smartphone

Smartphone manufacturers seem to be obsessed with making their handsets ever thinner and bragging about it in the form of marketing, only to be beaten the following week/month by a competitor. Now it looks as though the thin-frenzy is migrating over to the tablet market, too.

Toshiba has used the Mobile World Congress this week to unveil the 10.1-inch Excite X10 LE tablet. It stands out from the crowd because Toshiba claims it is the world’s thinnest and lightest tablet.

It’s a fair claim as the X10 LE measures just 7.7mm thick and weighs 535 grams. Compare that to the iPad 2, which is 8.8mm thick and 601 grams. That’s a whole 1.1mm thinner than Apple could achieve, and only 0.6mm thicker than the Droid Razr. Impressive.

Just because it’s super-thin doesn’t mean the X10 skimps on features. Although the use of Android 3.2 is a bit disappointing, Toshiba promise it will get Ice Cream Sandwich before spring is over. Inside you’ll find an OMAP 4430 dual-core Cortex-A9 chip running at 1.2GHz, 1GB RAM, 5MP rear camera, 1.3MP front camera, and the tablet comes in 16GB and 32GB configurations. As for the display, it’s a 10.1-inch panel with a 1280 x 800 resolution.

The Excite X10 LE will officially go on sale March 6. The 16GB unit will set you back $529.99, while the 32GB unit takes that up to $599. It’s therefore $30 more expensive than the iPad 2 16GB, but manages to match the 32GB on price.

March 6 isn’t the best date to launch seeing as we have the small issue of an Apple event the following day. Toshiba may hold the world’s thinnest crown for exactly 24 hours depending on what Apple have achieved with the iPad 3.