New Technology Hands-on With the EFUN Nextbook Next3 Tablet

Last week at CES we saw a lot of tablets and I met with a lot of tablet makers. I was fascinated by the differing philosophies among these companies. While some preferred to wait and release their tablets when Google finally released Honeycomb, others were looking to get to market faster and were just fine with sending tablets bearing Android 2.2 or even 2.1 into the world. One such company representing the second stance was EFUN, makers of the Nextbook tablets.

The Nextbook Next3, which recently arrived in our offices, resembles a lot of the Android tablets we’ve seen in the past 18 months or so since this recent slate craze began. What sets it apart is its size — 8.4-inches instead of the more popular 7 or 10-ish — but otherwise the plastic chassis and the resistive screen are all too familiar. At $299 it’s certainly less expensive than the iPads and Galaxy Tabs of the world (unsubsidized, anyway), but is it worth a look?

On the design front the Next3 is somewhat non-descript. The glossy black chassis is not plain, but instead has flecks of metallic blue that sparkle a bit in the light. It’s not something a Twilight vampire would envy, just a bit of flair to an otherwise plain design. The thing I noticed most was the lack of buttons. There are only two on the right side — up and down — and those are for turning pages in the eReader apps or paging through files or media, such as in the photo viewer. Unlike most Android devices, there’s no Home, Back, Menu or Search buttons. Instead, Home, Back and Menu are found on screen (sometimes accompanied by Search) in most apps, but they’re not always visible.

I realize that this is a trend several hardware manufacturers are going toward, and I’d like to take this moment to ask them to stop. Having physical buttons may offend some aesthetically, but they’re very useful. Especially in instances where an app stops working or the display stops responding to taps. As happened several times when using the Next3. Of course, there is always the chance that the entire system is frozen and it needs a hard reset. However, the Back or Home button would have sufficed for most of the problems I encountered.

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New Technology Hands-on With the EFUN Nextbook Next3 Tablet