Technical White Paper The Review of Gladius 10, a Rugged, Affordable Multi-purpose octa-core Powered 10-inch Android Tablet for Numerous Enterprise and Field Applications

ARBOR announced the Gladius 10 in 2015 as a general-purpose 10-inch class rugged Android tablet for a variety of enterprise and field applications. This report presents detailed product review and observations. The growing lineup of ARBOR's rugged Gladius tablets ARBOR has been on a tear as of late. Over the past 18 months or so, the company has introduced a number of rugged handhelds and tablets, all designed to meet enterprise and industrial customers' demand for contemporary mobile technology that's more versatile and far more durable than...

The Gladius 10 measures 11 x 7.5 inches, versus the iPad Air 2's 9.4 x 6.7. Its 10.1 inch diagonal screen size is a bit larger that of the iPad (9.7 inches), and between the extra ruggedness padding and the wider 16:10 display aspect ratio display it does look quite a bit more substantial than the standard iPad. There's more to a tablet, though, than just the size of the display. As a ruggedized device, the Gladius 10 is 0.9 inches thick, and weighs 2.3 pounds. That's significantly thicker and heavier than today's consumer tablets. The iPad Air 2 is sliver-thin at less than a quarter of an inch...

Android members of its Gladius line of products, ARBOR has been going with Taiwanese semiconductor company MediaTek. Just like the smaller Gladius 5 and Gladius 8, the Gladius 10 uses an ARM Cortex A7 processor from MediaTek. However, whereas the Gladius 5 uses the 1.0GHz MTK6589 designed for smartphones, and the Gladius 8 the more tablet-oriented 1.3GHz MTK8382 — both quad-core designs built on contemporary 28nm process technology — the Gladius 10 ups the ante with an octa-core processor running at 1.7GHz, the MediaTek MT8392. What exactly does...

While Apple is using traditional 4:3 aspect ratio displays in all of its iPads, ARBOR's Gladius 5 uses the 16:9 ratio, the Gladius 8 the 4:3 ratio, and the Gladius 10 a 16:10 ratio. We're not sure of the reason for that. For the most part, aspect ratio seems a matter of personal viewing preference rather than functional advantage. Like virtually all Android devices, the Gladius 10 uses projected capacitive ("procap") multi-touch technology. While some vertical market rugged tablets still use resistive digitizers, procap is clearly the popular...

Note that the three standard Android controls (Back, Home, MultiTask) are implemented entirely onscreen. That has its pros and cons. On the plus side, they will always be in the proper place no matter the orientation of the display. On the minus side, they eat up some screen space and you can't always see them. Design and construction of the Gladius 10 The more rugged tablets we review and analyze here at RuggedPCReview.com, the more we empathize with tablet designers. How many ways are there to create a product that consists of a rectangular...

To separate the two halves the Gladius 10 consists of, there are eight Philips screws around the perimeter and 14 inside the battery compartment to be undone. The eight outer ones sits recessed inside the back cover and underneath little black rubber plugs. Once all screws are out, a plastic separater tool should be used to gently pry the two halves apart. The emphasis is on gently. You don't want to crush or break the snap-on retainer loops. Sealing between the two halves is done with an elaborate tongue-and-groove design and a very slender rubber...

Reassembly requires some care. Just like plastic snaps often don't like to let go, they may need some special prodding to snap back in place. Here again it's a matter of finesse and patience rather than applying force. The barcode scan engine in our evaluation unit was an Opticon MDC-100 (see here) using CCD linear sensor technology and a red LED as a light source. It's a tiny module that supports a wide variety of 1D barcodes and postal codes. Note that the ARBOR Gladius 8 we evaluated a few months ago used the Opticon MDI-3100, a fixed-focus...

as the Microsoft Surface 4 and Apple iPad Pro, both in the 12-13 inch class. In our opinion, 10.1 inches is plenty for Android, which so far has seen less of a differentiation between phone and tablet optimized apps. The screen's 1,280 x 800 pixel WXGA resolution is not tremendous in an era where much smaller smartphones routinely offer 1920 x 1080 pixel displays, and some even full 4k. As is, WXGA offers barely more pixels than ARBOR's own Gladius 5 has on its much smaller 5.5 inch screen (1280 x 720). So why did ARBOR use comparatively low 1,280...

Android versus Windows The review Gladius 10 ARBOR sent us ran Android 4.4 "KitKat." But ARBOR also offers the very similarly sized Gladius G0975 that runs Microsoft Windows. With that, ARBOR follows the industry-wide trend of offering both of these major operating system platforms on similar and sometimes identical hardware. Why? There is no universal answer, and the reasons are different for tablets than they are for smaller handheld devices. Rugged industrial handhelds predate Android, and most of them ran Microsoft's Windows CE or Windows Mobile (now called Windows Embedded Handheld, or WEHH)....

Additional Android contemplations The overall number of available apps for competing software platforms has gone beyond bragging rights to become a crucial marketing issue. How many apps are available? Are all of the important portals and social media sites supported? How easy is it to download apps? Apple, of course, has its massive and very user-friendly App Store. Android boasts the rapidly improving official Google Play store, and there is a number of third party alternatives such as the Amazon Appstore for Android, Slide ME, and several others. Frustratingly absent from the current app stores...