BERLIN—Alcatel's Xess wants to conquer the kitchen. That's traditionally been a tough locale for consumer electronics, in part because it's a locale that's tough on consumer electronics.
But the successful phone and TV maker (it's part of TCL) thinks it's time for a home hub. The trick with this 17.3-inch, luggable tablet is that it's supposed to come loaded with a dashboard of home-friendly software that connects to a family's Android phones. It would summarize the weather, everyone's fitness trackers, and serve as a central location for connected family group messaging.
Pick it up by the handle on the back and pull it into the living room, and it becomes a streaming video box. Drag it into the kitchen, and custom software (once again) shows you recipes. You don't need to touch it with greasy hands, as it has a built-in stylus and air-gesture control. Plug in a keyboard and mouse into the built-in USB ports, and you can do some work.
The Xess is powered by a 1.5GHz octo-core Mediatek MT8783T chipset, and it's running Android 5.1; quit the custom apps and there's Android, right there, complete with Google Play. It has Wi-Fi and maybe LTE, a 5-megapixel front-facing camera for video chatting, 32GB of storage along with a MicroSD slot, and a 10,000mAh battery for when you do want to lug it around. Dual 3-watt speakers make it a portable radio.
I got to play with an extremely early version of this tablet, too early to know if the software will work at all. It's a solid piece of kit—I like the pop-up ring on the back with the USB ports, and the metal handle makes it feel easy to lug around. I'm less enthusiastic about the idea of a 17-inch, 1080p screen, but then again, that's what a lot of TVs are, and people don't usually complain there. Performance was sluggish, but Alcatel said the tablet (months before it's supposed to come out) was far from tuned.
The software will be absolutely critical here. Most Android software isn't designed for a very big screen, so it tends to look and work awkwardly on screens larger than 10 inches because of how physically far away interface elements end up being from each other. Any family coordination software also needs to plug into a wide range of devices, including Apple's, so hopefully Alcatel will have an iOS app that reports to this tablet.
I have various Internet and radio devices kicking around my kitchen, so I've always thought a kitchen tablet was an interesting idea. But this will have to be affordable and rugged enough, with sleek enough software, to find a place in the home.
The Xess will go on sale by the end of the year in a Wi-Fi version, with an LTE version coming in mid-2016. Alcatel didn't announce a price.