Toshiba Hopes Thrive Tablet’s Name Is Prophetic

I was honestly surprised to see Toshiba’s upcoming tablet, the Thrive, at Pepcom’s Digital Experience. To be honest, I’d forgotten it was announced. Now that I’ve handled it, I can’t get it out of my head.

The Thrive (release date unknown) looks like a typical 10.1″ tablet. Running a mostly virgin copy of Android Honeycomb 3.1 with a Tegra 2 under the hood, it has  the usual accelerometer, multi-touch, and front and rear cameras along with having Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Little flourishes include bundling Music beta by Google and including Flash support. Then there are the unique bits, and they’re quite nice.

For one thing, the Thrive has a built-in GPS, as well as a compass. I’m unsure of any other tablet without a cell radio that does GPS, so that makes a real added value. With Google Navigation free, you essentially get a 10.1″ free GPS for your car and without marrying yourself to a cell provider. Not a bad deal at all.

Another feature I absolutely love are the ports. While the Thrive has a proprietary docking connector, and a bunch of planned connections to use it, that’s not the end of it. The Thrive also has an HDMI port built right in, an SD card slot (not MicroSD – the larger sort), and here’s the kicker – a USB Mini and a full USB 2.0 port, the latter with USB hosting. That’s right, the Thrive supports external storage.

To accommodate this, Toshiba added a great file browser that manages content and media. We have it demo’ed in the video below and it’s great.

There’s also internal storage, which is another area where Toshiba has done something different. Instead of starting at 16 GB at $499, the base model is 8 GB at $429. While this may seem like a false savings at first, keep in mind that you could easily add a second 16 GB via the USB 2.0 port or via SD. In that case, why not start with less and lower.

The Thrive has a removable battery, something I very much applaud. There are removable swappable color backs, which I’m not as enthused over, but it still finds a way to make me smile because it gives me the ability to actually change a battery and maybe even carry a fully charged spare. The actual contours of the back feel great in the hand, and you don’t feel like it may slip.

Toshiba is throwing the Thrive out into a market where there are about to be a lot of different 10″ tablets each trying to show how they’re as good as, if not better than, the iPad. From what I’ve seen, the Thrive’s unique features honestly address the iPad’s few failings and does so with panache.

Let’s see if the marketplace agrees.

Caveat about video below: At one point the demo unit stopped responding and had to be replaced. We haven’t had time to edit the video, so we beg your patience. There’s a warning caption when the video gets to that point. We hope to have a better, edited copy for you later.

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7-_9q0dqd8&feature=channel_video_title’]

Update: Added a second video below!

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSzcZ1r6NKQ’]