Cisco Cius

Cisco has recently stepped in the elite league of Tablet computing with its Android powered ‘Cisco Cius’. They are marketing this device for a very niche segment of business users and therefore it’s bundled with a very specific set of tools.

The Cius has a 7-inch screen and weighs at 1.5 pounds compared to the iPad which has 9.7-inch screen and weighs at 1.6 pounds. It is packed with a 32GB memory and an SD slot for expansion. It runs on a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor with a battery life of eight hours. The battery is also easily replaceable, so an extra pack can be carried whenever required. The most effective feature of this device is its teleconferencing capabilities which encompasses a front-facing 720p camera as well as a rear-facing 5MP camera that has the capability to capture either stills or VGA-quality video. The reason behind keeping the front camera on a high resolution can be their promotion of video conferencing which they are already veterans in.

Cius will have an a/b/g/n Wi-Fi card, as well as 3G or 4G service and features a desk-to-mobile transformation with a Bluetooth 3.0 support. It also uses HD Soundstation to dock providing a faster wired ethernet connection, as well as a USB 2.0 port for external keyboards.  It also supports dual monitors when there is a need for a larger monitor.

Cisco has tailor-made Android with a suite of software specifically designed for business conferencing. Just by tapping the name of a contact pops-up email, IM, telepresence, or conference to communicate with that contact. Cius supports both TelePresence and the WebEx Collaboration Cloud and can easily be integrated with social networking using real-time communication through Cisco Quad which lets you create and share videos with Cisco Show and Share. Also Cius is pretty much open to all the Android Market apps navigable by a mobile Firefox browser.

Cius with a very different target market, makes a very interesting device which is far from being an iPad competitor and falls in a segment for users addicted to Blackberry & Lenovo Laptops. It is expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2011.