∞ JooJoo creator unveils new smartphone and tablet

Fusion Garage, the company behind the ill-fated JooJoo tablet, is back again. This time the company has unveiled two new products – the Grid 4 and Grid 10 – a smartphone and tablet, respectively.

[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]The Grid 10, a 10.1-inch tablet, will be the first to hit the market in September, for $499 for a 16GB Wi-Fi-equipped model (similarly priced to Apple’s entry-level iPad). The device sports a 1366 x 768 pixel resolution. A 3G version will also be available for $599.

Under the hood is Nvidia’s Tegra 2 microprocessor, which powers an increasing number of tablets. The Grid 4, a 4-inch smartphone handset, features 16GB of storage capacity and will be available unlocked for $399.

Both devices are powered by GridOS, which uses the kernel of Google’s Android operating system but employs a custom interface and capabilities on top – a relationship Fusion Garage likens to Apple’s use of BSD Unix as the core of OS X.

Hints about the Grid 10’s introduction have been bouncing around the blogosphere prior to Monday’s product introduction, attributed to a mysterious company known only as “TabCo.”

The subterfuge is perhaps understandable: Fusion Garage has already been marked by the abject commercial failure of the Linux-based JooJoo; it’s also the subject of a pending lawsuit filed by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington. Arrington was spurned by Fusion Garage after it initially collaborated with him to develop the “CrunchPad,” which Fusion Garage launched itself as the JooJoo.