HTC, the once-impressive Android smartphone manufacturer, has announced a new tablet to go along with its weird metaverse-focused Desire 22 Pro. The new A101 is an Android tablet with a 10.1-inch display, entry-level specifications, and a design that dates back to the mid-2000s. According to the Wayback Machine, the smartphone, which we discovered via AndroidPolice, was secretly unveiled last month and is aimed at the African market. It follows the A100 pill, which was issued last year in Russia to a similar lack of response.
Given that the tablet looks to be aimed mainly at emerging markets, we won’t be too harsh on its specifications or design. But it’s still strange to see HTC — creators of the first Android phone and a firm Google once entrusted to produce a Nexus-branded tablet (the Nexus 9) — producing such forgettable devices. The A101 even ships with 2020’s Android 11, rather than Android 12 or the big-screen-focused Android 12L.
HTC’s tablet is powered by a Unisoc T618 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage, which is extensible through microSD. It has two cameras on the back: a main 16-megapixel camera and a 2-megapixel ultrawide camera. Both variants have a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, a 3.5mm headphone socket, a 7,000mAh battery, and the capability for face unlock.
Overall, this is a strange HTC release. This is a firm that used to compete in the flagship Android market with the likes of Samsung. However, in 2022, it can secretly unveil a completely mediocre tablet on its website and most of the globe will not notice until days later.
Meanwhile, the smartphone design talent that HTC sold to Google in early 2018 has been growing steadily over the last few years. While the Pixel 4 is now considered a flop, the Pixel 5 was an excellent intermediate device, and the Pixel 6 was a competitive flagship (albeit one with seemingly more than its fair share of software bugs). In contrast, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to understand what HTC’s remaining smartphone division is working on beyond vague buzzwords like “metaverse.”
