Panasonic working on a WiGig-enabled tablet? [VIDEO]

Nowadays, your average smartphone or tablet comes with wireless connectivity options such as Bluetooth, WiFi b/g/n and maybe 3G as standard and each of these has its own benefits and drawbacks.

Speed is the key in wireless data transfer and Panasonic are working on some tech that promises to be quick, really quick; able to transmit a DVD wirelessly in 60 seconds thanks to WiGig.

In case you haven’t heard of it, WiGig is a multi-gigabit speed wireless communications technology which was originally announced back in 2009. It’s only now that Panasonic have picked up the torch and are investing some serious time in creating useful applications for the technology.

With WiGig, devices use multi-gigabit speeds in the 60GHz frequency band to communicate with one another. Panasonic’s demonstration of the technology shows a WiGig-embedded tablet transmitting data like photos and videos to a set of displays mounted on the back of car seats. The demo shows the tablet transferring a “full DVD video” in no more than a minute, according to Diginfo (who made the video).

The technology clearly has potential, with the 1.1 specification demonstrated here offering a transmission rate of up to 7 Gbit/s. On the other hand, its biggest limitation is range, WiFi can work consistently up to between 10 and 30 meters and Bluetooth up to about 10, but for WiGig’s impressive transfer speeds to be effective, a device can be no more than 1 to 3 meters away.

Despite this drawback, Panasonic are still putting time into making WiGig-enabled SD cards, which should be commercialized by next year and there’s also talk of some WiGig-capable phones in the works too, but we can’t tell you anymore than that.

Would you see the replacement of WiFi or Bluetooth with WiGig as a benefit or a hindrance? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

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