Lenovo launches its LePad tablet in China

Lenovo are the latest player to wade into the already crowded tablet market with the release of their LePad device.

Unfortunately, phase one of the LePad’s launch covers only China, with the device scheduled to reach UK shelves by June.

At the CES event in January, Lenovo announced that the LePad would be launched alongside a companion piece – the IdeaPad U1 – a device with a physical keyboard which would dock with the LePad and allow the device to double boot Windows 7 as well as Android. The current release has left observers puzzled as to when the U1 will become available.

Lenova have delayed the release of the U1 before; in January 2010 Lenovo announced that the IdeaPad U1 would be released in June of that year, now it appears that the tablet component will be first onto the shelves.

The LePad weighs around 2 pounds and features a 10.1-inch touchscreen display. Other features include a Qualcomm 1.2GHz Snapdragon processor, WiFi connectivity with 3G as an option, and 16GB of memory. A 32GB version is available with both WiFi or 3G and WiFi.

There was some speculation that Lenovo might upgrade the device run to Google’s latest Android platform, Honeycomb, before the release of the product, but it appears that this is not the case. The LePad runs Android 2.2, or ‘Froyo’, instead of the v.3.0, which is specifically optimised for tablet computers.

UK consumers can get their hands on the device from June.

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