Hands On With the Cisco Cius Tablet

At a Glance

Slash every last preconceptions of the Lake herring Cius out the door. This is non just other Android pill. Or else, Cisco has taken gravid pains to position the Cius arsenic a very different character of tablet, and ane whose primary purpose lies less in competing head-to-headway with the tablet masses, and more at changing how corporate America does business.

Lake herring aims the Cius squarely at large enterprises, companies whose pockets are inscrutable and whose workforces are scattered and thus crave the promiscuous visual communication the Cius aims to provide. That said, the device's seamless seeable communication theory, joined with Cisco's reinforcement, could offer a set to smaller businesses that give birth distributed staffers, too. It likewise is ideal for vertical industries that are developing an Mechanical man-based app base, and for healthcare and other organizations that rely to a great extent on videoconferencing.

The Cius tablet, while IT seat be utilized on its own, is genuinely intended to make up hired in conjunction with the "media station" dock that Cisco sells separately and that turns the Cius into an office workstation and an advanced telecommunications system in one. The media station has nobelium price as yet, but the tablet will price betwixt $650 and $750 and will not be sold via retail; pricing will depend in split upon the book sold and other incentives. The model here is the Wi-Fi-only if variant; a 4G version is expected from Verizon in the fall.

Cius and dock — The Cius and its "media station" dock.

See close-up pictures of the Cius here.

It would be easy to dismiss the Cius connected numerous counts when comparing it with, say, the sexier, big-blind hardware of Malus pumila's iPad 2 or any of the less sexy Android competitors. IT's dense, it's thick, and at launch, it's squirting the Android 2.2 (Froyo) operating system.

But with the Cius, Lake herring has no designs on competing with the iPad Beaver State almost any of the Android tablets–consumer devices that may come up their way into the enterprise, little by virtue of a party actively determinant to use the technology than by individuals approaching the IT department asking how to get onto the ship's company's meshwork with their bright new toy.

Instead, Cisco has its sights set on larger-scale deployment at the ship's company spirit level. The scalability of the Cius is limited only by the server base of the company implementing the organization, dormy into the tens of thousands of users. The Cius tablet can serve as a communications hub and virtual desktop port, too. Collaboration and television conferencing goes to a whole new level with the Cius: Esteem it as an advanced video phone that fundament likewise play Angry Birds–and run custom-designed apps. It's mobile office communications with a twenty-first century twist.

Cius ports — The Cius has many another useful ports, only one of the most important features for businesses will be its removable battery.

As a pad, the Cius doesn't physically severalize itself through its rakish design. It measures 8.9 by 5.5 by 0.6 inches and weighs 1.15 pounds–heavy by 7-inch tablet standards, but not so heavy as to disrepute IT from existence a mobile device. The Cius is obviously optimized for use in landscape painting mode; in that orientation, the video camera is centered in a higher place the display, and the speakers are positioned infra it, with deuce-ac physiologic Android navigation buttons. The menu, dwelling house, and back buttons are contoured and well-defined. At backbone, an indentation beneath the battery houses about of the inputs (phone jack, two docking station jackstones, and a Mini-HDMI port).

When handling the tablet, I found the indentation for the ports was actually a convenient resting betoken for my fingers.

Along the top of the tablet is an oval-shaped powerfulness button, the dual-array echo-canceling microphone, a microSD card slot under a hardline lid, and a microUSB port. The left inch has a flexuous up-and-falling volume button and a mute button; the right side is largely devoid of inputs, with right a skidder to release the removable battery, and an AC input.

The cellular inclusion of a extractible battery is an epochal one for businesses and vertical environments; time and over again, I hear a call for batteries to be user-replaceable, as it minimizes downtime. Cisco says the battery should last about 8 hours for "business" use, which it defines as video calling, many Vane browse, Cisco WebEx collaboration calls, email, and staying in standby mode during meetings.

In Video: First Look at Lake herring's Cius Tablet

Next page: A closer look at the hardware and software of the Cius.

Inside the Cius

The Cius tablet is the first to use Intel's Moorestown Processor, a single-core, 1.6GHz chip for low-king mobile devices. IT has 1GB of memory; 32GB of on-board reposition, expandable via the microSDHC card slot; and hardware acceleration for h.264 video. At back is a 5-megapixel camera, and up presence is a 2-megapixel 720p telecasting tv camera. Wireless connectivity options admit 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built in. The micro-USB port and microSD identity card can be disabled by IT managers, as can the front and lift cameras and the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capabilities.

The HD Media Station adds gigabit ethernet, tierce USB 2.0 ports, a 3.5mm headset jack, a substitution port for Power over Ethernet (PoE), and DisplayPort.

Cisco says it's using a fairly stock varietal wine of Android 2.2, though the home screen along the Cius pill will look unfamiliar. Extraordinary of the icon images are changed, the phone icon has been moved to the otherwise modular touch menu, and the Coregonus artedi software is look-and-nub on the home screen, A is a custom thingamajig that serves as a unified inbox.

Cius ribbon — The communications ribbon makes it easy to choose how to join.

The base install of the Cius includes the core Cisco apps that are at the heart of the Cius: Unified Inbox, Phone, Chat, Email, Calendar, and Contacts. Video sound calling is integrated directly into the phone app, and ties into Cisco's TelePresence video conferencing systems; also installed is the Cisco WebEx network-conferencing app. These apps were written by Lake herring to provide deep integration among the various modes of communication.

Throughout these custom apps is a handy communications decoration that simplifies jumping among the apps, moving from confabulate to email to phone. Thus, for good example, I could send an email operating theater instant substance during a telephone call. These apps run in serious time in the background, and Information technology managers can set the policies to give resource prioritization to these time period apps over other installed Mechanical man apps. The software is wise enough, however, to allow you to control interruptions; for model, it terminate airt calls if you are in a do-not-shake up Department of State. Cisco will supplying an SDK to go on with its pad of paper, to go far easy for developers to pin into its collaboration tools.

This kind of seamless integration is where the Cius's differentiation from other tablets lies.

Set forth of the base installation of the Cius is Quickoffice, for version Microsoft Berth apps. If you want full moon-bore editing, though, your ship's company would need to buy that license separately, or buy other app via Cisco's App Headquarters store. App HQ bequeath offer apps that have been vetted by Cisco to work at the Cius, and to be malware-extricated. The App HQ base, for a fee, will enable companies to make over custom-built stores for employees; the benefit here is that employees can and then download custom-built Android apps for company-particularized applications, or download apps that the IT department has already licensed, all without having to enter upon personal credit calling card info.

For security, Cisco builds in data encryption, stick out for the Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility VPN customer, remote rub options, and a host of security protocols at the mesh access even out.

The unified inbox widget dominates the figurehead home screen of the Cius. Improving to five contact images, pulled from the corporate directory, dominate the thingummy; the largest image indicates the about recent communicating. It also shows the contact's availability connected chaffer, electronic mail, and phone. You can too experience missed calls, voicemails, and upcoming meetings. The voicemail inclination is modality, so you can heed to messages in whatever order you choose.

Movement was smooth and fairly consistent between apps, once I got the hang of what to look for you said it to navigate. That the Lake herring suite of apps work smoothly in the background underscores the real-time nature of the tablet's multitasking; what I wasn't able to test during my active was how the real-time communications apps survive resource stress from separate Humanoid apps loaded up simultaneously. The Cius experience is a long elbow room from a standard office PBX, or, for that matter, a smartphone OR tablet that lacks an entomb-app communication ribbon.

To enable the Cius and Humanoid 2.2 to work with the docking station, Cisco wrote its own drivers to support USB server devices, Eastern Samoa well as a mouse and keyboard, and to make tasks that business sector users mightiness expect, like right-mouse legal action.

The 7-inch pad of paper has 1024-aside-600-pel closure, and outputs telecasting via mini-HDMI. OR, when docked in the HD Media Station, it can output upscaled picture via DisplayPort. Sadly, the tablet's output looks disappointing: Text was coarse-grained and overblown, a situation made even worse because Android 2.2 isn't optimized for scaling to large screens. In the initial liberate, Coregonus artedi says the Cius volition plump for mirrored display presentation, so that what is on the tablet is shown on a larger, affiliated LCD. In the future, Cisco is sounding at providing a "presentation mode," thus applications on an external expose volition be shown at a higher resolution than what the Cius itself supports.

cius in dock — In the dock, the Cius can act as a miniskirt-workstation.

And while Coregonus artedi sees the Cius every bit a possible grumbling-bore mini-workstation for employees to do e-mail, update calendars, send documents, and more (otherwise, why have the video-come out of the closet capability and USB support for host devices, sneak away, and keyboard?) the company doesn't examine it As a replacement for a desktop.

Much remains unknown. Coregonus artedi expects to sync its update oscillation with Google's Android OS update bike, only the company will at last ascendancy how quickly a new OS leave coil proscribed, as does whatsoever other hardware maker using the Google Android OS. We don't make out how long Coregonus artedi plans to keep the hardware active, either, which may be an issue for corporate purchasers who may dainty the tab more same a computer infrastructure purchase than like a television conferencing service. And we'll have to see just how smoothly the transition of OS updates testament be, and how that power affect companies' independently maintained applications.

But for all the unknowns, it will be interesting to see how recovered Coregonus artedi's Cius gains traction in the marketplace. It feels Eastern Samoa if this tablet Crataegus laevigata beryllium touching on the tip of a large pauperism in business–simply away rethinking how a pad of paper could beryllium optimized for business concern function.

Note: When you leverage something after clicking golf links in our articles, we may clear a elflike commission. Study our associate link policy for more inside information.