Not the XL or even the XXL. The Xess. As in excess. As in a 17.3-inch tablet is incredibly excessive for an Android tablet. Honestly, I missed the thing in my first trip around the Alcatel booth because I thought the company had a bunch of small TVs on display.
Nope. This is the Alcatel OneTouch Xess, a device that stomps all over the boundaries of what you might sanely consider a tablet. Or, as the company pithily puts it in its press material, "A Tablet So Different We Can't Call it a Tablet." Fair enough.
Given the ways the company was showing the product off at its IFA booth, perhaps the massive thing can be considered something more akin to a small TV with tablet functionality, so when you're finished watching your stories, you can play a round of Fruit Ninja.
The device has a built-in circular stand that supports the TV theory, letting users position it in a variety of angles for video watching. Above the stand is a big, circular metal handle, should you lug the massive thing around.
Unfortunately, a super-sized tablet doesn't necessarily mean super-sized specs. Things are decent, but not exceptional, including a 1.5 GHz octacore processor, 2 GB of RAM, and 32 GB of storage (expandable via microSD). There's an impressively large 10,000 mAh battery, but we're guessing that's the kind of power you're going to need to fuel a 17.3-inch screen with 1080 x 1920 pixel display.
There are some pretty cool features on board, including gesture control (still in its nascent stage, with only three or four currently up and running), a stylus that clips on the back magnetically, and a retractable button on back that houses the power and USB ports.
No exact word on pricing, but I'm told that the thing will run "no more than a laptop," whatever that means.
