Camen Design Forum

Android Tablets

append delete theraje

So, I've been looking at Android-powered tablets lately, as I've been interested in developing for them the minute I heard that they were being worked on. In my opinion, the current-gen tablets still have a lot of growing pains to go through.

The best-looking tablet I've seen thus far seems to be the ViewSonic G-Tablet. Of course, getting a workable interface and access to the standard Android Marketplace seems to be a real headache (it involves flashing the system and using a community-provided hack). The specs, features, etc. are all there, but the software is crippled unless you do a lot of hackery.

There are tablets that have it in the software (default access to Google Market), or in the hardware (Tegra2 processors, multi-touch, etc.), but never both (and a lot of times not either one).

Does anyone think there are any next-gen tablets that will finally get it "right"? Or do you think it will be a while until we get an Android tablet that doesn't come with hoops in the box with the instructions, "jump through"?

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append delete #1. ThomasGC

I'm doing Android dev on a couple of phones (Hero and NexusOne) and have played with the SDK 3.0 preview tablet virtual device... find it _very_ slow and unresponsive compared to the phone emulators. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.

I had hoped we'd see a lot more Android tablets in 2010 but, now that 3.0 Honeycomb is out, it should get interesting.

I'm holding out at least until mid-year to get a tablet. I've seen talk of quad-core devices and one of these would do very nicely. Until then, my tablet dev will be on the SDK's emulator.

append delete #2. Kroc

Yeah, I would recommend waiting no less than six months, and ideally one to two years before buying in, unless you’re intending to develop for the current market.

Tablets are still in the "market opening" stage just like netbooks before; and just as most of the early netbooks were crap (celeron 900s / tiny SSDs) the format will eventually stabilise around a decent enough spec level (Atom / HDD).

Google have yet to release a tablet themselves, expect this soon enough. They wouldn’t be coding Honeycomb with such fervour unless they had something to directly to use it on.

append delete #3. oldtimes

I was looking for a nice Android tablet too, but eventually decided to buy an iPad while waiting. (Note: It was my first Apple product, not a huge Steve fan yet :)

I really would have preferred some android device instead of iPad, but I was unable to find a tablet which was performing well enough in user reviews. Now after 3 months of iPad usage I must say I'm happy. I use it one or two hours every day to check news, blogs, google reader feeds, facebook, irc, etc. So far the missing flash-support hasn't been a problem.

What is the operating system of next tablet which I'm going to buy? Honestly I don't know anymore. Currently I'm so happy with iPad that it is going to be a hard choice between some android version x versus iPad x...

I have a Motorola Milestone phone with 2.1 Android and it has always felt like unfinished product with some minor issues there and there. Android is developing so fast and new releases are flooding to markets that I don't know if android devices will always feel like semi-finished alpha/beta versions to common users.

PS: NoNonsenseForum works fine with iPad. =)

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