The creators of the WikiPad have now announced a release date and price for the 7-inch gaming tablet and we now know it will be hitting shelves of retailers such as BestBuy and Walmart in the United States with a slight redesign next Tuesday with a $250 price tag.
Dedicated readers of the Gadget Helpline blog may recall our early coverage of the ambiguously titled touch-screen gadget called the ‘Wikipad’ which was making some noise at tech industry events throughout 2012. Originally appearing in January as a concept render, the convertible Android tablet was not related to the web-based information source as one might immediately expect with a name like that. But it was in fact a dedicated gaming platform with a beastly Tegra 3 quad-core processor and generous 7-inch 1280 x 800 pixel display. For storage the WikiPad comes with 16GB of internal memory with SD card support up to 32GB.
Designed for playtime, the WikiPad comes with a lightweight attachable outer casing complete with grips, thumb stick, D-pad and a button configuration that will be familiar to ‘serious’ console gamers. The tablet / handheld gaming system is even PlayStation certified and will come with access to Sony acquisition Gaikai – a streaming games services. Of course the core market place for WikiPad games will be the Google Play Store and a vast selection of Android 4.1 (and above) compatible games will be available, some of which will be optimised for WikiPad.
When the time for games is over, the tablet portion slips from the casing and offers a more natural tablet experience and all the usual Android features such as web browsing, social communications through Facebook and Twitter and general life tasks can be accomplished via the touchscreen and the WikiPad also boasts a reasonable 2-megapixel front facing camera.
The tablet alone will not be a big draw, but the gaming element of the WikiPad will certainly add appeal to the growing trend of mobile and tablet play through the Android platform when the gadget is released in the US on June 11th. We await news of a U.K and Europe release.