Sorry to inflict the photo on you (which comes via the phone of Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC's technology correspondent). But it seemed important just to prove that I'd been there and done that.
Done what? Got a hands-on experience with the tablet from Next. Yes, Next the clothing people, not Next the bought-by-Apple-and-took-it-over people. It had been lent to Cellan-Jones, and while we awaited Steve Ballmer at the LSE, I had a quick play.
Next is offering the tablet, which it's simply calling the "Next 10" tablet" (snappy naming, fashion folk) for what looks like the killer price of £180. Only £180!
First things first: it's a 10" screen, though it's longer and wider than the iPad. It runs Android - allegedly.
Allegedly? Well, when you press the power button, the word "Android" keeps being highlighted as it powers up. And then you're at a screen which looks much like the iPad's: a few icons on the bottom, and a restful background picture.
"Try to do something," suggested Cellan-Jones. So I thought I'd peek at his mail, and touched the Mail icon.
Nothing happened. I pressed again. After a while, a file manager - from the adjacent icon - came up. Puzzled, I looked for an exit icon. There wasn't one. I resorted to the "home" button (now on the side of the device, as I was holding it in landscape mode). That took me to a screen with none of the icons of the starting screen, and a three-icon tab on the right. Er.. OK.
Press the middle of the icons, which looked like an icon arrangement: ah, that brings up the screens that available, in a sort of Apple Exposé manner.
Ah.. progress? But choosing or touching any of the screens did nothing. A few more prods and it gave up - nothing would get it to react. Seriously, if that's Android on a tablet, there's trouble ahead.
My recommendation: do not buy this item unless you have tried it out thoroughly in a shop, and found out whether you can crash it (as I did in 30 seconds).
You think that I'm some sort of death to devices after my Nokia S^3 hands-on comments? Not at all. Here's another review via Androidcommunity:
"PDA-247 bought one, and found it unbearably slow, that the battery lasted a mere 30 minutes of web browsing, and that the download application – not the Android Market – ended up hiding the software it had installed so you couldn't actually run it."
Oh, but it gets better:
Meanwhile the preloaded OfficeSuite app is in Chinese with no apparent settings to change that, and media loaded onto the bundled 8GB microSD card from a computer than couldn't be recognized on the tablet itself. In short, save your money.
I'd concur.
• Meanwhile, those who go violently apoplectic (Appleplectic?) at a mention of Steve Jobs's company look away now. The iPad is currently selling 4.5 million units per quarter, according to a new study by Bernstein Research – surpassing the adoption rate of both the iPhone and the DVD player. As we well know, Apple sold 3m iPad units in the first 80 days after its April release; Samsung has today said it hopes to sell 1m Galaxy Tab units before year-end – 87 days away.
