weight for a keyboard may be more than tolerable. The split keyboard found on the device looks spacious and very usable, and to be honest we’re surprised to see this coming from Dell.
Dell’s tablet offerings have been a bit sub par to say the least, but after seeing its leaked roadmap, one can tell that the company is betting heavily on this emerging market. We can expect to see more Android tablets from the company as well as some Windows 8 devices down the line. As far as this particular tablet is concerned, either OS would likely benefit from this form factor.
The well designed tablet may pack a serious punch when we see some specs revealed, but until then we’ll have to keep dreaming. If it’s an Android tablet then we’ll no doubt find Dell’s Stage UI running on top, which is nice but offers very little functionality outside of some interesting widgets. If it’s a Windows 8 tablet then we’ll take what we can get, and since its release is still some time away we wouldn’t be surprised if this prototype saw some design changes before it debuts. May we suggest doing something with the center of the keyboard, like some awkward gaming controls?
[Via: GSMArena]