If you are in the market for a solid 7-inch Android tablet, you’re probably having a very hard time deciding between the very nice looking and cheap gadgets Google and Amazon are currently offering. The Nexus 7 was thought to be the champion of this particular niche just a few weeks ago, but Amazon has stepped up its game by releasing a new 7-inch Kindle Fire and cutting the price of the first-gen tab.

Now Acer is looking to join the crowded and competitive “party” as well, with one juicy 7-inch tab we craved for ever since Computex in June. The Iconia Tab A110 is the name of this new slate, and, just when we thought we knew everything about it, Acer dropped the bomb: it will come with Jelly Bean on board.

The announcement came in an otherwise unspectacular press release presenting the Iconia Tab A110 — again — in Switzerland. We don’t know why in Switzerland and why now, but we’re guessing the 7-incher will finally start selling sometime soon.

Pricing was not mentioned in the press release (why would it be, right?), so the only hint we have on that front is still the Ebuyer pre-order listing over in UK, which has the Iconia A110 at £179.98, including VAT. The listing popped up way back in August, so it doesn’t seem particularly trustworthy, although it has slightly changed from then, now saying that there are “500 units available for pre-order.”

I personally think this is still wishful thinking (if not outright fraud), but there are other rumors that point towards similar pricing and a shipping start scheduled for late September or early October. That’s in the UK and other “select” European countries, because in the U.S. we still have nothing more than wild guesses at this point — like the price being $180 or $200.

Getting back to having Android 4.1 Jelly Bean out-of-the-box, we should stress that this is one unexpectedly pleasant surprise, especially seeing how tough of a job most manufacturers seem to have with updating much advanced tablets to the latest OS version.

The rest of the A110’s spec sheet was more or less known in August. It will include a capacitive multi-touch screen with 1024 x 600 pixels resolution, a quad-core 1.2 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor, 1 GB of RAM, 8 GB of on-board memory, microSD support, a 2 MP front-facing camera, micro HDMI, WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, and a 3,420 mAh battery.

There are several pros and cons for choosing the Iconia Tab A110 over the Nexus 7 and/or Amazon’s Kindle Fires, most of which we already talked about in our previous post about the tab. Jelly Bean will certainly top that pro list, although it’s still too early to say anything more about Acer’s latest 7-incher than it looks like a contender good enough to challenge the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire. Do you guys agree?

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Acer Iconia Tab A110 priced in the UK at £179, to be released in late September, Acer Iconia Tab A110 7-inch tablet unveiled, to come soon with ICS, Tegra 3 and sub-$200 price tag, Acer says Jelly Bean updates are coming for several tablets, no names and dates mentioned just yet