Toshiba could unveil redesigned Thrive tablet

According to NotebookItalia, Toshiba may be set to reveal a new and slimmer Thrive model, possibly at the IFA trade show in Berlin this September.

The original 10.1-inch Toshiba Thrive launched early July in the U.S. with a full-sized HDMI port, USB 2.0 and an SD card reader. The unit even included a user-replaceable battery, a rarity for tablets. Unfortunately, the expandability came at the cost of size, as the tablet is about 0.62 inches (16mm) thick with a weight of 1.6 pounds (0.725 kg).

The supposedly newer Thrive model will attempt to fix the size issue with a thinner, brush-metal design. So instead of full-sized ports, the source images show a micro HDMI-out, microSD card reader and a possible micro USB port as well. Whether or not the battery would remain user-replaceable is unknown.

In terms of hardware specs, it is possible that the redesign could sport the same features as its older sibling, including the Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, 10.1-inch 1280x800 resolution screen, 1GB RAM and Android Honeycomb OS.

At launch time, the original Thrive faced sleep issues that weren’t fixed until a month later. We imagine that such issues and any related bugs would be taken care of before the rumored redesign launches.

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