Ipod touch alternative?

H

HardLiner

Gawd
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Sorry if this is in the wrong forum.

I'm looking for a late gift for my mother and she likes to play games like solitaire on my brothers Ipod touch and I'm curious if there is anything in the same price range $150-$200 that does the same thing with maybe a bigger screen?
 
In the $150-200 range the Archos 32 with a 3.2" screen running Android 2.2 which runs about $149 - but for $249 I'd highly recommend the Archos 43 without skipping a beat. With a 4.3" diagonal widescreen with 854x480 pixel resolution, Android 2.2 and probably 2.3 pretty soon, it's quite a jump from an iPod touch in terms of screen real estate.

While Android doesn't have the sheer volume of apps the iPod touch does, it still has quite a few, and if a game is popular at all you can be sure it'll be on Android almost at the same time as the iPod touch whenever it gets released (Angry Birds is probably the most popular one of 2010, available on both platforms).

The one "downside" to the Archos 32 and 43 that many people will harp on is they have resistive screens, not capacitive which means they technically aren't touch-screens but pressure-sensitive. The good thing is that resistive screens have progressed to a point where they are almost as sensitive as a capacitive screen, especially on the 32 and 43. I had a chance to play with a 32 recently and while I can tell the difference (physically) that's it resistive, the amount of pressure I had to apply to get the screen to register my finger was hardly anything at all.

The larger size of the 43 is a plus as well, it fits better in the hands in my opinion, and again the larger screen and higher resolution just makes it a better device. No, it ain't an iPod touch, but sometimes that's a very good thing.

It's the only "iPod touch" replacement I recommend at this point if someone has an interest in apps. If someone wanted a media device without concern for apps but only listening to audio and maybe watching some videos, then the Zune HD or the Cowon S9 or J3 would be the recommendation.
 
iirc, 7 home tablet is stuck w/ android 1.5. there is the archos 7 internet tablet which has recent android updates(2.2) and gets fairly good reviews but it is $300
 
Yah, the Archos 7 Home Tablet (not to be confused with the Archos 70 tablet) is based on the Rockchip CPU, so it's fairly weak in terms of processing power, and it's stuck with Android 1.5 and I seriously doubt (like, I'm 100% positive) that Archos is never going to release any updates whatsoever for that one.

For what it is, it's usable but it certainly is the definition of "stuck in time" because it's not going to get upgrades. For listening to music, watching videos (not super-high-bitrate stuff, mind you), and reading eBooks or even surfing the Internet with the knowledge that it is a slower device and not fully up to speed, it's a decent device.

Just don't expect miracles from it. :)

The one downside to Archos devices is they have them locked down so badly... if they were more open, people over at XDA-Developers would tear into them and start making custom ROMs of all kinds, improving most everything, but alas, Archos just doesn't allow it sadly. If they did, their hardware would probably sell 10x what they do right now.

But if you were going to spend that much for the Archos 7 Home Tablet, honestly I would just go ahead and say spend another $50 or so (if that's a possibility) and get her a NOOKColor because that is the tablet device to get for ~$250 or less right now. More capabilities are being uncovered every day, and while your Mom may not give a rat's ass about it being "rooted," you can be sure she'd appreciate all the things that little thing can provide, and all the additional apps one can install on it.

I'm guessing you'd be the one to do the deed if necessary (the rooting and installing apps, games, whatever). For ~$250, the NOOKColor is the device to beat these days and for the next few months as well.
 
Hey thanks for your guys help,the NOOKColor seems to be what I'm looking for.I was reading it might be getting it's own apps hopefully it has solitaire and maybe scrabble/crosswords (old people apps).Do you guys know off hand if you can check Gmail and surf the web on it?
 
It has a browser so yes, you can surf all you want - Flash stuff won't work worth a damn but that's no surprise. It's got Android 2.1 on it at the moment but Barnes & Noble announced recently that they hope to have 2.2 ready sometime in January or February - Android 2.2. has Flash support so, like I said before the NOOKColor just keeps getting better and better all the time.

Once the device is rooted, you're able to install most anything Android related on it, and there's more of those apps each day as well.
 
Nook Color definitely seems to have the best screen/dollar out there.

Screen quality is a big deal in devices that are almost ALL screen.
 
As a followup to the Archos 7 Home Tablet thing, apparently Archos was listening recently when people complained about it never being updated. While that doesn't mean they're going to release an actual update (at least that's what it looks like so far), they have released or will be releasing an Archos 7 Home Tablet v2.0 (this is a translated page so forgive Google for mistakes):

http://translate.google.fr/translat...e.net/L-Archos-7-HT-se-renouvelle-en-V-2.html

and apparently it's already on sale at least from one online retailer:

http://www.expansys-usa.com/archos-7-android-tablet-version-2-8gb-800mhz-android-2-1-207566/

More interesting by the day... and while Android 2.1 still isn't what 2.2 is, it's better than the stock 1.5 on the original Archos 7 Home Tablet, definitely.
 
HardLiner said:
Has anyone tried the Archos 101 capacitive 10inch screen $299...thoughts?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kss5qz5UlBQ
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i haven't tried it but from what i've read it is decent for the price. it has current gen phone internals and a bunch of tegra2 devices are due out in the next couple months. if you are looking to go to over a 7inch screen, then hold off.

the nookcolor is basically a 7inch droid x so theoretically it should perform the same if you root it and when it gets 2.2
 
From what I heard there will be a bunch of new tablets being shown at CES next week, hopefully one of those companies comes out with a budget 9 or 10 incher for around $300

BTW Do you think they will lower the price of the Ipad when the Ipad 2 comes out? Probably not much since it's Apple but I guess we can hope.
 
HardLiner said:
From what I heard there will be a bunch of new tablets being shown at CES next week, hopefully one of those companies comes out with a budget 9 or 10 incher for around $300

BTW Do you think they will lower the price of the Ipad when the Ipad 2 comes out? Probably not much since it's Apple but I guess we can hope.
Click to expand...

it is my guess that they will drop ipad prices by around $100 so starting price will be $399. of course, ipad2 will have just enough features to make it worth the extra money (cameras, maybe dual core, etc). i would be a little surprised if they do dual core since they will probably want to push a dual core iphone at the same time and i don't think iphone needs a hardware jump like that just yet.

check out the notion ink Adam. it will ship in a week or two.
 
While a lot of tablet devices will be introduced in another week or so at CES 2011, don't expect to see any of them in stores till March, perhaps even later. As for an iPad price drop, well, that will probably happen when Apple introduces the second generation model, but that won't be till April or so if they stick to their traditional 1-year spacing for introducing new(er) models of a given product - the original iPad was introduced in April 2010 sooo...

They may announce it in January during whatever Apple event they hold (again, traditionally towards the last week of the month, give or take a few days) but, we won't be seeing the next iPad till at least April - that's my guess.

If you're interested in a tablet device, either buy something right now or get ready to hold off on a purchase for at least 3 months till the "2011 models" come rolling into retailers and stores.
 
Joe Average said:
While a lot of tablet devices will be introduced in another week or so at CES 2011, don't expect to see any of them in stores till March, perhaps even later. As for an iPad price drop, well, that will probably happen when Apple introduces the second generation model, but that won't be till April or so if they stick to their traditional 1-year spacing for introducing new(er) models of a given product - the original iPad was introduced in April 2010 sooo...

They may announce it in January during whatever Apple event they hold (again, traditionally towards the last week of the month, give or take a few days) but, we won't be seeing the next iPad till at least April - that's my guess.

If you're interested in a tablet device, either buy something right now or get ready to hold off on a purchase for at least 3 months till the "2011 models" come rolling into retailers and stores.
Click to expand...

I tend to agree with that. New iPad won't drop until April and we probably won't get Honeycomb Android tablets until at least then either. So not much will change in the next few months.

As far as an iPad price drop, I wouldn't expect much, more like $50 off the old model. I expect the iPad II won't really have much worth waiting for. Likely just cameras and holding the same price point.

My thoughts if you want an iPad just go ahead and get one(unless you really want cameras) as iPad 2 will be a minor tweak at best. But if you want Android it will probably be worth the wait for Tegra 2/Honeycomb. Also with Android we will get a good look at CES about what to expect. iPad 2 won't pre-announce this year. I would expect to hear anything until it is ready to ship, in late march...
 
I suspect the next iPad will be more than you think.

Cameras aren't big deals by that point in time, but the iPad likely going to go dual-core and could have an even higher resolution display. Not to mention that we don't know everything that's coming with the iPad 2. If someone had told you in January 2010 that the next iPhone would have a 960x640 display, a front camera and a five-megapixel back camera with flash, you'd have thought they were smoking something.

Honeycomb is promising, but it's all in the execution and the apps. Delay it for too long or let carriers and OEMs screw it up too much, and it won't work all that well.

In the shorter term... I can't see someone getting the Archos players. Built to a price, and getting an Android device for gaming is more than a little ironic, even if it's awesome for communication. The Samsung Galaxy Player is much more promising as long as it doesn't ship too far out and doesn't suffer from Samsung's notorious tendency to abandon Android devices after they're launched.
 
I guess we find out about iPad in a few months, but I really do think they will minor differences at best. Dual core? Is it needed? Apple tends to add things slowly when they are required, not just doing because a competitor has it. I think the iPad 2 will be much like iPad 1 while it is getting established. I think it will iPad 3 before we see dual core or a resolution increase.

Archos would never be high on my list for anything.

Honeycomb is at least a starting point. Right now Android isn't even intended for tablets, people are just running apps intended for the phones.
 
Even if they were originally designed for phones, most of them scale properly when run on a tablet. It's the thing about android Apps is that they are designed to support multiple resolutions.

The only shortfall is that there's no distinction in the google market. On the apple store, if an application doesn't render properly on the ipad, it doesn't get displayed on the apple market. Otherwise, the same ipod Apps still get installed on the ipad.

All google had to do to make it seem seemless is to do what apple did, filters out the incompatible apps, and then declare google market to be tablet friendly. Instead, they did it the engineering way, and wouldn't put a stamp on it until it's 100% tablet designed.

As it is tho, android 2.2 (even 2.1) already has more useful features and flexibility than ios does.

Note that as you've said, all apps out now are using phone apps and yet most of them are working properly and the extra realestate still makes a difference.



Also, the Archos 4.3 uses the same software as it's bigger brothers. Meaning it does network streaming, and runs every audio and video codec you throw at it without transcoding.(a big deal since a lot of my soundtracks are ogg and flac).

An extra note. They may keep insisting that you can play mkvs using oplayer or vlc, but I've tried them both on my ipod touch 4th Gen and it's either a slideshow, or slowmo.
 
Sly said:
Even if they were originally designed for phones, most of them scale properly when run on a tablet. It's the thing about android Apps is that they are designed to support multiple resolutions.
Click to expand...

IIRC there were a lot of problems with this until some kind of hack program came out that forced a lot of apps to scale and even then a lot of games don't.

Also the Galaxy tab is much closer to phone size so scaled apps don't have that far to scale(but you get little benefit either):
http://gizmodo.com/5686161/samsung-galaxy-tab-review-a-pocketable-train-wreck
If you take iPhone apps and simply scale them up for the iPad, most of them don't feel right. If you take Android apps and scale them up for the Tab, the majority of them—Twitter, Facebook, Angry Birds—work perfectly. (Except for when they don't, like The Weather Channel.) That's because the Galaxy Tab is small enough that apps simply blown up a little bit still fundamentally work. Which means, conversely, that there's almost no added benefit to using the Tab over a phone. It's not big enough. Web browsing doesn't have greater fidelity. I don't get more out of Twitter. A magazine app would be cramped.
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Android tablets are clearly in the infancy stage at this point. It is like the cart leading the horse, some companies dropping Android on Tablets before Google had any support ready. Without standards you end up with a hacked, muddled mess.

Honeycomb will bring official tablet support in the OS and importantly also in the marktet. Also you will get a definition of what a tablet is with size/resolution cuttoffs that are important for interface design and then finally you get tablet unique applications that take real advantage of the extra size, instead of just being giant phone apps that are easier to see.
 
Snowdog said:
I guess we find out about iPad in a few months, but I really do think they will minor differences at best. Dual core? Is it needed? Apple tends to add things slowly when they are required, not just doing because a competitor has it. I think the iPad 2 will be much like iPad 1 while it is getting established. I think it will iPad 3 before we see dual core or a resolution increase.

Archos would never be high on my list for anything.

Honeycomb is at least a starting point. Right now Android isn't even intended for tablets, people are just running apps intended for the phones.
Click to expand...

Games (Apple's unambiguous advantage), 1080p video, more extensive multitasking and likely things neither of us have thought about yet. Besides, here it's as much about keeping current as anything. ARM is going dual-core for just about everyone this year, so if Apple can at least keep the battery life on par with the old iPad, why not?

There's also the wildcard of iOS 5, which could bring in some features we don't even know of yet that could benefit from the greater horsepower.
 
Snowdog said:
IIRC there were a lot of problems with this until some kind of hack program came out that forced a lot of apps to scale and even then a lot of games don't.
Click to expand...

Android specs says that if the app doesn't scale, don't force it and add black borders. However, it only applies to apps that don't scale. Which means they don't fit properly on anything other than their intended resolution. For the most part that hack you're referring to only has to be done for the small number of apps that use fixed resolutions. What the hack does is ignore the parameters that says "Do not re-scale me" and stretches it anyway.

On the App store, these apps are the ones that don't get allowed to be shown on the iPad store. But then as i've said, iPod apps that are manually verified to scale are still installable on the iPad. That's all there is to it. Hiding apps that don't work on the tablet is the only difference between android and ios markets.

Also the Galaxy tab is much closer to phone size so scaled apps don't have that far to scale(but you get little benefit either):http://gizmodo.com/5686161/samsung-galaxy-tab-review-a-pocketable-train-wreck
Click to expand...

Didn't say they were perfect, but until iPad specific apps had become prevalent enough, they were adding "HD" versions of the iPod apps. Android apps are getting updated as well and as of now, HD versions of android apps are already becoming more prevalent.

Android tablets are clearly in the infancy stage at this point. It is like the cart leading the horse, some companies dropping Android on Tablets before Google had any support ready. Without standards you end up with a hacked, muddled mess.
Click to expand...

And yet android users find their devices work great, referring to iOS as a standard isn't much considering that they're just variations of the same base model. I'm enjoying mine and if i didn't need the iPod for development purposes, i'd have gotten the Archos 43 instead.

When i had the iPod 3rd gen 32GB, i barely used any of it because transcoding videos was such a pain, even at the height of my usage and i was re-encoding videos like mad, i barely used more than 16Gigs. I currently have an iPod 4th gen 8GB and even now, it still can't play MKV's and i have to spend half hour re-encoding each episode just to make it show up on the iPod. So anything more than 8Gigs is wasted. And no, oPlayer and VLC cannot play MKV's unless you don't mind playing back slideshows.

Compare that to the archos, you just copy the file into it, even if the original was a 720p MKV, and it'll still run without spending hours re-encoding.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dba5JJmIono#t=7m21s

Honeycomb will bring official tablet support in the OS and importantly also in the marktet. Also you will get a definition of what a tablet is with size/resolution cuttoffs that are important for interface design and then finally you get tablet unique applications that take real advantage of the extra size, instead of just being giant phone apps that are easier to see.
Click to expand...

As i've said, android apps are already evolving ever since the first china slates came out on the 1st quarter 2010. So much so, that when these 4th quarter 2010 android tablets came out, there were already apps designed for HD. They were not told to make them that way, the applications just evolved naturally.

Apps that rescale are not the engineering feats you make them out to be. Maybe on the iPhone it is, since they've all had the same resolution until recently, but android apps were designed to rescale from the start.
 
Sly said:
And yet android users find their devices work great, referring to iOS as a standard isn't much considering that they're just variations of the same base model. I'm enjoying mine and if i didn't need the iPod for development purposes, i'd have gotten the Archos 43 instead.
Click to expand...

I am just saying it is kind of a mess right now for android tablets(not all Android devices). But I am not surprised that they will get defended by users. Right now iPad is the better tablet in almost every review on the planet. Most will be sold to Apple hating, android fan-boys, so of course we are going to get positve user reviews.

And no, oPlayer and VLC cannot play MKV's unless you don't mind playing back slideshows.
Click to expand...

When I get a tablet it will be for home use, where I have a HTPC hooked up the big screen in my living room, so I have practically zero interest in Video playback on it. Perhaps a few to use on a vacation, but it wouldn't be the end of the world to transcode once or twice a year. But have you tried yxplayer, it seems to have some promise.
http://iosforums.com/threads/13-yxplayer-for-iPad-kicks-ass


Apps that rescale are not the engineering feats you make them out to be. Maybe on the iPhone it is, since they've all had the same resolution until recently, but android apps were designed to rescale from the start.
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Apps that rescale aren't the same thing as purpose designed for tablet apps. Sure if it is an e-reader or text enditor, which are just big boxes with text, the same app can work for both. But for something like "The Elements" if you just scale the same interface you do a disservice to both pocket and tablet devices.
 
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