Fusion Garage will start shipping its Grid-10 tablet in October starting at £259, as the firm aims to provide a viable alternative to Android and iOS devices.

Chandra Rathakrishnan, chief executive of Fusion Garage, makers of the fabled Joo-Joo tablet, dropped by the V3 office to give us a sneak peek at the 10.1in device along with the Grid-4 smartphones due to ship later in the year.

With specifications including a 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor, 512MB RAM and 16GB of internal storage there's little to separate the Grid-10 from other high-end devices. It does come with a 1,366x768 resolution screen, which Fusion Garage claims to be the best on the market, but we didn't find it as bright as the iPad 2.

In terms of look and feel, the Grid-10 has a wedge shape but is of similar size to the iPad 2. It weighs 689g, however, so it is noticeably heavier than the Apple tablet.

The 10.1in tablet ships with the GridOS operating system, which has been built using the Android kernel. However, the interface bears little resemblance to Google's operating system.

As the name suggests, the interface consists of a grid where apps can be clustered together, and users can move between clusters to access applications. This unique design makes home pages redundant as it's possible to jump to any part of the grid using a little map in the corner.

The Grid-10 is virtually button-less, and navigation is performed with a swiping system very similar to the one on RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook.

Swiping from the top brings back the home screen, whereas a swipe from the right moves the screen back. A flick from the left brings up the notification centre, known as the 'heartbeat'.

We didn't find the gesture-based system as smooth as on the PlayBook, and we sometimes had to swipe a couple of times to trigger changes. However, transitions between applications are made interesting by the use of animations.

Web browsing also had some features not seen on Android and iOS devices. Words can be highlighted and clicked on to bring up a context-sensitive menu. The word 'inception' brought up reviews from Rotten Tomatoes and linked to Twitter, for example.

Pinch-to-zoom was also impressive, the text resizing almost instantly. Fusion Garage has also improved the stock Android keyboard to include secondary functions.

The tablet can also synchronise with other Fusion devices. We started and paused a movie on the device and were able to continue playing it on the Grid-4 smartphone from the same point.

However, Rathakrishnan explained that the Grid-10 will have access not to the Android Market but to the Amazon App Store for Android. There will be no native Google applications such as Gmail available, but Rathakrishnan tried to play this down, noting that the email client can be used.

Interestingly, Google search will also be absent as Fusion Garage has chosen to incorporate Microsoft's Bing instead.

The tablet is due for release on 24 October at £259 for the Wi-Fi-only model, rising to £359 for the 3G model, so buyers on a budget may be tempted.

Meanwhile, the Grid-4 smartphones will launch in the fourth quarter running GridOS, and it will be interesting to see how the operating system works on the smaller form factor.

Overall, it appears that Fusion Garage has learned from the mistakes of the Joo Joo which Rathakrishnan admitted was rushed to market. GridOS is unique and shows flashes of brilliance, but it remains to be seen whether Fusion has the support of retailers and the brand power to attract consumers.

HP failed to penetrate the market with the well-known webOS interface, and we think it could be very difficult for the Grid-10 to take a substantial slice of the market.

12 Sep 2011