MeeGo WeTab Will Launch With No App Store

Neofonie's WeTab MeeGo slate may be expected to launch this week, but it seems the overall user experience may not quite live up to what iPad and Android tablet owners have become accustomed to.  CarryPad's Steve Paine bumped into one of the 4tiitoo team partially responsible for the WeTab (back when it was the WePad) and he confirmed that when the 10-inch tablet arrives it won't have any sort of application download store.

Intel's own AppUp – which went "gold" last week – is not currently available for MeeGo devices, only Windows netbooks, and the marketplace created by AndroidPIT for the Android virtual machine that's part of the WeTab experience also won't be ready in time for the first production hardware.  Neofonie will be preinstalling OpenOffice, a browser, media player and an email app, but beyond that – and the company's flashy UI – the experience will be relatively closed.

That could put a serious dampener on the whole MeeGo launch, and is potentially part of the reason that Nokia chose not to bring any MeeGo devices to Nokia World this year.  As for the WeTab itself, Steve says the prototype is solid but unduly heavy (listed at 800g, it apparently feels more like 1kg and that makes for a two-handed slate), and battery life – with some video playback and multi-tab browsing – is likely to be sub-3hrs.