A look at Sony's first Android tablet; A gadget with a strange design and PlayStation games
Sony's first Android tablet, the Sony Tablet S, failed to achieve much success despite its attractive features and use of the PlayStation name. Are you familiar with this tablet?
If you are a little older, you must remember the time when Sony collaborated with the Swedish company Ericsson and launched the popular Sony Ericsson line of phones.
In the first years of Sony's cooperation with Ericsson, there was no news of Android and the Symbian operating system was the main option for most mobile phones at that time.
Memorable Sony Ericsson phones with a lot of focus on the camera and playing music were provided to users and became a popular choice for many of them. However, these two big companies finally decided to abandon Symbian and use Android.
Of course, in addition to the phones it jointly produced with Ericsson, Sony had launched several attractive gadgets with the SONY brand, and in particular, it tried to have a successful presence in the Android gadget market with its new and attractive tablet in 2011.
In this regard, today we will examine the history of Sony Android tablets and take a brief look at the past of this company in the field of tablet manufacturing.
Tablet S (Tablet S); Sony's first Android tablet equipped with Honeycomb Android
Sony's first Android tablet was Tablet S, which used an optimized version of Android Honeycomb for tablets.
This device had an asymmetric design that looked like a folded magazine from the side; So that the thickness of one side was 20.6 mm and the thickness of the other side was 10.1 mm.
Sony Tablet S
Sony's reasoning for using this design in its first tablet was its good ergonomics and easy handling.
The Sony Tablet S had a 9.4-inch screen that uses TFT LCD panels and offers a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels and an aspect ratio of 16:10.
The weight of Sony Tablet S was 625 grams.
As always, the screen was the lifeblood of Sony's tablet. This screen was accompanied by two stereo speakers, and by providing excellent hardware and software capabilities, it was considered an ideal option for watching videos and listening to music.
The Sony tablet was also equipped with the Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited applications by default, and it also used the Sony Reader program to read ebooks.
According to the standard of those days, Sony also equipped its first Android tablet with an infrared transmitter so that it can be used as a TV control. In addition, DLNA support also provided users with the ability to stream screen content on a TV or external display through a local wireless network.
In addition, Sony's game and entertainment department had close cooperation in the production of this tablet; So that the Sony tablet S was equipped by default with two games Crash Bandicoot and Pinball Heroes, both of which were exclusive and popular games of PlayStation 1.
PlayStation game
Sony android tablet
Sony's Android tablet was also launched with the PlayStation Certified label . The meaning of this label was that this tablet had an official PlayStation emulator and a separate store to access some PlayStation console games.
This support was exactly similar to the system that was implemented in the Xperia Play handset/handheld console.
Sony Tablet S uses the Nvidia Tegra 2 chip, which was equipped with two Cortex A9 chipsets with a clock speed of 1 GHz and a GeForce graphics processor.
On the other hand, Xperia Play uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon S2 chip.
Shortly after its launch, Sony's first Android tablet gained the ability to support DualShock 3 wireless controllers through a software update, thus providing a much better gaming experience.
Dual shock handle
It should be noted that none of the PSX games available in the dedicated store of this tablet were optimized for the touch control system. Therefore, before this update, the quality of the games was not much defined.
Shortly after, in 2012, Sony stopped supporting classic PSX titles on its new console and instead decided to bring exclusive content to the platform.
For this, the Japanese company signed several contracts with 46 Japanese game companies and 39 developers in other parts of the world to produce exclusive games for this tablet and PlayStation Mobile platform and provide them to its owners. These game studios include Sega, FromSoftware, THQ, Arch System Works, Nippon Ichi, Tecno Koei, Team 17 and others.
Sony also gave the PlayStation Certified label to some other devices such as HTC One X, One S and One V and several Asus devices to develop its PlayStation Mobile platform.
Sony's goal was to dominate the mobile game market; A market that has reached the value of 91.8 billion dollars in 2022, which is higher than the total value of consoles and PC!
Mobile games market
Of course, taking into account that many of you probably have not heard the name PlayStation Certified, Sony's efforts in this field can be considered unsuccessful!
Tablet P (Tablet P); Unique design but not so beautiful!
Sony Tablet S was one of the two tablets that this company unveiled in 2011!
The other product of this Japanese giant was Tablet P, which was launched several months after Tablet S and remained in the minds of many people with its unique design.
This device had a two-piece design that consisted of two separate 5.5-inch screens with a resolution of 1024 x 480 pixels. This unique design, at that time, followed an idea similar to today's folding screens.
Opening the device, the two screens side by side offered a size of nearly seven inches; Of course, if we did not consider the distance between them in the open state!
Sony Tablet P
In addition, some applications also recognized the two-piece screen and divided their user interface into two halves and displayed it equally on the upper and lower parts.
When the tablet was closed, it was 28 mm thick and with a weight of 372 grams, it turned into a cumbersome and large product. However, its design made it much easier to slip into a pocket or bag than a typical 7-inch tablet.
Of course, Tablet P was not a very suitable product for multimedia and entertainment uses, but it used the same Nvidia Tegra 2 chip used in Tablet S and was launched with the PlayStation Certified label.
However, for some unknown reason, the tablet was unable to connect to the DualShock wireless handles.
At first glance, the Sony Tablet P seemed to be an ideal option to compete with the Nintendo DS. However, during the lifetime of this device, no specific software emulator was developed for this tablet.
However, some videos at the time reported playing Mario Kart on this device; Although this issue was not widespread.
Thus, Sony's first and second Android tablets never achieved the success that Sony had hoped for. These tablets were, of course, the beginning of Sony's not so successful adventure in the mobile game market.
Of course, in the future, Sony also launched PSP and PlayStation Vita handheld consoles, which, despite their high appeal and great features, could never become a competitor to Nintendo and this company's great handheld consoles.
A similar thing happened to Tablet S, Tablet P and Sony Xperia Play.
Of course, a large part of the failure of these two Sony tablets was related to the not so good condition of Android at that time.
Around 2011, the situation of Android tablets was very poor and the companies active in this field could never produce a product of the size and size of Apple's iPad.
Therefore, at that time, users were not very receptive to Android tablets.
Project Q Sony; Another failure or a new beginning for Sony?
It seems that Sony is not disappointed with its efforts in the field of mobile gaming and is still trying to be active in this market. In this regard, this company unveiled its new handheld console known as Project Q some time ago.
This tablet consists of an 8-inch LCD screen with a resolution of 1080p and a refresh rate of 60 Hz. In addition, there are dual sense handles on both sides of this tablet.
Project Q PlayStation
Of course, this tablet is not going to receive exclusive content from Sony and will only be used to stream PlayStation 5 games.
Meanwhile, the important question here is whether PlayStation Q will become a more successful product than Xperia Play or not?
Obviously, the PlayStation 5 console has achieved stunning success in the market, and this issue can be a successful start for this handheld console.
However, it should be noted that everything the PlayStation Q offers can be done with a regular Android phone and the PS Remote Play app. This application is even able to support dual sense categories. Therefore, you can practically experience all PS5 games via streaming with any Android phone!
Sony's other efforts in the Android tablet market
Of course, Sony has made many efforts in the past years in the field of manufacturing and supplying Android tablets. For example, Xperia Tablet S is one of these Sony tablets that has similarities to Sony Tablet S in terms of design; But despite the fact that it was launched only one year after the first Sony Android tablet, it has a much more modern look!
Xperia tablet S
In general, the Android tablet market is still not in a very good condition; So that even Microsoft's Surface Duo tablet, which was unveiled with two separate screens, could not achieve a particular success in this market.
In this context, of course, we have recently seen the unveiling and release of powerful Android gaming tablets to the market, which can create a bright future for the tablet market.
From this category of products, we can mention the Red Magic tablet and of course the Acer Predator 8, which was released in 2015.
In conclusion, it should be noted that none of Sony's initial efforts in the Android tablet market were wrong; Rather, they were launched ahead of schedule! At that time, Android was not yet ready for the release of this category of tablets, and for that reason, they were not well received.
However, if Sony's Project Q tablet can become a successful product, Sony may once again bring the option of making Android tablets back to the table!