Gladius 8 Review
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Technical White Paper The Review of Gladius 8, a Rugged and Compact 7.85” IoT Tablet

Elegant, rugged and very compact 8-inch Android tablet for IoT (Internet of Things) and numerous other applications ARBOR Technology, a Taiwan-based ISO-9001 certified embedded and networking manufacturer founded in 1993, announced the Gladius 8 in 2014 as a general-purpose large-screen rugged Android tablet, and also as a building block for emerging IoT applications. In this article, We take a detailed look at the ARBOR Gladius 8. Gladius 8 and IoT, the Internet of Things IoT stands for "Internet of Things" and describes a paradigm where the current internet communication between people or...

d) the cloud with IoT systems analysis and instant feedback, resulting in increased efficiency and reduced costs. Why is this a big thing? Because experts estimate some 50 billion IoT devices and many trillions of US dollars in increased revenue and reduced cost within the next ten years. And where does the Gladius 8 fit in as a "rugged IoT tablet?" Both as a mobile sensor device and as an IoT gateway. As a sensor device, the Gladius 8 uses its various data sensing and collection systems. Those include, on the data sensing side, an ambient light sensor, an accelerometer, a 3-axis digital...

The picture to the right shows where the Gladius 8 fits in terms of size. The lineup shows — from left to right and in scale — Apple's iPhone 6 Plus, the Google Nexus 7, the ARBOR Gladius 8 IoT tablet, and finally the Apple iPad Air 2. The Gladius 8 measures 8.6 x 5.7 inches, versus the iPad mini 3's 7.9 x 5.3. Its 8.75 inch diagonal screen size is virtually same as that of the iPad mini 3 (7.9 inches), and with its 4:3 aspect ratio display it is visually almost dwarfing 7-inch tablets that mostly come with narrow aspect ratio screens....

PowerVR SGX544 graphics processor for parallel graphics acceleration, the MTK8382 hands that duty to an ARM Mali GPU. There's a gigabyte of RAM and 8GB of Flash for storage. While 8GB doesn't look like much compared to the 16/64/128GB available in current iPads, it's more than adequate if the device can use expansion cards. So for the Gladius 8 it's the 8GB and what is in its user-accessible micro SDHC card slot accessible from the right side of the tablet. There is an 12.6mp documentation autofocus camera with LED flash on the backside....

Wired connectivity is via micro-USB 2.0. For wireless connectivity there is integrated Class 2 Bluetooth 4.0LE + EDR, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, NFC, both A-GPS and dedicated GPS, and mobile broadband of the WCDMA UMTS variety. The image below shows the Gladius 8 from the front and from all four sides. It's an elegant design that combines the all-black glossy look of a modern consumer tablet with the protective rubber-cladding, meticulous sealing, and space for industrial grade expansion like a vertical market device.

Going around the Gladius 8 reveals a number of controls but not much in terms of ports. This is a well-sealed device, and that means the fewer openings that must be protected against immersion the better. The left side has a programmable button that can be used to trigger the scanner. On the right side are a volume up/down rocker and, underneath a clip-on cover, the tablet's protected SIM and MicroSD card slots. On top are, beneath protective hinged rubber plugs and flanking the industrial-grade 1D/2D imager window, the unit's earphone jack...

includes the grilles for the tablet's stereo speakers. The vertical bars to the left and right of the center area are actually snap-on plastic pieces. On the left side they cover the GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and mobile broadband antennae. On the right side the SIM card and microSD card slots. Like the Gladius 5, the Gladius 8 has dual SIM card slots, allowing for two separate mobile connections/accounts. The tablet's flat, rectangular 3.8V 6,200mAH (23.6 watt-hour) Li-Ion battery is replaceable and user-accessible. To get to it, there's first a...

As for the material of the two halves, in general, the "plastic" used in rugged mobile computing devices is PC+ABS, which is a polycarbonate and ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) alloy that combines the strength of polycarbonates with the high abuse resistance of ABS, but at a lower cost. ARBOR, on the other hand, chose PC+TPU, an alloy of polycarbonate and TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane elastomer), with TPU excelling at abrasion and wear resistance, high tensile and tear strengths, as well as having rubberlike elasticity. The Gladius...

The insides of the Gladius 8 leave a very good impression. This is a well conceived and executed design that's very stable. The one concern we have is the number of small snap-on and clip-on parts that can get damaged or lost. Particularly impressive is the elegant, functional magnesium frame with its custom-designed main and subsidiary boards that together form a compact, logical and very clean solution. Display — 7.85-inch and procap multi-touch The Gladius 8's 7.85-inch display is somewhere between a large smartphone and a full-size...

Capacitive multi-touch works as everyone expects from a tablet these days — quickly and effortlessly. The touch controller ARBOR used is more sensitive than that in most earlier capacitive touch devices. That means it can work when wearing certain types of thin gloves. The device doesn't come with a stylus and ARBOR doesn't offer an optional capacitive pen. Any 3rd party capacitive pen will work, though those generic pens with their broad tips don't offer much more accuracy than the tip of a finger. It's not that important anyway as Android was specifically developed for capacitive...