Welcome to a laptop battery specialist of the Toshiba Laptop Battery
Toshiba Thrive was one of the good Honeycomb tablets in 2011 [read our articles about it] thanks to its array of full size ports, but it was pretty bulky. Toshiba remedied that with the AT200 announced at IFA Berlin, but what we didn’t expect is for the company to announce officially a smaller 7 inch Thrive called simply Thrive 7. I guess right now the first model should be called Thrive 10.
Anyway, you might want to take a look at this little thing, as it solves almost completely the bulk issues of its predecessor. We’re now talking about 11 mm (0.47″) thickness and 399 grams weight (0.88 pounds), significantly less than the 16 mm and 725 grams of its big brother.
As you can expect some elements were kept, especially the visual ones so we still have the rubber back with indented angled lines, but now it’s not removable, so Black will be your only option right now. This means that the 15 Whr battery such as Toshiba PA3729U-1BRS Battery , Toshiba PA3730U-1BRS Battery , Toshiba Satellite P505 Battery , Toshiba PA3640U-1BAS Battery , Toshiba PA3640U-1BRS Battery , Toshiba Qosmio F55 Battery , Toshiba PA3536U-1BRS Battery , Toshiba PA3537U-1BRS Battery , Toshiba Satellite P205 Battery , Toshiba PA3589U-1BRS Battery , Toshiba PA3609U-1BRS Battery , Toshiba Qosmio F45 Battery can’t be swapped on the go either… A metal plate covers the front facing 2MP camera and the 5MP back facing shooter, but now there’s also a LED flash.
The only change we don’t like is the fact all full size ports have been replaced with smaller versions: microSD, mini USB and micro HDMI, all behind a rubber door, just like before. You’ll be able now to charge the Toshiba Thrive 7 through the miniUSB or the docking connector at the bottom, which should be used together with an optional docking station. Other buttons include orientation lock, power button, volume rocker and 3.5 mm audio jack. Two stereo speakers on the bottom complete the picture.
As of other components, they remain pretty much unchanged from the bigger Thrive: 1 GHz dual core Tegra 2 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 16 and 32 GB storage versions. Even the 7 inch screen kept the higher 1280 x 800 pixels resolution. The operating system version used by Toshiba is Android 3.2 with no custom software, except the Swype keyboard which you can easily replace with the default one from Honeycomb.
Toshiba didn’t exactly mentioned the price, but pointed towards a sub $400 starting price and mid November availability. I guess we have one more option right now for our Christmas shopping list, and a good one.