Tablet PCs

[LeftEyeNine]

Hello,

Before I can get my hands on a laptop I'll order from USA, I thought a tablet PC in the meantime would suffice for my internet/entertainment needs. (I have a PS3 for gaming)

I am somewhat fond of Android-powered gadgets and therefore took a look into that market. I've seen some good reviews about Asus EeePads. I guess they also have released their latest product to be the first gadget on the market having a Tegra3 processor. I may be wrong.

Criteria:

- 3g & Wi-fi. Connectivity is topmost concern.
- Powerful hardware. I don't want lags or stutters while scrolling down a heavy-loaded website or watching a 1080p movie on the excuse that it's merely a tablet PC.
- Wide software options. I am a software mole -I may dig into any (hence my love for open-source). My eyes flush with tears of joy when some software pushes the limits, i.e. unlocking more computing power/optimizations -I love trying such stuff.
- I am a Wikiphreak. Quality LCD which is easy and lovely to look at as well as being big enough for more comfort would be fine.
- I have not owned a single touch-screen tool in my life so I guess you'd be better than me at recommending a rig that has fine touch sensitivity (and what to look for).

Other than that, if you are intent to say "Android be darned, get an iPad 2 because Jobs needs more female unicorns to drive his sleigh of rainbows", I'm willing to hear that too.


Thanks in advance.

[LeftEyeNine]

:( Y U NO ANSWAR

[Furunculus]

i went for a blackberry playbook.

i bought it because:
1. i have a decent smartphone that covers my connectivity needs, so 3G was not necessary
2. i wanted decent hardware such as the Ti Omap4 SoC/Tegra3/Samsung Xenyos (rather than Omap3/Tegra2/etc)
3. i don't like the UI in android as it had poor multitasking (not so much of a problem with ice-cream-sandwich)
4. portability is king, and most tablets are 10" whereas i wanted a pocketable 7"
5. all of the above was available for £169 (most android tablets of a similar price are shocking rubbish!)
6. it has a very good tabbed browser with flash 11.1 support

that said, if 3G connectivity is necessary (why haven't you got a decent smartphone?), then i'd recommend one of the new samsung tablets, because:
1. they are usually available in 3G versions
2. ice-cream-sandwich is a half-decent tablet OS, and will be available as an upgrade
3. samsung's 32nm xenyos SoC's are the best thing since sliced bread (tied with Apple A5)
4. great build quality
5. beautiful 7" Super OLED HD display

http://uk.insight.com/productinfo/ta...=base&src=FRO1

but seriously, 3G tablets are overpriced. get a decent smartphone (like the N9 ;) ), and a £170 playbook.

[LeftEyeNine]

Fine but I may be spending time in our summerhouse where Wi-fi infrastructure is hard to found since not all summerhouse residents we are living within the same site would like to make a payment they'd never use. Also those people who want/need internet access are actively using 3G modems on their laptops to do so.

So if I need some proper internet connection while at the summerhouse, I really need a 3G-enabled gadget and I don't like plugging in crappy Chinese modems the 3G mobile operators give you to do it.

[Arab_accent]
OLED iz drrooling, yes ?
[/Arab_accent]

So Android's multi-tasking issues are to be overcome, if not done already ?

[Furunculus]

Fine but I may be spending time in our summerhouse where Wi-fi infrastructure is hard to found since not all summerhouse residents we are living within the same site would like to make a payment they'd never use. Also those people who want/need internet access are actively using 3G modems on their laptops to do so.

So if I need some proper internet connection while at the summerhouse, I really need a 3G-enabled gadget and I don't like plugging in crappy Chinese modems the 3G mobile operators give you to do it.

[Arab_accent]
OLED iz drrooling, yes ?
[/Arab_accent]

So Android's multi-tasking issues are to be overcome, if not done already ?

no problem. :)

multi-tasking got a fairly major upgrage in ICS:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives..._ice_cream.php

haven't tried it myself but has to be better than Honeycomb (asus transformer).

the 3G Samsung tablets should meet your needs, they do make fine hardware.

[LeftEyeNine]

Oh oh oh oh, one thing I've already wondered:

How is this Android OS update basically going ?

I mean, e.g. I got myself an ICS-loaded gadget which is 4.0, I guess, and how far will I be able to update that OS ? What makes version leaps impossible if any ? Or whole OS upgrade has to do with the tablet PC manufacturer since they provide product-specialized versions of the OS and make it available then ? Does that mean you can only upgrade as long as your manufacturer provides you ?

[LeftEyeNine]

Also how about this Asus ?

[Furunculus]

i believe google is trying to limit OS fragmentation by getting major vendors such as samsung, asus, etc to commit to a regular update program for new tablets using ICS.

transformer prime is supposed to be good, certainly the Tegra3 is pretty powerful.

[LeftEyeNine]

Obviously Tegra 3 is not fully utilized yet, however I'm assuming a relevant OS update would unleash the true power of the CPU ?

[Furunculus]

it might from a task scheduling point of view, but there is very little indication that app developers have any intention of seriously multithreading their apps to take advantage of all these cores, there are too many devices sold with single cores still in circulation (not to mention to few apps that would actually benefit from multiple cores).

personally i think TI have a better direction with their OMAP5 chips, having two very high performance and high clocked ARM A15 cores, supported by two low performance and low speed M4 supporting cores, rather than four medium performance and medium clocked A9 cores.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5406/t...tex-a15-at-ces

in addition, Tegra3 will suffer by being manufactured at 40nm at a time when 28nm cores are coming on line, as well as the fact that its graphics cores are not OpenCL capable when competitors such as PowerVR SGX are.

still, that said, Tegra3 is very powerful by today's standards, and does at least have the advantage of ARM NEON instructions for media encoding/decoding unlike the woeful Tegra2.

what really gets me a little moist 'twixt thighs is the arrival of OpenGL ES 3.0 for mobile graphics, bringing all the features of DX10 to phones and tablets, but we won't see that for another year until PowerVR Rogue (620/640) GPU's start arriving along with OS's and apps that support it.

[LeftEyeNine]

Well that talks about 2013, Furunkurüssü.

[Furunculus]

true, right now its all about Samsung Exynos 4210 or the Tegra3 for android, or Apple A5 for IOS.

[LeftEyeNine]

How about Exynos 4210 ? Does it have a better pair compared to a lower quartet of Tegra3 ?

[Furunculus]

http://androidandme.com/2011/12/devi...-mini-preview/

less cpu but about the same gpu, bearing in mind i believe the samsung in tablets is clocked at 1.4GHz whereas i think the review looks at the S G SII.

[Furunculus]

might be worth waiting a month to see what samsung announces at MWC:

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/25...denames-leaked

you might be able to get a ARM A15/Mali T604 System on a Chip, sporting OpenCL, DX11 (therefore OpenGL ES 3.0) roaring along at 2.0GHz (due to 32nm fabrication), sooner than you think!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A15_MPCore
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_%28GPU%29

------------------------------

[edit]

there you go, the exact stats as of yesterday:
http://gigaom.com/mobile/benchmarks-...sformer-prime/

[Furunculus]

here you LEN:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/07/s...ional-edition/

[Vladimir]

I think I can almost understand Greek now.

[Furunculus]

Geek, Vladimir, geek!

[LeftEyeNine]

Gaming: Tegra 3 rules.

Otherwise, that gadget is very very very very (yeah i couldn't find an adverb) Thanks for the recommendation.

Is it released, I couldn't make sure ?

[Furunculus]

yeah its out.

and i agree, it is pretty desirable!

[LeftEyeNine]

No sight within the borders of Turkey, yet. :/

[Baie052]

Recently I've bought a android tablet pc from ESPOW at only $119.
I can run all my phone apps on my tablet. So it takes up full screen which is fine since there is a button which shows the most recent apps.
Just as was the case with phones android is taking over with tablets i have been at best buys recently and most ppl were hanging out in the android tablet section. I am sure the ESPOW tablet pc's price sales will show that android has over taken ipad.

[Fragony]

New iPad has a screen to die for and also supports 4G, it's a bit on the expensive side but I quite like it. Having a lot of trouble with playing video's though, it flat out refuses to play some things. But that screen.... spot teh pixel was never so hard

[CBR]

Having a lot of trouble with playing video's though, it flat out refuses to play some things. But that screen.... spot teh pixel was never so hard

Video on the internets? Then it is because it is Flash, which is not supported. Some websites have not switched to HTML5 yet, so it can be annoying if you depend on them a lot.