MapmyIndia on Tuesday launched a new 7 inch Android tablet, named CarPad, which is customised for use inside a car.

Powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S1 processor, MapmyIndia CarPad comes with a large 7 inch capacitive display, 3G connectivity, MapmyIndia’s latest fully 3D and connected GPS navigation interface, and Android operating system.

Commenting on the launch, Rakesh Verma, managing director, MapmyIndia, said, “We are excited to launch CarPad which will revolutionise the way people travel in cars in India &#151 because of the simple, ingenious way in which it offers navigation, entertainment, connectivity and productivity to everyone in the car, be it in the back-seat or the front-seat.”

CarPad will provide turn-by-turn voice guidance to places, augmented reality with 3D landmarks, buildings and terrain, house-level details, travel guides, nearby information and even friend finders.

The CarPad comes exclusively pre-installed with Aura, MapmyIndia’s latest navigation interface, with full 3D navigation and maps including house numbers as well as city and travel guides.

All the maps are pre-installed on MapmyIndia CarPad, making it independent of the network. It leverages connectivity by streaming photographs of places and letting users discover people and friends nearby, share their location and message with others &#151 connecting users to everyone and everything around them.

MapmyIndia CarPad is loaded with comprehensive and accurate all-India maps, with over 5 million places, national-level maps for 5,79,000 towns and villages, street-level maps for 1200 cities, house-level maps for 18 cities and 3D landmarks and building footprints for major cities.

With the bundled car kit’s head-rest and windshield mounts, you can use the CarPad conveniently in the car’s back or front seats, and then carry it easily with you to use at home, office or anywhere.

You can call, message, mail and chat with everyone, browse the web at high speed, and socialise with others anywhere using the CarPad’s in-built 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth.

With CarPad you can listen to FM Radio and music; watch movies and YouTube; flip through photos and Flickr; click photos and record videos as well.

MapmyIndia CarPad is at Rs 22,990 which includes the CarPad device with 3G, WiFi, 8 GB SD card memory, pre-installed MapmyIndia navigator Aura, as well as car-kit worth Rs 6,990, containing the headrest mount, windshield mount, CarPad holder and car charger, in separate box free with CarPad.

MapmyIndia CarPad will be available for sale from 15th September, online at mapmyindia.com, followed by retail stores.

Viewsonic unveiled its first Honeycomb tablet, the ViewPad 7x, during IFA Berlin. The tablet will be launched in India this September. Ajay Sharma, the country manager of Viewsonic India confirmed to The Mobile Indian that the ViewPad 7x will be launched at a competitive price in the Indian market next month.

The 7 inch tablet comes preinstalled with the latest version of Android Honeycomb update version 3.2. Although technical specifications for the ViewPad 7x are unavailable, we do know that it will be powered by an Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core processor. The display will be 7 inch multi touch capacitive with native resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels. One of the best things about the 7x is that it utilizes a 10 point touch sensitive technology that makes it more intuitive and exciting for the user. The device will also feature front and rear cameras and 8 GB of Internal Memory along with a 32 GB expandable memory Micro SD slot.

The device also has a custom user interface called ViewScene 3D. We’re told this interface is somewhat similar to the Windows flip feature but the tiles are stacked in a circular fashion. The interface is fully customizable and users can tweak or modify it as per their needs. One of the most useful features of the ViewPad 7x is its pre-installed GPS tuner software that allows maps to be saved locally on the device so that it can provide navigation even without a data connection.

The ViewPad 7x, as mentioned above, is scheduled for launch in India next month, most probably around the same time as it will be launched in the international market. The Viewsonic spokesperson did not comment on the price of the device but looking at the international price, which is Euro 350, it is expected to cost around Rs 30,000 or less.

Toshiba’s new tablet is likely to be a lot thinner than its current offering, Thrive, said a tech website.

The new tablet appears to have an all-metal body, which seems to be a response to the criticism faced by Toshiba’s Thrive for being heavier and bulkier than the competition. Thrive, of course, had something which the competition didn’t have &#151 full sized USB ports. These ports allowed Thrive’s users to connect external accessories such as keyboards and gaming pads directly to the tablet.

The thinner tablet from Toshiba will not have full sized USB ports and will instead have micro HDMI, micro USB, and micro SD card slots. The new tablet from Toshiba is expected to be unveiled at the IFA Berlin, a consumer electronics trade fair.

The specifications of the tablet are not known, though it is expected to run on Android Honeycomb.

The first tablet launched by Toshiba was Folio, which did not survive in the market for long; whereas the second tablet Thrive did marginally better.