Could today mark the birth of a real competitor to the Apple iPad? In a long and zealous blog post, Notion Ink has announced that it will begin taking pre-orders today for the Adam, a 10-inch Android tablet running a customized-for-tablets hybrid of Honeycomb and Gingerbread, dubbed Eden.
Pre-orders for the Adam tablet start today on the Notion Ink Web site. Those who commented on previous Notion Ink blog posts will be allowed to place their orders starting at 1:30pm Eastern time. Notion Ink will send them an e-mail confirmation with a pre-order link that will be good for six hours. Everyone else can place pre-orders starting at 7:30pm tonight.
The tablets might not ship until early 2011 due to FCC testing, Electronista reports.
"It's great day, possibly deserving an entry into the history books about how we all came together and started a revolution," wrote Notion Ink founder Rohan Shravan in the blog post. "Adam, as we love to call it, is not a tablet, it's a dream come true for many of us."
Shravan said he has reduced prices for the first-generation range: an LCD Wi-Fi tablet starts at $375.33, a 3G version at $425.33. Transflective Wi-fi version (Pixel Qi) starts at $499.45 and a Tranflective 3G model starts at $549.99. The transflective 3G tablet comes in a 900 series and 850 series.
The Eden OS combines elements from Android 2.3 and 3.0, such as several keyboard layouts, native OpenGL hardware, OpenSL ES support, SIP/VOIP support, an upgraded 2.6.35 kernel, better view support and an easy copy/paste function.
As for hardware, Adam is equipped with a Nvidia Tegra 2 mobile processor, which is a dual-core CPU that supports ultra-low powered, high-definition 1080p video playback and high performance audio.
"The way we look at Eden, it's closer to the Honeycomb than to the Gingerbread," Shravan wrote. "And we were really happy to do those changes for you in time. So when you look at Adam in your hands you will not feel under-powered by a Mobile OS."
Shravan has also left one "secret feature" for owners to unlock.
Finally, Shravan responded to rumors over NFC sensor capacity and digitizer support: the first-generation won't have an NFC sensor, but it will come with an open source implementation that converts the screen into a digitizer.