Much like the Iconia Tab A500, the A60 features a 10.1-inch touchscreen display with 1280 x 800 resolution, 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 5-megapixel rear-facing auto-focus camera, 2-megapixel front-facing camera, and 16GB of internal storage expandable with built-in SD card slot.

It will come running Android 3.1 Honeycomb out of the box and features your usual WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and two USB ports. It’s 6520mAh battery is rated for up to 8 hours. All sounds good, but the tablet is set for Canada with a a $400 CAD price tag, equivalent to about $404 USD, and it’s available now at Future Shop.

[via Engadget]

Nearly every single week, you’ll find a new set of devices on sale with a 2-year contract attached on any of the 4 contract-based brands working with the Target brand. All four of the biggest mobile carriers are included, blue, pink, yellow, and red, the lot of them, then Target also carries off-contract devices as well. These off-contract brands (Virgin Mobile, for example) are displayed to the right of the main smartphone wall in a separate section that lets the consumer know that these devices aren’t on par with the main four brands – not necessarily bad for either camp, but they certainly are separate.

The endcap generally holds four smartphones, though if you take a look today you’ll likely find three smartphones and an LTE USB modem from Verizon. At least seven manufacturers of devices are carried by Target, though those working with Android appear to be given the upper hand being shown at the top left of the cellphone collection, with brands like Nokia and BlackBerry being closer to the bottom right. As you browse the physical Target store (as we’ve been speaking about thus far) you’ll find little differentiation between carriers of devices, instead showing all smartphones in a mixed configuration on the whole. The iPhone 4 is featured amongst these Android devices with a slightly different display – note though that none of these smartphones are working units, having instead simple behind-display printed images or nothing at all to show on their screen.

The iPad 2 is prevalently featured one or two aisles in and away from the smartphones. Aside the iPad 2 display is a similar format display showing off several iPod devices. While the iPod display is the same as the iPad 2 display (the original iPad has taken a back seat since the iPad 2 was released, but Target does still sell them online), the iPad 2 display has a working unit playing a display-only in-store demonstration video. Another aisle or two away is a display of two Android tablets with one or both of them having a clear plastic shield over them so that they may not be worked with by customers. This is also true of the iPad 2 and all of the iPods, each of these Apple products being shown behind a large plastic cover.

As far as promoting the Target brand THROUGH Mobile, check out this excerpt from the Target Annual Report 2010 for stock investors:

We are rapidly expanding MOBILE AND WEB SOLUTIONS for our guests, giving them greater convenience by allowing them to shop from just about anywhere in the world. Mobile Commerce Daily named Target “2010 Mobile Retailer of the Year.”

In addition to being able to shop the Target Brand from the internet and have it shipped to your home, you can check out the Target Mobile app for several different platforms now, your Target addiction fully encouraged as the consumer grabs a weekly ad with little to no effort on their part. On this same note, the way the Target on mobile devices method is being promoted to stock investors, reports you’ll find showing only the iPhone and the iPad 2, while online, customers are treated to Apple iOS devices as well as Android in the main promo images.

Designers working for Target are given press images of all of the mobile devices they’ll be working with for advertisements and coupon announcements each week, and all devices are shown in their purest form with the carrier name of each device displayed on their screens — occasionally this rule is broken with a basic press-release-style homescreen shown off instead. On the whole, Target uses straight up Helvetica fonts in several different weights and colors (mostly red and black) to write about all of their products, mobile devices included.

Tablets

Back in June, yours truly took some issue with the way the two Android tablets, Motorola XOOM and Acer Iconia Tab A500, were being displayed. You can read that story over on Android Community if you wish, but here’s the skinny: these two tablets were out, clamped by metal talons and available for the touching, but were not plugged into power sources of any kind. Thusly they were off, and if a person familiar with either tablet were to tap the power button they’d find that the tablets were either completely or nearly out of power, this resulting in what every Target electronics employee that I’ve spoken with over the past few months has described as little to no sales.

This is no way to promote any piece of gear, much more important is the on-state of these particular gadgets because tablet computing is still relatively new and, though everyone and their mother has likely touched an iPad before, Android tablets were (and still are) mysterious to the public. Since that time, Target has wised up slightly by actually having power cords running to both tablets. They now both show display-only videos – if you’re lucky – though now there are plastic covers over both tablets so that the consumer cannot mess around with the tablet at will. Of course they’ve not taken the time to cover the power buttons again, so any hooligan can turn the tablets off then on again if they wish, revealing a ready-to-use yet inaccessible tablet computer to cry over.

In addition, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is now available at your local Target location, but you wont find it on display. You can find it down the aisle in the glass-fronted and locked cabinet with the rest of the electronics that, in contrast with the Galaxy Tab, are available for the browsing in the rest of the aisle. How many Galaxy Tab 10.1 units do you think Target has sold in-store? Though they’ve improved their situation with power feeds so that they can be ON during the day, how many XOOM and Iconia Tab A500 units do you think Target sells in-store?

The iPad is a different situation. Though the fault of almost certain lackluster current and future Android tablet sales rest on both the shoulders of the manufacturers as well as Target in this case, Apple has provided the world with much more than adequate incentive for people to purchase an iPad 2 or an iPod of any sort. Apple has promoted the iPad 2 (and the original iPad) not as a tablet computer, but as an iPad. You may have a tablet computer, says society at large, but if you don’t have an iPad, you simply do not have an iPad. The same is and has been true about iPods of all sorts since the beginning. An MP3 player is like wearing a piece of tire as a sandal compared to Apple’s iPod, much closer to a high-quality hightop or otherwise classy footwear – cool and recognizable.

Smartphones

This is the point at which I’m not sure of the logistics of the devices Target is able to display (or not), but the chain being the top-class brand that it is, I have a feeling some weight could be pulled to increase the likelyhood of the following situation. Target, you’ve got all four top carriers willing to show their devices in your store, then in your other hand you’ve got a perfectly legit and well-working Target app for multiple platforms. Why do you not have, first of all, working smartphone units in the aisle like each of the individual carriers do in their mobile stores? Second, why do you not have working units with the Target mobile app running on them?

My only hypothesis can be that Target isn’t making the revenue necessary to make these improvements to their smartphone section of the store, otherwise there’s no good reason why Target can’t pay for the insurance and training necessary to make these mobile devices display and work with the software they’re packaged with run to the fullest. I don’t buy a television from Target unless I see it showing me brilliant images on the wall, I’m certainly not going to buy a smartphone unless I can see it working in my hands at the tap of its display.

Wrap-Up

Target, you’re not the only retailer in the market that does this. Market, if you want the mobile business to grow at a rate that’s much greater than it is right this moment, you’ve got to show every man, woman, and child how these devices work, and you’ve got to do it at Target. Apple has taken the initiative and has working iOS devices in their Apple-centric stores, Android and the rest of the brands (for the most part) have working devices sitting in all manner of carrier stores, but to reach the everyday midwest-minded citizen, you’ve got to let them explore the devices inside their comfort zone, and their comfort zone is the big red living room: Target.

This version of the app store offers up everything you’re used to with the mobile app version, that being links to the Android Market for downloads, news stories written by authors who are pros on the subject of NVIDIA dual-core processors and processors in general as well as mobile gaming. You’ve got all the details you need on each of the games optimized for the platform by NVIDIA and friends.

This web-based version of the Tegra Zone adds a couple of web exclusive pieces of the ecosystem including first and foremost links to the rest of the NVIDIA site. The first thing you’ll notice here is the Tegra-Powered Devices link near the upper-right of the page. This link leads to all the information you’ll ever need on the Tegra 2 collection of Android devices should you feel like you want to upgrade to a different model than you’ve already got. Above this is of course a link to a download of the app version of the Tegra Zone – a must as NVIDIA certainly wants you you hang out in the Zone all day and night, no matter your platform.

The second web-only feature here is the Community tab. This tab is a place for you to discuss everything and anything regarding NVIDIA Tegra-centric subjects. There are currently three main forums: Tegra Zone (for the mobile app version of the Zone), Tegra Gaming News (to discuss upcoming games), and Games for Tegra (to discuss games already released). A link at the bottom of this set of three forums brings you to a much wider format forum that you may already be a part of if you’re a big fan of NVIDIA. Clean!

ALSO NOTE that this Community section, at the time of the publishing of this column, will have / has a contest going on where you can win one of five Acer Iconia Tab A500 dual-core Android tablets. Sweet! Check out our full review of that tablet for more information on how much awesome it can kick around the block. Also check out our review of it’s little bother the Acer Iconia Tab A100 as well.

Then there’s a search bar, a support button, regional pulldown bar, News, Games, and Home tabs, connections to social networking sites so you can share your favorite new Tegra games, and all of this done with the style and class that the graphic designers at NVIDIA should certainly be praised for. Look at those devices – they look fantastic! Look at those games – they look like so much fun! I’m surprised more manufacturers aren’t looking to NVIDIA’s crew to hook them up with some pro looks for their next bit of hardware to be perfectly honest – black and green for the win.

So go now, instantly, and check out the http://tegrazone.com/ website for all your NVIDIA Tegra Zone needs. Of course you’ve also still got the mobile app in the Android Market. Grab it! Use em! Do it!

Before we engage in judgement, let’s have a look at what we’re dealing with here in the tablet as it comes directly out of the box. Vincent Nguyen will show you just what this device is all about as he flips it over in his hands for the first time:

Hardware

Those of you heavily aware of all Android goings on in the world should be questioning whether I refrained from mentioning the LG G-Slate because I thought it was actually a 10-inch tablet or because I didn’t think it was worth mentioning. Truth is it’s neither: the G-Slate being an 8.9-inch tablet and having 2 cameras on the back for 3D video and photo collection, I consider it to be another completely unique device. The G-Slate compares with the A100 in that it is smaller than 10-inches, and that’s where the similarities end. The G-Slate is much heavier than the A100, the Acer tablet is much more smoothly formed, and the G-Slate has the ability to display 3D media while you’re wearing your included 3D red and blue glasses.

The Acer holds sway over all other Android tablet-classified mobile devices at this very moment because it’s only slightly heavier than the original Galaxy Tab yet totes more than double the processor speed, has an almost vanilla* flavoring of Honeycomb, and it’s got two fairly decent cameras on it, one on the front and one on the back. *Vanilla in this case means that there’s really nothing added to the Android that Google’s made save for some organizational apps and 3rd party bonus apps.

One of the least pleasing pieces of this entire equation is the viewing angles on the display. You’ve got a lovely amount of brightness with this LCD touchscreen, but have a look at the video below and you’ll see how dark bits get at around the 45 degree mark. Meanwhile you’ll find that the plastic surrounding this entire device and an overall size that’s small enough to fit in an adult male’s pants pocket (in general the companies that make male and female pants make the pockets for male pants a bit bigger) and big enough to be considered a tablet.

Acer-branded Case

We received a brand new Acer-branded case with this device, one into which you can slide and lock-in your Acer Iconia Tab A100 tightly, some sweet leathery feel all around, allowing everything to breath nicely while the tablet itself is relatively protected from danger. I wouldn’t go around tossing the tablet even if you’ve got this case around it, but you’ll definitely be protected against the odd pencil and toothpick attack. Furthermore, this case allows you to sit the device up diagonally so you can watch your favorite YouTube video in style. See more about this case inside the hands-on video below.

Hands-On Review and Second Look

Software

As far as software goes, you’re going to find several different cloud apps that’ll allow you to access your media from all directions. There’s Acer’s Clear.Fi, a service that’s remained quite the same since its original launch back in November of 2010, working here with its newest and most simplified set of menu screens. Next is Media Server, a service which will allow you to turn this tablet into a sharing machine, a simple interface able to turn Video, Photo, and Music on or off with the tap of a button. Acer Sync helps you work with your PC remotely with a simple to download desktop app.

Nemo player is another 3rd-party media explorer and player, and Docs To Go will allow you to explore all of your documents at will. AUPEO! is a radio app that’ll allow you to utilize your FM radio embedded in the device with ease, and MusicA will allow you to listen to any bit of music and identify it on the spot. The only Tegra-specific app included with the device is HW Solitaire SE, a game which you’ll otherwise be able to find in the Tegra Zone, an app-like portal which will let you in on why you made the right choice selecting a device with an NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor (note that we’ll show you one of these excellent games, Pinball HD, in the demonstration video below as well.)

Finally Planner is an email-based notes system, and SocialJogger will allow you to connect to all your social media contacts at once. Beyond that it’s your normal set of Google-set items like Google Talk, Gmail, YouTube, Books, the stock camera and camcorder interfaces, Gallery, Clock, and a strange bit: instead of a Facebook app, there’s a Facebook shortcut to the web, almost as if they’re encouraging you to use the web-based version of the social network instead of the downloadable app version.

Then there’s a drawer system which can be accessed from several shortcuts: eReading, Game Zone, Multimedia, and Social, each of them the same as they appeared on the Acer Iconia Tab A500, working very similar to the homescreens on any Android OS, but with a cool little desk graphic at the bottom of the screen and a fancy grab-and-drop system for adding app shortcuts. It’s very simple and I’d venture to guess that many have and will call it unnecessary, but it’s a step in the right direction for those who have trouble organizing their masses of apps in an orderly fashion.

Performance

To see how this tablet performs in the field, you’ll truly have to take it out for a spin yourself OR just trust the following benchmark tests which you can gain further insight on via Cory on Android Community in his post on this device which we’re both taking a look at: We Have Benchmarks. A couple of these benchmarks you’ll notice instantly that this device is not lacking, nor will it fall far behind its 10-inch comrades in the heat of battle:

Battery

After having the battery on from a full charge and having used the device lightly since then, I’m ten hours in to a day and the battery is at about 28%. Its tough to judge this particular battery as it’s certainly small compared to its predecessor at 1530 mAh while the A500 was a whopping 3260 mAh. Compare that to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1′s massive 7000 mAh battery and you’ve got quite a spread. Even the original Galaxy Tab has a 4000 mAh battery, so it’s tough to understand why Acer would stick such a small one in this new tablet device. Seems to be holding up alright thus far, but once a hard day’s work of downloading, having multiple apps open, and maybe even watching an HD video is done, you’ll be looking at more like 4 or 5 hours tops.

Camera

What you’re going to see below are masterpieces of photo and cinematography. It might be difficult for you to get a grasp of how well the camera is working its 5 megapixel rating on the back since the composition is so good because of your humble narrator’s awesome skill, but you’ll have to try. I’d rate this back-facing camera and the 2 megapixel camera up front to be roughly the same quality seen on the A500 -more than likely they’re the same models in each tablet.

Pricing

Surprisingly perhaps to some, this device is only $60 USD cheaper (at the moment) than the A500 10-inch tablet made by the same company. What you’re paying for here is the overall experience though, not the screen size – in other words, a bigger display isn’t necessarily better for you, though it certainly costs more to manufacture. Acer appears to understand this, though might be making the wrong decision having this tablet cost approximately $330 (depending on where you shop) – should this tablet fall below $300 USD and you’ll see it MAYBE popping off the shelves. Might need a bit of a bump on the ol’ advertising side as well.

Wrap-Up

This tablet is good for a lot of things. Wrapping up the awesome power of the NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor in a medium-sized package, one that’s not a smartphone yet not quite a full-sized tablet makes this device good for some slightly more hardcore on-the-go games than you’re used to on your Motorola ATRIX 4G or Motorola Photon 4G. On the other hand, it’s thicker than the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, a 10-inch tablet, yet just about the same size as the original Galaxy Tab 7-inch, a tablet which does not yet feature the tablet-centric Google mobile OS Android 3.2 Honeycomb – this tablet has the right to boast itself up as the first and only tablet to currently be featuring Android 3.2 Honeycomb, again the first tablet-based Google-made mobile OS to be optimized for tablets smaller than 10-inches.

For the lay-person, this is a pretty cool pocket companion. You don’t need to pick up a contract whilst purchasing this device, and it packs an NVIDIA dual-core processor, yet it’s not as large as any other tablet currently featuring that same utterly awesome amount of power on the market today. In other words this device is indeed unique, as all good new devices should be, and should definitely be considered by all students this coming school season as an alternative to all other tablets on the market.

Portability is king, and in some cases this device is a better fit for hardware AND software than the competition, be they Android or otherwise. This tablet is not the coolest tablet in the NVIDIA Tegra 2 toting family, but it will be rated higher in the hearts of many than its predecessor, the larger A500. This device feels solid and it feels like it’s ready to take on the market.

Have a look at the images above and below along with the videos then ask any questions you may still have on the device and we’ll do our best to answer them! Finally, check out our listing for the Acer Iconia Tab A100 in the Android Device Directory at http://device.ac/ for every fact and link to hands-on and review you can handle!

Below you will find the details on who the lucky few winners are but first make sure to check out our week 1 & 2 winners post. We were lucky enough to have a few more tablets to giveaway and today is the day they will learn where their new homes are. We literally had thousands of entries and had to create multiple giveaway threads over on Google+ as we continued to reach the comment limits over on the new social network site.

We loved seeing what all our readers had to say as we went through all the entries and had a blast reading the comments. Without talking too much I’ll just announce the winner of week 3 for the Acer Iconia A500 tablet below.

(drum-roll…)

Kirsty Lawer WINNAH!

Congrats! Now you can be one happy Androinerd, you are the winner and soon to be proud owner of a brand new Acer Iconia Tab A500 NVIDIA dual-core Android tablet.

We also were nice enough to have this same giveaway running strong on our sister site Android Community and they’ve been giving away a wide array of Android tablets too. This week they had the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and you can check out that giveaway right here. This was the final week for our giveaway so I might as well announce the Android Community winner here while we are at it right?

Josh Oman WINNAH #2!

And there you have it, the winners for both SlashGear and Android Community neatly for your convenience. This was an extremely awesome giveaway and we had a huge turn out and loved every minute. Now remember guys, this isn’t the first and most definitely will NOT be the last giveaway we do here at SlashGear as we have some huge plans over the next few weeks that we will be sure to announce shortly. Don’t forget to check SlashGear.com daily for not only your tech and mobile news, but for the next big giveaway when we do get things started.

In closing we would like to say thank you to everyone that entered, and give a huge thumbs up and THANK YOU to NVIDIA for the prizing and making this entire thing possible. Not only do they provide the world with amazingly fast and powerful Tegra 2 dual-core NVIDIA powered tablets, but they were nice enough to pass a few along to us for our faithful readers to enjoy. Stay tuned for our next giveaway coming shortly!

Thanks!