Notion Ink Adam – design, specs and some features revealed

Notion’s Ink Adam prototype with Pixel Qi display was one of the attractions of this year’s CES in early January. And now, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, more details were unveiled on this device that will probably be one of the most expected gadgets of this year, as it brings some revolutionary technologies and promises lots of features and goodies. Thus, even Apple’s iPad should really tremble in front of it.

First, from the list of novelties we have on the Adam, here are the main specs:

• NVIDIA TEGRA 2 + Dual Core Cortex A-9 “MPCORE” CPU
• 16/32GB eMMC/SD memory
• WiFi b/g + 3G HSDPA + Bluetooth 2.1
• capacitive touchscreen 10.1” Pixel Qi display, 1024×600 (transmissive, transflective, and reflective display mode
• 3.2MP swiveling camera for front-facing or rear-facing photos/video
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• microphone and two speakers
• 2x USB 2.0
• HDMI output
• others: 3 axis accelerometer, ambient light sensor, A-GPS

The main attraction of the device is the Pixel Qi display, that has the unique feature to act as a regular LCD or as an e-ink ebook reader display when needed. Thus, if you turn backlighting ON, the device offers a color display that can run movies, music, etc. But, if you turn it OFF, you get a screen visible in direct light conditions that only needs a very low amount of energy to work. Sounds nice, ain’t it? And it also is, as we saw from the available presentation videos of the device. However, there might be some flaws on the technology. I can’t say anything for sure until I’ll get my hands on such a gadget somewhere on the future, but I’m expecting the device to be quite sluggish when playing video content and offer poorer colors reproduction than a regular LCD. Still, these are only suppositions for now.

Notion Ink Adam - preview picture

Anyway,, in terms of features and performances the device is amazingly good. Offers 1080p video playing (thanks to Nvidia’s Tegra 2 platform inside) and excellent web-browsing capabilities in all conditions. Not to mention it boosts quite some battery life (check it out in the picture below).

Video hands-on

There are a couple of video hands-on with the Notion Ink Adam you can find below. The first was sent to Slashgear in order to showcase the swiveling camera and to demonstrate that this device can play Flash clips (while regular netbooks can’t).

And the second is just an interview with one of the people involved in developing the device, that answers many of the question you might have about it. Although pretty long (around 6-7 minutes), i suggest you take a look at it (Thanks Technoholik for the clip).

Compared to the iPad

It’s obvious everyone will compare the Notion Ink Adam with Apple’s iPad, the most popular touch-tablet announced so far. You should check out the picture below for a short comparison between the two, and you’ll easily notice how the Adam is far superior on almost every aspect.

Apple's iPad vs Notion Ink's Adam

Like i told you, Apple should really fear this competitor.

So, as it seems right now, i’m pretty sure the Adam will become popular. However, there are a couple of variables still hanging in balance :

• how will the final product look (although we’ve seen many prototypes and mock-ups, design seems to have changed continuously in the last period. So, i really am looking to see a final version)
• the final price
• distribution methods (don’t forget Notion Ink is a virtually unknown company from India and their distribution and marketing schemes are no way a match for Apple’s power. Thus, even if the product will be amazing, if the producers won’t be able to join forces with some bigger brands, they might not have a chance on the big markets like the US one)

Anyway, that’s it for now. But stay tuned and don’t forget to subscribe, i’m pretty sure we’ll see more and more details on Notion Ink’s Adam in the net period and we’ll keep you updated once we find more.

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Tags: Pixel Qi, touch tablet

Last updated: February 15, 2010 | Published: February 15th, 2010 | Add the first comment!