Sony pushes new tablet designs with two upcoming products

Sony is looking to avoid the crowd of me-too tablets with the newly announced S1 and S2 tablets. The company has taken the route of innovative hardware design to stand out from the growing crowd of Honeycomb-bearing tablets coming to market. The S1 has a unique wedge shape containing a 9.4-inch screen that Sony claims makes it more comfortable to hold, while the S2 borrows from the Kyocera Echo smartphone design by using two 5.5-inch displays on a folding hinge that goes from pocketable to full-size.

The company is not providing any pricing information, a key fact that can determine acceptance in the market. The two new tablets will not appear until later this year, either, which will see it land amdist a veritable sea of Android tablets.

It is refreshing to see Sony develop two new designs for its tablets, as unique is not a description that applies to most products in the pipeline. Other companies have taken the route of producing tablets with accessories that turn the slates into notebooks in an attempt to stand out from the crowd. Hopefully Sony's effort will stimulate other companies to push the envelope.