The Vodafone Smart Tab 10: have we seen it all before?

Ah man, the sense the excitement in the Vodafone boardroom when its latest product was unveiled must have been palpable. A tablet! And a 10-inch one at that! At least one person, caught up in a state of self-congratulatory revelry, must have dared to think: “Look out Apple, here we come”.

Good news, Tim Cook and co. The Vodafone Smart Tab isn’t the device that’ll knock your company back to the nightmare days of the late 90s. It’s a decent tablet, but iPad killer it most certainly ain’t. Let me explain:

Overall Design

Look, there’s only so much creativity you can fit into a 10-inch rectangle, but Vodafone (okay, the tablet’s actually made by German manufacturer ZTE) does seem to have gone for a bare bones approach in the design department — uniform thickness, some metallic trim and a rubbery back. Most of the buttons and holes lie flush with the trim, barring the volume buttons (which kind of makes sense) and the recharger socket (which makes a lot less sense).