I was going to buy one from Deal extreme, but is a super confusing process because of all the talk about upgrading firmware constantly, then someone mentioning that the ones with Blue or red LEDS you shouldnt flash the firmware… so I guess I wont be buying this toy for my flight to Taiwan…
I guess, hopefully, I can purchase one in Taipei?
My recommendation is to wait for Android tablets with official Google blessing to be released.
The experience on any of these devices is going to be totally dependent on the apps you have running on it, so I agree if you want an Android tablet, you should definitely wait until the officially blessed ones are released and there is an actual app community behind them.
Otherwise you’re going to have a more or less useless 7" touchscreen, that probably doesn’t work that well as that, even.
If you can’t wait until the “official” Android tablets, get an iPad.
Archos has a couple of 5-inch models and one 7-incher on sale here shopping.pchome.com.tw/?mod=stor … _NO=ABAO2C
Not sure it’s worth it though, but hey…
Fixed.
Bleh. Honestly, the app support is so encompassing now on iPad and jailbreaking will soon get you Flash such that buying and Android tablet will likely be “settling” for a while.
Even if a smoking hot Android tablet ships tomorrow with every app imaginable available that justifies the switch, I can say that the value I’ve gotten out of the 4 or so months of this iPad have already easily paid for the admission fee.
Android on tablets won’t be worth it at all until next year. Once there’s support for 1280x720 displays, dual core ARM CPUs and some other new features, then maybe.
Still, I haven’t really found myself longing for a tablet of any kind, not even an iPad…
[quote=“TheLostSwede”]Android on tablets won’t be worth it at all until next year. Once there’s support for 1280x720 displays, dual core ARM CPUs and some other new features, then maybe.
Still, I haven’t really found myself longing for a tablet of any kind, not even an iPad…[/quote]
The primary driver of Android tablet success is the app and accessory support, not things like hardware specs.
The hardware is nearly irrelevant as long as it works well at what it does. Outside of people like us who browse tech forums, tech industry insiders, and analysts tracking semiconductor trends, basically NOBODY cares about specific specs in terms of gigabytes, megahertz and [insert nonsensical string of letters here]VGA.
What the device can do, and how well it does these things is all that matters.
And despite its very modest 256MB RAM and 1GHz single core ARM, the iPad in v1 can do some pretty amazing things. Some things that computers with 16 times the RAM and 4x the processor can’t do or don’t do well. People who deny this have obviously never sat with one, thought about what things can be better on it, then did those things. These things are possible due in a very large part from 3rd party developers having a pot of money to chase and the resulting brainshare that comes. This is why “ecosystem” is not just a “marketing” buzzword, and people who dismiss as such aren’t looking at the whole picture.
There’s also a lot of things the iPad can’t do well or at all, but it is neither apologetic nor trying to do these things halfway. The success of the Android tablets will also depend on how well they DON’T try to do everything, despite some people (who will tend to be the most vocal) thinking they should.
Like Timothy Ferris pointed out quite well in 4-hour Work Week: Don’t waste time fixing your deficiencies and instead spend time doing what you do well really really well. Doing the former nets only incremental gains, whereas the later gets huge, orders of magnitude differences in impact.
Of course people care, one of the big thing a lot of people are waiting for is a tablet that can play HD video on an HD resolution display. Having a portable video player is something a lot of people are keen on and if it also can double as a web access device, a gaming device and what not else, then so much better. A portable DVD player can’t do this, nor can your phone or your hand held gaming device.
Memory is required so you can store the apps you claim that everyone cares about, so that is very important, more so than I realised when I got my first Android phone. This is likely to change once Android 2.2+ becomes the norm, but for now, having a device with very little internal storage memory means that you can’t have a lot of apps on it simultaneously.
I’m not asking for an all singing, all dancing product with a built in toaster, but we’re not there in terms of both software and hardware yet and I was merely pointing this out. I’ve tried most of the “tablet” devices that have launched over the years and pretty much every single one of them have sucked. The iPad is a step in the right direction and I’m willing to say more so than any current competing device in the market. However, I think we’ll be seeing a lot better devices come next year, devices that will do 80-90% of what people expect to be able to do with them, instead of 40-50%.
There should be a bunch of these by the end of the year. For many, its important that it run Android 2.2 Froyo which has Flash. There will also be Windows 7 tablets. My opinion: a good time to wait 4 months.
Many of the “Windows 7” tablets will run Windows 7 Embedded, i.e. not a full version of Windows 7.
Anyone considering getting an Atom powered tablet, don’t. It’ll be like having a netbook without a keyboard and with half the battery life, if you’re lucky.
Swede, have you used any of the i-Devices?
iOS has been able to use the entire available storage space (up to 64GB minus the OS in the iPad) for apps since the first iPhone, so this has never been a problem there. The app review site, 148apps.com is so named because this is how many apps that could be displayed back in the days of only 9 homescreens and no folders, even though you could store as many as you want and get to them with spotlight.
The Android 2.1 and below app storage behavior is so frustrating. I ran out of room on the Milestone the first week I had it. Thank goodness for this fix in Froyo, but most of the owners of phones that shipped with 2.1 originally will never see this. I certainly hope nobody will be shipping actual Android tablets on anything but Froyo, because that would be horrible in so many ways on so many parts of the ecosystem.
Hence my comment which you quoted…
You said that no-one cares about memory, but obviously you do, even on whatever Apple device you got as well.
And yes, it’s a stupid limitation on Android and loads of owners of Android devices will never see a 2.2 upgrade which really sucks, especially as one of the main reasons most people never will see it is that the manufacturers want to differentiate between their “budget” and high-end models by offering different OS versions on them, despite there being no actual cost difference for the software. We’re going to see devices with older versions of Android for a long time and the Android tablets that are shipping already, like the Archos ones, have older versions of Android on them and are unlikely to be upgraded to 2.2+.
[quote=“TheLostSwede”]Hence my comment which you quoted…
You said that no-one cares about memory, but obviously you do, even on whatever Apple device you got as well. [/quote]
I said people don’t care about RAM, not storage. Storage is a marketable spec. RAM, in mobile, not really.
iPhone users never cared about storage in the sense of storing apps because there was never a limitation on how many apps you could store that was directly mappable to storage. You just keep putting on apps, and it works.
Sure, storage is an important customer-facing parameter… because it defines what you can and cannot do, and how much you can do, in terms most people understand. It determines how many hours of video you can put on it, how many pictures you can take, how many songs you can store, and (although this limitation will never be hit in practice on any iDevice from the first iPhone) how many apps you can store.
Most people understand and relate to “it feels fast or slow”, “it is instant or laggy”, “it is crisp or blurry”, “the battery lasts all day or not”. They don’t directly understand or care that its dual core runs at 3.14159GHz, it has 516MB of RAM, its screen is [insert-nonsensical-string-of-letters-here]VGA or its battery is 1500mAH. Because these things don’t directly map to use cases in eyes of non-techy users, these are not truly differentiating factors.
a 7" tablet is indeed a bitter pill to swallow.
Ill just wait till after the holidays…or if I fall in love with something that I physically play around with at a store… then shop for it online ofcourse.
Some new models coming from Archos, all with Android 2.2
engadget.com/2010/08/31/arch … s-we-go-h/
[quote=“TheLostSwede”]Some new models coming from Archos, all with Android 2.2
engadget.com/2010/08/31/arch … s-we-go-h/[/quote]
They look alright in a cheap and cheerful kind of way, until you get to this:[quote]Speaking of applications, all of the tablets come with Archos AppsLib – there’s no Market access or Google apps preloaded…[/quote]So, no Gmail, no YouTube, no Google Maps, also probably no Kindle app. Alright if you mostly use the browser or apps that are sold as separate APK downloads; not so good otherwise.
Yeah, Archos seems to have this recurring problem that all their tablets only support their own app store…
Not quite sure why, if it’s to do with them not wanting to pay up to Google for the extra features or what…
ViewSonic (local Taiwanese company) will launch a new 7-inch model at IFA this week, although it’ll only hit retail in October, but it’s said to have 3G built in as well as support for the Android market. It’s £350 though…
[quote=“TheLostSwede”]Yeah, Archos seems to have this recurring problem that all their tablets only support their own app store…
Not quite sure why, if it’s to do with them not wanting to pay up to Google for the extra features or what…[/quote]
Which is quite interesting because it can go less than free.
abovethecrowd.com/2009/10/29/goo … ess-model/
[quote]I then asked my friend, “so why would they ever use the Google (non open source) license version.” (EDIT: One of the commenters below pointed out that all Android is open source, and the Google apps pack, including the GPS, is licensed on top. Doesn’t change the argument, but wanted the correct data included here.) Here was the big punch line – because Google will give you ad splits on search if you use that version! That’s right; Google will pay you to use their mobile OS. I like to call this the “less than free” business model. This is a remarkable card to play. Because of its dominance in search, Google has ad rates that blow away the competition. To compete at an equally “less than free” price point, Symbian or windows mobile would need to subsidize. Double ouch!!
[/quote]
Totally seems like an example of a tech company heavy on tech and light on product management, marketing or business direction. Or operating cash.