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Android Tablets

BobSutan

BobSutan

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Apr 5, 2000
Messages
12,226
I haven't seen a full showdown between all the 10" tablets on the market and need help deciding on what to buy, or even to buy as there's so many interesting products hitting the market in a few months.

At the moment I'm torn between rebuying the G Tablet again or picking up a 16GB iPad non-3G. It's been reported Viewsonic pushed some updates the other day that fixed some of the problems people have been having, and there's a rumor they'll be getting rid of Tap'n'Tap all together. TJ Max has the iPad on sale for the holiday and it's the same price as the G Tablet, although it lacks the SD and USB slots for adding stuff on the fly.

Rumint has the iPad 2 in develop and nearing a release in Q1 11, and I read today that ACER has some products in development, although they're probably going to slip until mid 11. Lastly is the ASUS EEE Tablets, which I've really been looking forward to for some time now. However, I haven't read anything recent on their progress and there's no telling when they'll see release date.

I think anyone looking to future proof their Tablet should only be looking at Tegra powered tabs for the horsepower to run Gingerbread (2.3) and Honeycomb (3.), both which will be getting released fairly soon (2.3 in Dec and 3.0 in Q1 11).

EDIT
Found this on the ASUS models

Pushed back to April 2011:
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/asu...e-but-well-have-to-wait-for-android-50001442/
 
My recommendation:

The Archos 101 10.1" Android Tablet

Nothing else comes close, especially for the price. If you intend to buy now or in the next few weeks, there's really no competition that matters. If you're intending to wait, then maybe something better will come along but I can assure you those other tablets will be nearly double in price.
 
^^ Yeah, I'm getting either the Archos 70 or 101 Whenver. They're. Available. Been waiting a little while now. Want to play around with them at Best Buy or wherever and then see how much Amazon has them for.
 
You might have to wait if you want to see them in stores. All the Archos shipments in my area are reserved all the way to december according to our distributor.

Whenever the archos store gets online, it kept getting sold out within hours. I got lucky and had mine reserved all the way back in October so mine got included in the november 1 shipment.
 
Sly said:
You might have to wait if you want to see them in stores. All the Archos shipments in my area are reserved all the way to december according to our distributor.

Whenever the archos store gets online, it kept getting sold out within hours. I got lucky and had mine reserved all the way back in October so mine got included in the november 1 shipment.
Click to expand...

I would imagine that Archos would be alloting more units to the US retail market than to the Philippines market, which is where you got yours from right?
 
I don't know how someone could get the Archos 101!

I tried it at CTIA. It felt cheap and slightly underpowered, but more importantly, you don't have access to Android Market at last check. The substitute doesn't seem like a viable option. Archos also doesn't strike me as the kind likely to have a quick Android upgrade in place, either, assuming the hardware is up to it.

Personally, I'm not expecting much from Android tablets until HTC and Motorola weigh in with Android 3.0 hardware.
 
@Cliff Couser
Yeah. From what i've been reading, it's like the US got them last. Maybe they filled in the smaller orders first?

@Aurelius
I got the google market working 10 minutes after i got it. The whole process took about 2 minutes. The built in file browser can run APKs.

To be honest, i'm only keeping this for half a year. It's the best bang for the buck right now so it's okay to get one ($300!!!). But in about year when the market stabilizes, we're gonna seeing dual core, tegra 3, android 3.0, and a stable software platform, that would be a good time to buy a premium slate.

How long did it take for netbook specs to stabilize? The original netbook had 512MB ram, 4Gig SSD harddrive, 500Mhz celeron. It has since standardized to 1Gig RAM, a mechanical drive, and 1.6Ghz Atom. If china slates were eeePC 700s, the Archos 101 would be en eeePC 1000. The slates seem to be evolving faster than the netbooks.


BTW, might be of interest, we all have the same market APK's, but the ones in the US were able to access the paid apps. Philippines can't :( I wanted PocketCloud :( :( :(
 
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Sly said:
@Cliff Couser

To be honest, i'm only keeping this for half a year. It's the best bang for the buck right now so it's okay to get one ($300!!!). But in about year when the market stabilizes, we're gonna seeing dual core, tegra 3, android 3.0, and a stable software platform, that would be a good time to buy a premium slate.
Click to expand...

BINGO! stop-gap for me as well until we see some honest to goodness tablets in a year with faster processors and better screens. Just want/need a tablet now myself. :)
 
I'll tell you one thing, I won't be buying anything unless I can get my hands on one first to test out. For completeness, here's my quick review of the Viewsonic G Tablet I posted at Ars the other day...

I had the Viewsonic G Tablet last weekend. Great hardware for the exception of the screen due to the really bad viewing angle. So long as you look at it straight on it's fine. It weights about 1.5lb so it's not too heavy, but I did feel that if dropped it once it'd be a gonner.

When the tablet works it is a speed demon and works well. However, the Tap-n-Tap UI is so bad I cannot recommend anyone buy this thing unless they're a modder and don't mind fiddling to gt it working. Despite what the box says Flash does NOT work, there is no marketplace for obtaining apps, the wifi is problematic, and a lot of people are having problems getting the thing to recognize their micro-SD card, plus the way they split the internal 16GB storage was strange. They reserved 3GB for the OS (about 1.5GB free to load apps with) and gives the user 13GB free to load music, movies, pdfs, etc. Any storage you add via the micro-SD card will be mounted to the slot2 partition and the lack of manual is also catching people off guard who aren't Linux savvy.


Overall this thing has got gobs of potential, but it's not something for Joe Sixpack due to being utterly crippled with the custom UI they shipped it with and bugginess. I'd give it 4 stars if it worked as advertised and was a polished produce (which would have been 5 starts with a better screen), but out of the box it gets 1 1/2 stars--1 star because that's the minimum and the half star for how great it was when it (rarely) worked the way it was supposed to.

My suggestion is if you're a modder and don't mind fiddling with it to go ahead and grab one, but hold off for a sale or one that's been returned.
Click to expand...

On paper the G Tablet eats the Archos 101's lunch, but the reality is likely much different due to the piss poor UI and how buggy it is. Once this thing is polished it'll be the best tablet of the current generation available.
 
While the g tablet does have the hardware potential, it's unusable without a major overhaul from the user. Hence, not very user friendly. Its hardware advantage however will be lost in just a couple of months when the big name tablets arrive. So in effect you've been suffering with a horribly coded os for the most part.

The archos on the other hand works as is, using a slightly older chooser but polished enough that you'll actually enjoy using it with no hassle tight from the start. It may not have froyo yet, but even with just 2.1, it's perfectly usable.

So with the g tab, the moment you get it, it's worse than an archos. And by the time it's fully working, other tablets with superior features would have almost arrived.
 
Sly said:
While the g tablet does have the hardware potential, it's unusable without a major overhaul from the user. Hence, not very user friendly. Its hardware advantage however will be lost in just a couple of months when the big name tablets arrive. So in effect you've been suffering with a horribly coded os for the most part.

The archos on the other hand works as is, using a slightly older chooser but polished enough that you'll actually enjoy using it with no hassle tight from the start. It may not have froyo yet, but even with just 2.1, it's perfectly usable.

So with the g tab, the moment you get it, it's worse than an archos. And by the time it's fully working, other tablets with superior features would have almost arrived.
Click to expand...

Defending your purchase?

FYI I took the G Tablet back and told them it was defective (technically it was--box said it had a market and had Flash, but the market wasn't on it and Flash was broken).
 
i dont think he is defending the purchase when he says it is unusable, and when it does work it will be worse than what is out.....


anyhow i'm looking forward to the Archos 101, or HTC's offerings when available
 
Not much to defend. I already mentioned that any tablet out now is just a stopgap (perfect description from cliff) until the real tablets come out in six months, whose specs could be anything, so any attempt at future proofing is futile. You might as well get one that works right now.

I have high expectations for this platform, and already have a wishlist for my permanent slate :)
 
i'm excited about the Notion Ink Adam. I hope this start up releases a quality product that helps shape the market. there are a lot of tegra2 based tablets due out in the next few months. the complete feature set along w/ the custom UI will be what determines the best tablet. standard android won't cut it for a tablet that is going up against the ipad.

i had hopes for a quality webOS tablet but palm screwed up the pre line and i think HP will screw up the future devices. pre2 is a joke
 
One thing I'll say is that tablets should get a LOT better at CES.

Expect dual-core Tegra 2 and possibly Android 3.0. My main worry is whether or not Google will have properly optimized things: if Android 3.0 is literally just some rescaling and doesn't actually change the UI or apps on a fundamental level, that's going to hurt and give Apple plenty of ammunition.

As it stands, Acer isn't giving a lot of promise; it announced tablets six months ahead of time with no idea of how well they're actually going to work. They're not going to look that good in April, since there should be a new iPad... and the PlayBook... and probably the HTC, LG and Motorola Android-based tablets.
 
Just my $0.02: I was checking out the Android tablets at BBY the other day and compared to the iPad they are very very poor.
 
Liquid_Table said:
Just my $0.02: I was checking out the Android tablets at BBY the other day and compared to the iPad they are very very poor.
Click to expand...

How so? Because the one's that have had both ipad and android tablets are preferring the android. The only advantage the ipad has is the screen and not much else.
 
Sly said:
How so? Because the one's that have had both ipad and android tablets are preferring the android. The only advantage the ipad has is the screen and not much else.
Click to expand...

I... don't think you've actually used an iPad.

I've used both the iPad and the Galaxy Tab. Right now, Apple has a serious head start in terms of experience. Its UI is much smoother (try scrolling or zooming in the browser as an example) and, more importantly, it's just better optimized. Every native app was clearly improved for the extra screen space; a lot of Android tablets don't. Samsung has been fairly good about it, but most haven't really done anything.

Not to mention the third-party support, Apple was very shrewd in not only making sure the OS was tablet-ready, it gave developers a head start and even a universal app format so that a single app could run fully optimized on an iPad and an iPhone. There are over 35,000 iPad apps. How many are written for current Android tablets? Heck, Google has even specifically warned against making Android tablets for 2.2 and earlier, which is pretty telling.

And before you ask: no, having Flash doesn't make it better. I've tried it on the Tab, and so have a few of my friends. It's just too slow, and a lot of the advantage is lost for games when you realize that most Flash games don't know how to deal with touch. One of those friends put it succinctly: web browsing is fine on the Galaxy Tab as long as you don't go to sites with Flash.

I want to see a good experience on an Android tablet, but we won't really see that until Android 3.0 and dual-core chips are common place. Until then, the iPad is just a lot more polished and better supported.
 
The Nook Color is in such incredibly short supply that I don't expect to see a root (if one appears, which it probably will) for a few weeks to come. It's got decent hardware in it, and the 7" 1024x600 screen looks to potentially be great for reading full PDF files but, then again it is a 7" screen. ;)

It has almost the makings of a full blown Android tablet really, I don't see why Barnes & Noble just doesn't make that leap considering the price. But for something in the $250 price range (give or take maybe $50 either way) the best buy for a 7" device at this point is that Archos 70 that I'm looking at. I like the Archos 101 also but, I think 7" tablets will be a sweet spot in the market and 10" is a bit large for most folks.

But for $279 or so, the Archos 70 - considering it IS a full Android device (minus 3G capability, of course) and can run the eBook readers from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and whoever - is still probably a better deal than any static eBook reader by design.

As for the iPad vs the world shit, enough's enough, this is a thread about Android tablets, keep the iPad comparisons out of it will ya. We've seen enough of that shit. Focus on Android...

And any gripes about current Android devices on the market and in stores as of this moment are most likely going to find that Android 2.1 on them (or an even older version) is what's causing it. The Samsung Galaxy Tab is the only device in a store that I've been able to actually do a hands on demo with that has 2.2 Froyo from the factory - everybody else still has 2.1 or an older build.

2.2 Froyo definitely smooths out the operation of the device, manages the memory far better, and adds additional capabilities as well. I demoed a Dell Streak at Best Buy recently and was pretty much pissed at how badly it performed because of that stock 1.6 build on it. I still don't know what the fuck someone at Dell was thinking with that but, what's done is done. I'll say this: it killed sales right out of the gate, honestly, and the still way too damned expensive pricing will just keep that Dell buried.

A damned shame too 'cause I kinda like the form factor, it did fit into my hand pretty damned well, and I am a HUGE fan of that actual Gorilla Glass on it. I love watching that video over at Engadget where the reviewer beats the living shit out of a Dell streak and it doesn't even flinch. That's a huge plus... here's the link if you've never seen it:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/29/dell-streaks-gorilla-glass-screen-torture-tested-for-your-amus/

That is just fucking AWESOME and I don't think most any other devices out there could tolerate that kind of punishment. You can see he's really pounding the hell out of that thing (the little circle blips that appear on the LCD show he's making pretty serious content).

I tell ya, if it was half the cost (unlocked as well as on contract) I'd consider it, but as it is, forget it.
 
I haven't had an ipad, but some of the ones in the archos forums have. I have used an iPod and as my boss said, his iPad is just an oversized version of his iPod. The fact is, the android tablet isn't anywhere near as restrictive as the iPad, the iTunes alone pisses me off because of the horrible way it was coded. The thing is probably the worst coded application i have ever used. This coming from a company that's been passing off windows and its applications as a horrible.

The apps are a non-issue. Google did not specify the specs for something this large, but the basic specs still applies. Unlike iPhones, android smartphone screens do not have a fixed resolution, and as such, the apps are pretty much written to adjust to any size. Much like desktop apps, they are autosized to fit any resolution. Including the tablet sizes. Hence, most of the existing android apps can fit into the tablets without need for pixel doubling or stretching. The known issues are the ones with fixed resolutions. Which the google specs also cover as well. In those cases, the specs says to add black borders around the app. The Galaxy Tab followed this and that's why some of the apps are smaller than the screen, archos tablets did it a bit differently decided to stretch it anyway. Point is, existing apps work.

While the interface does indeed need polishing, the basic android tablet already pwns the iPad in connectivity.

The use of an actual file system is also a big plus. You need something off your PC? Just use your tablet to browse it, get your files, save it to your tablet, and use any of your ebook readers to open it. All without needing to connect with a proprietary cable or software. On that note, if it was in someone else's pc, you can just access that too.

On the android, you get the ability to connect anywhere. If you go to a friends house and share files, you can connect through his home network and get your files through his shared folders. You can use the thumbdrive. Or maybe even connect to his PC via USB and just drag it there.

The platform just allows your tablet to function independently from a PC, need to copy files off a camera? The USB can read files off it. I've plugged in my iPod, Camera, Thumbdrives, harddrives, cellphones. The tablet can access the files on all of them.

Need more room? There's a micro sd slot on the side of it. That kinda took out the question on what size to get because even if it's just 8Gigs, you can stick a 32Gig card in there later anyway. Or even expand it right now since it's the same type that's used on smartphones (I already had three of them)

In a meeting and you need to trade information with someone? You can copy it off his memory card or thumbdrive.

Need to load something off your desktop? Just go...
\storage\network\smb\workground\yourpcname\yoursharedfolder\supermario3.nes
Much like windows applications, you load files anywhere on your network.

The day i got my Archos 101, i was watching 720p subtitled anime videos right off my file server. The stock player apparently runs MKV's and you can stream anything off it. Rather than spend hours converting, you just play the videos as is. At worst, the amount of time it takes to get the video to run on it is about as long as it takes to copy a file into a thumbdrive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvLzPSTpNJA

Need a keyboard? A Mouse? Get a usb hub and connect them both. Wireless mice also work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYAyQQk2C78

And all that for $300.00. No need to spend another hundred dollars on accessories.

If this is what these early android tablets can do now, i'm looking forward to what's out there six months from now.

EDIT: In respect to Bahamut, i've taken out the iOS references. Including the one that shows it takes almost half an hour to watch a video on an iPod/iPad.
 
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BTW, regarding the flash. There's a tickbox on it that says 'use when needed'. So it's an option. You don't want it, disable it. Point being, you now have 100% of the web available to you now. Including company and product websites which still tends to prefer flash.
 
Well you don't have to do it "in respect" to me - I just figured instead of this turning into another "iPad vs everything else" thread why not keep it on track and on focus: Android tablets, that's all. Things around here so off-topic so fast sometimes, be nice to have a decent thread with intelligent discussion about what is soon to command the most space on tablets, that being the Android OS.

As someone that's tinkered with pretty much every form of pocketable device ever made since the mid-1970s, I have to say that aside from my Axim X51v that I still find a use for pretty regularly, I do like this HTC HD2 - even more so since it's so easy to run Android off the microSD card so I can tinker around with it as much as I damned well please.

I like many other enthusiasts just can't tolerate being locked down or restricted in most any way, hence the fascination with Android I suppose. It's open in so many ways (and I don't just mean as open source) and people are free to goof around with it as they see fit. Want to do development? No problem, the SDK runs on almost all major OS platforms and doesn't require me to buy a new computer (aka a Mac to run Xcode since it's platform-locked) just to run it.

Sometimes I wish I had some skills with coding, I really do. But I never went into the software side of things, I'm a hardware geek first and foremost, always have been, always will be.

If I had any talent at all I'd be working on a customized version of some OS similar to the interface seen at the beginning of the movie "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" for the Guide itself. I love that animated sequence of the book opening up, booting the interface, and how it presents the data.

Someday we'll have a seamless interface between the data we're looking for an how it's represented, and not a multitude of OSes and browsers and whatnot. Could be very interesting, but I doubt I'll still be around when it happens - that is if we don't blow ourselves off the face of the planet first.
 
Aurelius said:
I... don't think you've actually used an iPad.

I've used both the iPad and the Galaxy Tab. Right now, Apple has a serious head start in terms of experience. Its UI is much smoother (try scrolling or zooming in the browser as an example) and, more importantly, it's just better optimized. Every native app was clearly improved for the extra screen space; a lot of Android tablets don't. Samsung has been fairly good about it, but most haven't really done anything.
Click to expand...

That's because Samsung chose to use adw.launcher for it's main page. It's slow on any device, and makes the decently fast Galaxy tab sluggish.

I used both HTC Sense (Stock+HTC widgets) and ADW.Launcher (the crap Samsung uses) on my Aria (uses a much slower CPU vs the Galaxy Tab), and the difference is subtle, but rather noticeable. The galaxy UI choice (which you can easliy change by downloading a new one from the market) was poor, IMO. Samsung would of been better served by just using Android's stock UI, which does almost everything adw.launcher does -save for having "unlimited" tabs.
 
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oops. made a serious typing screwup. Corrected now.

Instead of "stock ui interface" it should read Galaxy UI interface"


Sorry!
 
I have a Galaxy Tab and it's amazing, I pull it in and out of my jacket pocket all day long and barely use my smartphone. I'm considering going back to a regular flip phone or reducing the data plan to a limited one at least.
 
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