I’m pretty happy that @denogoh likes to cover Android but I was pretty sad to see that some of the arguments he made regards to the A500 where just wrong or could be misinformation. This article came out in the Brunei Times on Wednesday 18th May 2011. Below is a screenshot of the E-Paper version
the A500 has a proper-sized USB slot. The list of things you could do with this fabulous gadget include transferring files from pendrive or external harddisk, plug a dongle for Internet wherever you go in the world, very easily find a cable to connect to whatever you want to connect it to)
Just because there is a USB port doesn’t mean it will support any USB device: it needs the necessary drivers for the OS to communicate with the USB device. For instance, there is no mouse support yet (but is supposed to come soon with an over-the-air upgrade). It seems some people are working to get a 3G USB dongle to work with some success but it doesn’t look like something for a regular user.
not to mention it’s quite light (lighter than the iPad 2)
But it is not lighter than the iPad 2 which according to Apple specs is 1.33pounds (601g) for the Wi-Fi only model and 1.35 pounds (613g) for Wi-Fi+3G model. The Acer Iconia A500 is “0.4 pounds heavier than the iPad 2” according to Laptopmag.com while Gigaom reports the weight to be 1.69 pounds and Carrypad reports: 765g. All 3 different sources say that it is heavier.
The video capabilities of the tab is not something to boast about as well, but you do get 1080p later this year
While it does not support extra codecs, the standard H264 in MP4 format, AAC, MP3 should all work fine and they are the typical formats available: similar to the iPad 2. Otherwise software decoding could be used though players like RockPlayer Lite to play files that is not initially supported. Currently 720p output is available with 1080p output to come in the future.
Currently the A500 32GB version is going for B$728 at Concepts which is cheaper than a 32GB iPad at B$798 (however there is a 16GB iPad2 which is cheaper, currently it seems that the 16GB A500 is not brought in). @mfirdaus and I will try do a (possible live stream) video later doing an overview of Honeycomb and the device itself
The Wheat Field 