Technology Android

[masta247]

Lol, I'm very far from being an Android fanboy. I'm barely an active Android user and I see how despite all of its weaknesses it's the best choice for me amongts all imperfect mobile operating systems. Frankly, I'm more of a fan of Android devices - because good phones seem to be using Android.

The Ipad is a decent tablet, especially in its price range, yes. It's one of the best tablets hardware-wise, offers superior tablet software and imho still a superior feel to MOST Android tablets which are often more expensive.

I have a smartphone, I have a laptop - I had a tablet (Ipad 2) and I see that it's not too useful for me. BUT given the right price tag I might reconsider getting one just for the little use that it gives me (playing games while shitting or reading stuff on the bus).
I think that there's limited demand for high-end tablets, but once the price gets low enough there might be a demand for inexpensive tablets. Also, for many markets these are the only devices people will be interested in - cheaper than high-end phones but packing similar performance AND being a tablet (with Ipads being out of reach). Outside of the US most people still buy feature phones.

 

[S O F I]

There is A HUGE FUCKING DEMAND for high end tablets. It is obvious with how successful the lastest iPad version was. I don't know how you seem to classify demand. What you're confusing is that there's NO demand for tablets either than the iPad.

But I do agree that if two years from now, the equivalent of a present day iPad cost $150, that might be a popular low end product. But I just feel that for people who find these products useful, they'll be willing to shell out $500 dollars. But then again, I've seen people use iPhones when they don't even deserve a Nokia from 1998 with what they use it for and the level of their IQ. But I digress. The market is still in its infancy, I feel. I think companies might be just as successful, if not more, with tablets commercially. So I might think buying a Nexus tablet would be idiotic, but a government agency might find it a good buy and so forth.

 

[masta247]

There is A HUGE FUCKING DEMAND for high end tablets. It is obvious with how successful the lastest iPad version was. I don't know how you seem to classify demand. What you're confusing is that there's NO demand for tablets either than the iPad.

By limited demand I mean that most people still don't plan on buying one. And outside of the US the demand for all tablets is even lower.
What I mean is that if tablets were to cost 200$ the demand would be much higher. Since the companies even plan of releasing 249$ laptops it probably means that they've estimated their PEDs here.
There's a small amount of people who REALLY need what tablet offers yet companies do a good enough job by creating those needs and at 200$ suddenly a lot more people might be interested.
Kind of like with laptops 10 years ago. They were too expensive for what you could do with them. With time there came new needs and the price drops and now most people have one.

 

[S O F I]

Yeah, definitely. I think if you can make a quality tablet and sell it for $200 and not sell at a loss (Hi Amazon) then you've got something. But I don't know how good a tablet can be that costs $200 or so.

 

[Casey]

I bought a Motorola Xoom 2 Media Edition back in February. This is it:

It's an 8.2" screen. I wanted something bigger than the 7" screen on my Nook Color, but still small enough to use as an e-reader, so this was perfect. Also, it's incredibly light - 336 grams, which is lighter than even the Galaxy Tab 7.7 which weighs 340, yet this has a bigger screen. It's portable, responsive, and has a great screen, nice quality speakers and I absolutely love it.

The only issue is that slow-ass Motorola haven't pushed out Ice Cream Sandwich for it yet, so it's still on Honeycomb 3.2. And the bootloader is locked, so no custom ROM's, although I have been able to root it. Moto are saying July for ICS, which is a fucking joke, but oh well. Honeycomb is fine for the meantime and I've got something to look forward to lol.

Great price point as well - £300. I was ready to drop £500 for the Transformer Prime, but my cousin bought one and after a few hours playing with it, it's just not portable enough for my needs and obviously not suitable for e-books.

 

[Pittsey]

I have an Asus Transformer Prime. It does what I want from it. But I agree with Sofi, it isn't as good as the Ipad 2.

The docking station is fucking awful. Far too sensitive and difficult to type on. I hate using it. But the 18 hours battery life is awesome. I still prefer android, I want to look at all of the internet, not a flash free selection. But I think I am going to buy an ipad 2 for my son, the ipad 3 doesn't bring much extra., for the educational apps.

The way I see it. Education and business (enterprise) are the 2 largest areas for tablet growth. No one seems to be working on enterprise solutions, where security is paramount and RIM still seems to be leading.... and android is severely lacking in the education area. When I saw google body about 4 years ago, I thought they were targeting schools. But, no. Google body is shit. 5% of what it should be, and it is all google are offering.

 

[Flipmo]

I'm still waiting it out for a tablet. I won't lie, the Samsung 7.7 tablet had me considering it, but... I'll still wait it out till the tablets are pushing at least 2 gigs of ram.

 

[masta247]

I don't think you need 2gig of ram on a tablet running a mobile OS and mobile apps. Faster ram is what I'd be looking for but 1gig is quite a lot. Android's process management still sucks though, it keeps a lot of things in the memory.

 

[masta247]

It's an 8.2" screen. I wanted something bigger than the 7" screen on my Nook Color, but still small enough to use as an e-reader, so this was perfect. Also, it's incredibly light - 336 grams, which is lighter than even the Galaxy Tab 7.7 which weighs 340, yet this has a bigger screen. It's portable, responsive, and has a great screen, nice quality speakers and I absolutely love it.

Yeah the size looks good, kind of like the Tab 8.9 which seems to be the perfect size for me.
But I've read that the Xoom 2 was heavier:
http://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=4465&idPhone2=4136
While the battery is much smaller - it's only 3980mAh while the Tab 7.7 packs a 5100mAh li-po one. Also 7.7 packs a super amoled screen and is slightly faster. BUT it's much more expensive I think. I wouldn't want to pay that much for that tablet, I don't think it's worth it.

 

[Casey]

Yeah the size looks good, kind of like the Tab 8.9 which seems to be the perfect size for me.
But I've read that the Xoom 2 was heavier:
http://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=4465&idPhone2=4136
While the battery is much smaller - it's only 3980mAh while the Tab 7.7 packs a 5100mAh li-po one. Also 7.7 packs a super amoled screen and is slightly faster. BUT it's much more expensive I think. I wouldn't want to pay that much for that tablet, I don't think it's worth it.

Ah,, you're right, my bad. I got confused. Still - the weight isn't an issue, anything under 400g is fine with me. It's mainly the screen size, I found that around 8" is perfect for my needs. And yeah, the 7.7 is way too expensive for what it is.

 

[masta247]

The HTC ONE S Review, bitches:

http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one_s-review-746.php

All told, the HTC One S is the fastest phone on the market - there's no task in the mobile world it can't tackle. It will also throw a monkey wrench in the quad-core hype machine.

The HTC One S performance in our audio quality test came as a really pleasant surprise to us. It appears that the Beats influence hasn't been limited to a single equalizer preset this time as the smartphone delivers the cleanest output we have seen from any device so far.
When connected to an active external amplifier, the HTC One S audio is simply flawless - volume levels are a little above average and it got excellent scores on every part of our test.

What's most impressive though is the One S retains virtually the same performance when you plug in a pair of headphones. The stereo crosstalk takes the tiniest dip of any smartphone we've seen so far, while the rest of the readings are either totally unaffected or worsen by an undetectable amount. Volume levels remain the same too, so it's arguably the most impressive overall performance to date.

I'm pleasantly surprised. HTC have seriously stepped their game up.

Other than this, which I expected:
http://www.gsmarena.com/piccmp.php3?idType=1&idPhone1=4574&idPhone2=3621&idPhone3=4212

the camera on the One S is a notable improvement over previous HTC cameraphones. The noise is kept low and the post processing leaves a lot of fine detail in the shot. There are some signs of oversharpening though. Colors are accurate but a touch oversaturated.

Overall, the camera may not be the big deal HTC makes it up to be.

if you want full 8MP resolution still shots, you have to disable the Widescreen option. But then it becomes hard to frame a 16:9 video in the 4:3 view finder. That's made even worse when shooting 720p video. The field of view in that mode is narrower than what the viewfinder shows and framing involves a lot of guesswork.

 

[masta247]

And a One X review:

http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one_x-review-747p5.php

Turns out to be not only slower but also packs an inferior audio chip and camera, and build quality (plastic). I'm surprised that HTC still market this one as their flagship and not the overall superior One S. I'm surprised that people buy this phone over the One S.

After the flawless performance of the HTC One S in our audio quality test, we were hoping its bigger brother will deliver an equally smooth output.

However, the One X certainly started on the wrong foot, producing some pretty poor numbers in when connected to an active external amplifier. In the scenario where the HTC One S was virtually perfect, the One X let quite a lot of distortion creep in. Volume levels are also lower on the X than they used to be on the S, so the overall performance is hardly as impressive.

Things weren't perfect when we plugged in a pair of headphones either, even though the degradation wasn't as big as on some other smartphones. The stereo crosstalk takes a dip and the distortion levels increase further, while volume levels are average at best.

8MP camera fails to inspire
However the image quality is not quite the best in the 8 MP league - the One X produces rather noisy, if nicely detailed photos. Colors are nice, but tend to be a bit over-saturated at times. Sharpening algorithm is a tad too aggressive, too, resulting in occasional artifacts.

 

[THEV1LL4N]

it goes to show how people will jump the gun and buy anything.

 

[Pittsey]

it goes to show how people will jump the gun and buy anything.

It's still a good phone. Just shows how HTC are a bit dumb to make their flagship their second best phone.

 

[masta247]

Yeah it's still a nice phone. One S is just better and.. cheaper.

I think people buy the One X because it's.. more expensive and has a quad core processor (despite being slower, but people aren't conscious enough to research).

I think that might prove that Samsung won't pack a dual core Krait into their Galaxy S3 and will probably go for a quad core A9 instead, just because people are silly. On another hand that's what mobile phone manufacturers made them think - more cores = better.

 

[Ristol]

I really prefer the NeuroTablet SG8. Nerds.

 

[S O F I]

so, who's =

I think people buy the One X

who? lol i haven't heard of these phones outside of this thread.

 

[Pittsey]

so, who's =

who? lol i haven't heard of these phones outside of this thread.

Your circle are all iphone people? My friends are too. But people at work, who are more intelligent than my friends, have android phones.

 

[masta247]

so, who's =

who? lol i haven't heard of these phones outside of this thread.

HTC One X is the third most popular high-end smartphone now as far as daily sales go. I've been also looking at the auction sites to peep the One S to One X units sold ratio. The One S doesn't sell, the One X does sell well.

Another issue with the One X:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105...e-x-screen-flaw-we-would-never-let-that-ship/

 

[Pittsey]

Added some HTC One S' to my Ebay watchlist. If I can get one for under £200, I'll be happy. Worth a look. Will then sell it on, when something better pops up.