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    Panasonic ToughPad A1 and B1 tablets offer military-grade Android for $1,299

    Panasonic ToughPad A1 and B1 tablets offer military-grade Android for $1,299

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    Panasonic's just announced the ToughPad A1 and B1, which offer Android 3.2 Honeycomb in military-grade rugged tablet enclosure.

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    toughbook a1 big
    toughbook a1 big

    Pansonic's certainly taken its time getting its ToughBook-inspired ToughPad Android tablets out the door: it announced the project back in June, we got a quick hands-on in July, and now we're finally getting specs, pricing, and a launch date. Not only that, but we're getting a second tablet: the 10.1 ToughPad A1 will be joined by the 7-inch ToughPad B1, which will launch later next year. Both tablets will live up to their ToughBook heritage, with daylight-viewable displays, military-grade resistance to drops, dust, and water, and integrated hardware-level security that's rated for use in healthcare and government.

    Internally, the A1 will run Android 3.2 Honeycomb on a 1.2GHz dual-core Marvell processor with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable storage, with a 5-megapixel rear camera and a 2-megapixel front shooter, either LTE or WiMAX connectivity, and stylus support for all those extreme enterprise apps the kids are freaking out about these days. Protecting Android this thoroughly isn't going to be cheap, though: pricing will start at a whopping $1,299 when the A1 hits in spring 2012. We'd expect the B1 to be just slightly cheaper and share many of the same specs, but Panasonic says it won't release any more details until "later in 2012," so we could be waiting a while.

    Panasonic ToughPad A1 and B1 press photos

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    ToughPad A1
    Panasonic Android Toughbook tablet hands-on pictures

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