Whilst this will definitely give them a competitive advantage of their rivals, I suggest this can mostly be mitigated against by mandating that they cannot have anything other than month by month rolling contracts for services provisioned over that network.
That way when the other operators do manage to get enough spectrum to deploy their own LTE networks, customers using EE's LTE network can jump ship immediately if they so wish as they won't be tied into long term contracts.
It's perfectly apposite to quote RRPs in this context. I've got plenty of Android games free from Amazon App of the Day, but that doesn't mean I should be comparing these based on "actual cost" (which is zero). Simple fact of the matter is that Vita games are, in general, several multiples more expensive than comparable Android games.
Asda and Amazon are both selling Uncharted for Vita for a shade under £35 with an RRP for £45,, so hardly the savings you are suggesting. In general, even 360 games won't be significantly discounted until after they've been on the market for a few weeks, and by then the hardcore gamers will have already purchased them. Hardcore gamers (the Vita's target audience) won't generally wait for a game to hit a budget price point!
If you look at phone gaming, for many the price of the device is free when they've tied themselves into a 2 year contract, so the subsidy argument doesn't really work too well for the Vita. Given that most people will have a mobile phone anyway., why carry two devices when you can carry one.
At this precise moment in time, the Vita is an impressive bit of kit, butl the technology in the Vita will be out of date compared to mobile phones before this year is over, let alone the 5-10 year lifespan that Sony predicts. Yes, it has the dedicated controls, when then again so does the Xperia Play which is a line where Sony should've concentrated their mobile gaming efforts.
So the NYT's "commissioned" an app developer to put together something incredibly trivial because it's a known fact (and presumably a design decision) that the "user data" (let's call it external SD, because it differs from /data/data, which is some what protected) is accessible to any app. This is newsworthy?
How else are apps like Photoshop, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, etc going to gain access to your photos for retouching/uploading? Yes, you could have them encrypted on external SD with an API and explicit permission set for accessing them, but then you wouldn't be able to access them when you connect your phone via USB mass storage, which would be an incredible inconvenience.
I have several different video and/or music players on my Android devices, and they can all access my stored videos/MP3s, which is what I want to be able to do. On my wife's iPad, I accidentally loaded some non-video files into the walled garden of her CinePlayerX app, which I'm now completely unable to delete because they don't appear in the file list of the app.
Sometimes we have to balance the needs of security with convenience, just as we do in real life. I'm not going to be taking naked pictures of myself, or copies of state secrets on my phone, so if they somehow end up on a public website, I don't particularly care.
If I were to do something that required more security, I would be taking the appropriate steps to safeguard my data.
Not all mobile games are shallow and simplistic you know! ;)
Galaxy on Fire 2, Shadowgun, and GTA III are all extensive, in depth, mobile titles and all are priced at a *fraction* of PS Vita games. Yes, I can play Uncharted
The DS, and to a lesser extent, the PS VIta, are more likely to appeal to kids than the people who can actually afford the £40 per game that these require. The Vita will still appeal to hardcore gamers for a time, but Sony seem to think that the platform will last 5 to 10 years - given the pace of mobile development, it simply won't be competitive hardware-wise in 1 to 2 years, let alone 5 to 10, so it will lose those hardcore gamers too.
Sony actually had the right idea with the Xperia Play - an updated version of that could've owned mobile gaming, and they could've easily produced an updated version every couple of years to tie in with cellular contracts.
The age of the dedicated gaming device is over IMO. Convergence is where it is at.
£40 for a Vita game, vs £5 for Shadowgun on my Asus Transformer Prime.
As a casual mobile gamer, it's easy to drop £5 on a game, but not £40. The Vita will pick up the hardcore gamers, but it's casual gaming where the real money is!
I was considering getting the dual-sim version for when I travel overseas for business, but this *essential* feature put a kybosh on that - bad move Nokia!
Unacceptable in this day and age, and as such I wouldn't even give the phone 80%!
So, I bought one of these for £90 from Amazon, based on the strength of this review and to be honest I'm pretty pleased with it.
The resistive screen isn't great - I'd have paid a few quid more for a better quality capacitive screen, but for what I want it for it will serve well. The sounds quality is much better than I expected so as an internet radio it's all good, and having now installed the Android Market and GMail, I can now check my emails in the morning without having to use my phone
It occurs to me that this will also be great when I'm travelled for work - not to take with me (though undoubtedly I could), but because I can leave Skype running on it and then video call with my kids whilst I'm away.
I have a US bank account with Bank of America, and I can assure that for the most part when I use my debit card in a US store, I have to enter my PIN. Same is true of most gas stations too.
True, there's no chip on the card, so I guess it has to validate the PIN "online" so to speak, and I believe if you press the credit button on the keypad in say Walmart, it will ask for a signature, but the point is that our US cousins are already used to entering a PIN code for most debit card transactions - they've been doing it longer than we have!
So, if the rumours are to be believed, the new iPad will have 2048*1536 resolution on a 9.7" display - what a totally pointless idea!
It would only add cost and not really add to the user experience given that it's going to need a decent GPU to shift around that number of pixels, and that touch interfaces are suited to large controls anyway.
You wouldn't see a resolution that high on an 11.6" Macbook Air, so why's it necessary on an iPad?
"But you can't see the individual pixels" - so what? I can't see them on my non-retina display phone either unless I look really, really close!
I bought a Kogan for a friend, as a cheap alternative to the Samsung Galaxy Tab. On paper, it was a no brainer, but after having to return the Kogan 3 times due to faults, it became very apparent that you get what you pay for! ;)
Ok, perhaps there isn't a Media Scan analogue for iOS, but that's probably because apps can't share media in iOS for the most part, and have to maintain their own copies of any files/data that they require.
"Come on, be realistic. The need was there, the apps were created."
Apart from the HTC Locations "fix" app which is HTC Sense specific, there are pretty much direct analogues for all these apps on both iOS and WP7, so please keep the fanboi nonsense to a minimum!
Not exactly a great example though is it? There's no Honeycomb optimised version of Google+ for Android tablets as yet - the fact that Android apps can often scale depending on screen resolution, as Google+ does, is immaterial. How long *exactly* did it take for Facebook to launch an iPad version of their app?
Simple answer - to use the native Gmail facilities not available using a "standard" mail app.
Regular Gmail users probably make great use of label, conversation muting, priority inbox etc etc, and these are all available in the native Gmail app.
So how exactly are Google in breach of the GPL, given that Android itself is not GPL'd code?
Only the Linux kernel at the heart of Android is GPL'd code, and Google have always made the kernel source available for "there" devices (e.g. the Nexus range) pretty much as soon as the devices ship.
As someone who owns both consoles (and a Wii FWIW), and has done so since both consoles originally came out, I can say that all you have stated is an "opinion".
Now, I personally prefer the games on the 360 than those on PS/3, so much so that in *my* particular case I use my 360 for games, and my PS/3 as a media player. That's not to say that 360 games are necessarily "better" than those on the PS/3, just that I prefer them, and also that I prefer the feel of the 360 controller.
In short - if the acronym GOW means Gears of War rather than God of War to you, you're likely to prefer the 360 over the PS/3.
As to the Xbox looking "very tired and end-of-life", that's really sounding like fanboi nonsense! :)
One last comment in defence of the Xbox 360 - Sky Go! :)
I just used YELL.COM to get the same information, and I *bet* it look less time than it did for you to look it up in the physical yellow pages!
I see absolutely no need these days for a physical copy of the yellow pages any more, but that is my personal preference. I couldn't even tell if I still have a copy kicking about somewhere, but I can access the same information online in seconds.
Most of the major Android players (e.g. HTC, Samsung etc) do comply with the GPL although often not as quickly as perhaps they should.
To say this "threat" is hanging over Android, is a nonsense because all any individual phone/tablet manufacturer needs to do to comply with the GPL is publish the kernel source which isn't exactly rocket science.
Also, did the author of this article even look at the link which shows the list of GPL compliant/breaching list of tablets? It's so woefully out of date it's untrue (no Xoom, Transformer, GTab 10.1 etc), and when you look closely you'll see that the vast majority of the tablets in breach are the cheapo no-name Chinese clones who basically don't give a monkeys about the GPL.
The problem is that the Asus TF isn't a superior tablet to the Galaxy Tab 10.1 - I know this for a fact because I own both.
The TF is an excellent device it its own right, but I see it as more of a hybrid tablet/netbook. If that's what you want, then the TF is the device to buy.
However, from a pure tablet perspective, I do find the Galaxy Tab 10.1 to be a superior device - especially with Touchwiz - Heresy I know, but it does seem to me that Touchwiz in this incarnation provides for a much nicer user experience than vanilla Honeycomb, so much so that the GT with Touchwiz and Android 3.1 seems much slicker than the TF with Android 3.2.
I still love my TF, but it doesn't get anywhere near as much use now that I have the GT.
I'm holding a GT 10.1 in my hands right now. Glancing across my living room, I can see another flat screen surrounded by a black plastic bezel that looks remarkably similar, albeit larger - it's my LG flatscreen TV, which predates the ipad!
It may have escaped your attention that the white plastic Macbook isn't actually part of the the Macbook range any more - just the Macbook Air and Macbook Pro, both of which pre-date the Samsung Series 9 by a few years, and are made of aluminium, which also "won't shatter into white plastic pieces"!
Whilst the Galaxy Tab 7" doesn't have a dual-core Tegra-2 CPU, that isn't necessarily a disadvantage. The video playback capabilities of the Hummingbird in the GTab7 are way better than those of any Tegra-2 tablet. It also fits very neatly in a jacket pocket.
As to the 4:3 vs 16:9 discussion - it's very much horses for courses. Apart from browsing the web, I watch more video on my device than I do read books, so from my perspective the 16:9 aspect ratio is a better choice for me. Having said that, on a 7" tablet , reading books in portrait doesn't feel particular odd especially when you consider that most paperback books have a ratio closer to 16:9 than 4:3.
On the subject of the Streak 7 - it simply isn't as good as the GTab 7" - full stop, done, dusted.
The A4 is based on the Arm Cortex core, as are many other ARM processors (e.g. Samsungs Hummingbird, TI's later OMAP processors) but Qualcomm are an instruction set licensee - they have designed their own core (Scorpion) which is ARMv7 compatible, but is a completely custom design and not based on any ARM core.
16:9 works much better if you are using an RDP application to connect to a remote server, or watching practically any video since it's all wide screen these days.
Since I do both regularly on my Asus Transformer, a 16:9 aspect ratio suits me personally far better than 4:3 would.
I ordered one of these last week primarily out of intellectual curiosity rather than expecting it to be a usable business tool.
Battery life on the Chromium-OS based Kogan appears to be only half what other OEMs (e.g. Samsung) quote for their Chrome-OS based devices, but at this price point I'm prepared to give it a shot!
Personal bugbear here, but Quadrant scores are worth less than this comment!
They have absolutely no relation to real world performance, and given that it what benchmarks aspire to achieve, makes Quadrant an absolutely worthless benchmark.
I'm sure that someone will pipe up that it's all we've got, but in the case of benchmarks, no benchmark definitely better than a flawed benchmark!
Software SIMs - great until you lose your phone, or want to pop your SIM in another device because perhaps say, you run out of battery. How am I supposed to get onto the cloud in the first place to retrieve my "SIM"s in those situations?
What is it with smartphone manufacturers obsession with faster/dual core CPUs?
As far as I'm concerned, the CPU is my original HTC Desire was more than adequate for anything that can be thrown at it today. What we really, really, need now is better batteries, not more processing power!
I've since replaced my Desire with a Desire HD, which has a "better" processor, but an even smaller battery capacity than the Desire. I'd swap it out tomorrow for a similar device that gave me a *full* day of heavy use on a single charge, without loss of functionality.
As far as I'm concerned, dual core is pretty much just a marketing gimmick on phones right now.
I travel a lot for work - and when I travel, I often have a local SIM that I can simply pop into my phone without having to worry about excessive data roaming charges. For voice, I usually forward my mobile number to my Vonage line which can then "simulring" my foreign SIM, thus saving me vast amounts of money.
SIM cards are great! They are small enough to be easily transportable (I have about 10 in my wallet at the moment) and large enough to be easy to handle. I'll never have an iPhone 4 for a variety of reasons (I did buy my wife one though), but one of which is that it is almost impossible to get hold of prepaid microSIMs in the various countries I regularly visit.
So, I see no benefit to the microSIM as is, and a smaller one even less so. As to dumping the SIM entirely, and letting someone like Apple control my network via something like iTunes - absolutely no way!
having taken James Bond's Blackberry when he left it on the train, surely my first step would be to put it into airplane mode so that it can't receive any remote wipe instruction! ;)
Just because Amazon doesn't have stock, doesn't mean that the device hasn't shipped!
Comet delivered my Transformer on Monday morning of this week, after I ordered on Saturday morning.
True, it doesn't have the keyboard dock yet, but I consider that an accessory, which I've already ordered direct from Asus with expected delivery in the 2nd half of May.
So Opera Mobile and Firefox 4 both go to final versions within a few days of each other.
However, Opera have managed to get the Flash Plug-in to work, and Mozilla haven't.
That would be ok in a beta version, but not in a final version, so that's a big fail Mozilla!
And to anyone who might comment that Flash is bloatware/resource hungry/buggy/slow/security risk/carrier of smallpox etc, all I can say is that I want the option to run Flash on certain sites ok? The Android browsers (Webkit-based and now Opera) all you to load Flash on demand which is a far better compromise than the iOS one of not supporting it at all!
For those who think that the Tab should be priced at £200, consider this:
An unlocked 16GB Samsung Galaxy S phone currently retails for around £350. The 7" Galaxy Tab shares very similar hardware except that the Galaxy Tab has:
1. A much bigger, and higher resolution screen (ok, not AMOLED, but it's very good).
2. A much more capacious battery
3. A front facing camera in addition to a rear camera (rear camera lower MP on Tab, but has a flash!)
4. A gyroscope
To suggest that somehow it should cost £150 *less* than a less well specified smartphone is a nonsense.
To those comparing it to the iPad 1 - ok, apart from the fact that they are completely different devices due to the difference in size, show me where you can get a brand new 16GB iPad with 3G for £330, because if you are going to make a comparison at least make it like for like! :)
I paid £500 for my Tab when it first came out and I don't regret it for an instant, because it is a constant companion whether I'm home, out and about, or travelling for business. A Tab for £300 is quite frankly a steal!
Register
109 posts • joined Tuesday 21st November 2006 10:53 GMT
Page:
Let them build it!
I say let EE build their LTE network at 1800MHz.
Whilst this will definitely give them a competitive advantage of their rivals, I suggest this can mostly be mitigated against by mandating that they cannot have anything other than month by month rolling contracts for services provisioned over that network.
That way when the other operators do manage to get enough spectrum to deploy their own LTE networks, customers using EE's LTE network can jump ship immediately if they so wish as they won't be tied into long term contracts.
You mean the Android app drawer looks a bit like the iOS UI, which in turn actually looks quite a lot like the Symbian S60 UI
The actual home screens themselves (the real UI!) look completely different - but don't let facts get in the way of some good Apple propaganda! :)
Re: Inventing
Do you remember the Diamond Rio PMP300, which predated the iPod by a couple of years?
The original iPods didn't look a whole lot different to that!
No Windows Media Player on the tablet version, a device primarily used for consumption of media?
Where's the logic in that?
Re: I thought so. So here they are again!
The One Plan on Three allows tethering with all you can eat data.
Re: Price, Price, Price!
It's perfectly apposite to quote RRPs in this context. I've got plenty of Android games free from Amazon App of the Day, but that doesn't mean I should be comparing these based on "actual cost" (which is zero). Simple fact of the matter is that Vita games are, in general, several multiples more expensive than comparable Android games.
Asda and Amazon are both selling Uncharted for Vita for a shade under £35 with an RRP for £45,, so hardly the savings you are suggesting. In general, even 360 games won't be significantly discounted until after they've been on the market for a few weeks, and by then the hardcore gamers will have already purchased them. Hardcore gamers (the Vita's target audience) won't generally wait for a game to hit a budget price point!
If you look at phone gaming, for many the price of the device is free when they've tied themselves into a 2 year contract, so the subsidy argument doesn't really work too well for the Vita. Given that most people will have a mobile phone anyway., why carry two devices when you can carry one.
At this precise moment in time, the Vita is an impressive bit of kit, butl the technology in the Vita will be out of date compared to mobile phones before this year is over, let alone the 5-10 year lifespan that Sony predicts. Yes, it has the dedicated controls, when then again so does the Xperia Play which is a line where Sony should've concentrated their mobile gaming efforts.
WTF?
So the NYT's "commissioned" an app developer to put together something incredibly trivial because it's a known fact (and presumably a design decision) that the "user data" (let's call it external SD, because it differs from /data/data, which is some what protected) is accessible to any app. This is newsworthy?
How else are apps like Photoshop, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, etc going to gain access to your photos for retouching/uploading? Yes, you could have them encrypted on external SD with an API and explicit permission set for accessing them, but then you wouldn't be able to access them when you connect your phone via USB mass storage, which would be an incredible inconvenience.
I have several different video and/or music players on my Android devices, and they can all access my stored videos/MP3s, which is what I want to be able to do. On my wife's iPad, I accidentally loaded some non-video files into the walled garden of her CinePlayerX app, which I'm now completely unable to delete because they don't appear in the file list of the app.
Sometimes we have to balance the needs of security with convenience, just as we do in real life. I'm not going to be taking naked pictures of myself, or copies of state secrets on my phone, so if they somehow end up on a public website, I don't particularly care.
If I were to do something that required more security, I would be taking the appropriate steps to safeguard my data.
Re: Price, Price, Price!
Not all mobile games are shallow and simplistic you know! ;)
Galaxy on Fire 2, Shadowgun, and GTA III are all extensive, in depth, mobile titles and all are priced at a *fraction* of PS Vita games. Yes, I can play Uncharted
The DS, and to a lesser extent, the PS VIta, are more likely to appeal to kids than the people who can actually afford the £40 per game that these require. The Vita will still appeal to hardcore gamers for a time, but Sony seem to think that the platform will last 5 to 10 years - given the pace of mobile development, it simply won't be competitive hardware-wise in 1 to 2 years, let alone 5 to 10, so it will lose those hardcore gamers too.
Sony actually had the right idea with the Xperia Play - an updated version of that could've owned mobile gaming, and they could've easily produced an updated version every couple of years to tie in with cellular contracts.
The age of the dedicated gaming device is over IMO. Convergence is where it is at.
Price, Price, Price!
£40 for a Vita game, vs £5 for Shadowgun on my Asus Transformer Prime.
As a casual mobile gamer, it's easy to drop £5 on a game, but not £40. The Vita will pick up the hardcore gamers, but it's casual gaming where the real money is!
Angry Birds anyone? ;)
Re: Confused
What about the lack of USB charging?
I was considering getting the dual-sim version for when I travel overseas for business, but this *essential* feature put a kybosh on that - bad move Nokia!
Unacceptable in this day and age, and as such I wouldn't even give the phone 80%!
Bought one based on this review
So, I bought one of these for £90 from Amazon, based on the strength of this review and to be honest I'm pretty pleased with it.
The resistive screen isn't great - I'd have paid a few quid more for a better quality capacitive screen, but for what I want it for it will serve well. The sounds quality is much better than I expected so as an internet radio it's all good, and having now installed the Android Market and GMail, I can now check my emails in the morning without having to use my phone
It occurs to me that this will also be great when I'm travelled for work - not to take with me (though undoubtedly I could), but because I can leave Skype running on it and then video call with my kids whilst I'm away.
They already do use a PIN!
I have a US bank account with Bank of America, and I can assure that for the most part when I use my debit card in a US store, I have to enter my PIN. Same is true of most gas stations too.
True, there's no chip on the card, so I guess it has to validate the PIN "online" so to speak, and I believe if you press the credit button on the keypad in say Walmart, it will ask for a signature, but the point is that our US cousins are already used to entering a PIN code for most debit card transactions - they've been doing it longer than we have!
Nobody will buy an ultra *as well as* a conventional???
Who says?
I have a 16gb i7 desktop replacement laptop that I generally use on a day to day basis, and for more heavyweight tasks.
However, I also have an 11.6" Macbook Air (which is an Ultrabook IMO) that I use when travelling for both business & pleasure.
Different tools for different job!
Unlimited data?
So, cellular data has a 3GB cap - in what way is that unlimited?
Femtocells have a range of around 10m, so it's pretty unlikely that you'll regularly be connecting via a Femtocell when you're out and about!
Retina Display on an iPad...WTF?
So, if the rumours are to be believed, the new iPad will have 2048*1536 resolution on a 9.7" display - what a totally pointless idea!
It would only add cost and not really add to the user experience given that it's going to need a decent GPU to shift around that number of pixels, and that touch interfaces are suited to large controls anyway.
You wouldn't see a resolution that high on an 11.6" Macbook Air, so why's it necessary on an iPad?
"But you can't see the individual pixels" - so what? I can't see them on my non-retina display phone either unless I look really, really close!
Kogan quality control
I bought a Kogan for a friend, as a cheap alternative to the Samsung Galaxy Tab. On paper, it was a no brainer, but after having to return the Kogan 3 times due to faults, it became very apparent that you get what you pay for! ;)
Research isn't your strong point is it AC?
http://www.redmondpie.com/track-your-3g-data-usage-with-data-counter-app-for-iphone-jailbreak-req/
Oh look - similar to NetCounter, but for iOS.
http://www.macstories.net/reviews/appswitch-cool-process-management-app-for-iphone/
Oh look - similar to WatchTower, but for iOS
Ok, perhaps there isn't a Media Scan analogue for iOS, but that's probably because apps can't share media in iOS for the most part, and have to maintain their own copies of any files/data that they require.
http://moreinfo.thebigboss.org/moreinfo/depiction.php?file=keyboardcachecleanerData
Oh, look, cleans a cache.....
See what I did there? ;)
Oh please!
"Come on, be realistic. The need was there, the apps were created."
Apart from the HTC Locations "fix" app which is HTC Sense specific, there are pretty much direct analogues for all these apps on both iOS and WP7, so please keep the fanboi nonsense to a minimum!
Trolls begone!
As far as I'm aware, Google is now mandating a minimum 18 month support for OS patches/upgrades, if you want to include GApps.
Of course, if you don't include GApps, you're free to do whatever you want since it is open-source after all! :)
Not exactly a great example though is it? There's no Honeycomb optimised version of Google+ for Android tablets as yet - the fact that Android apps can often scale depending on screen resolution, as Google+ does, is immaterial. How long *exactly* did it take for Facebook to launch an iPad version of their app?
why use a native Gmail app
Simple answer - to use the native Gmail facilities not available using a "standard" mail app.
Regular Gmail users probably make great use of label, conversation muting, priority inbox etc etc, and these are all available in the native Gmail app.
Breaching the GPL?
So how exactly are Google in breach of the GPL, given that Android itself is not GPL'd code?
Only the Linux kernel at the heart of Android is GPL'd code, and Google have always made the kernel source available for "there" devices (e.g. the Nexus range) pretty much as soon as the devices ship.
Has better games?
As someone who owns both consoles (and a Wii FWIW), and has done so since both consoles originally came out, I can say that all you have stated is an "opinion".
Now, I personally prefer the games on the 360 than those on PS/3, so much so that in *my* particular case I use my 360 for games, and my PS/3 as a media player. That's not to say that 360 games are necessarily "better" than those on the PS/3, just that I prefer them, and also that I prefer the feel of the 360 controller.
In short - if the acronym GOW means Gears of War rather than God of War to you, you're likely to prefer the 360 over the PS/3.
As to the Xbox looking "very tired and end-of-life", that's really sounding like fanboi nonsense! :)
One last comment in defence of the Xbox 360 - Sky Go! :)
@Jake
I just used YELL.COM to get the same information, and I *bet* it look less time than it did for you to look it up in the physical yellow pages!
I see absolutely no need these days for a physical copy of the yellow pages any more, but that is my personal preference. I couldn't even tell if I still have a copy kicking about somewhere, but I can access the same information online in seconds.
Absurd
This entire story is frankly absurd!
Most of the major Android players (e.g. HTC, Samsung etc) do comply with the GPL although often not as quickly as perhaps they should.
To say this "threat" is hanging over Android, is a nonsense because all any individual phone/tablet manufacturer needs to do to comply with the GPL is publish the kernel source which isn't exactly rocket science.
Also, did the author of this article even look at the link which shows the list of GPL compliant/breaching list of tablets? It's so woefully out of date it's untrue (no Xoom, Transformer, GTab 10.1 etc), and when you look closely you'll see that the vast majority of the tablets in breach are the cheapo no-name Chinese clones who basically don't give a monkeys about the GPL.
The TF isn't superior - it's different
The problem is that the Asus TF isn't a superior tablet to the Galaxy Tab 10.1 - I know this for a fact because I own both.
The TF is an excellent device it its own right, but I see it as more of a hybrid tablet/netbook. If that's what you want, then the TF is the device to buy.
However, from a pure tablet perspective, I do find the Galaxy Tab 10.1 to be a superior device - especially with Touchwiz - Heresy I know, but it does seem to me that Touchwiz in this incarnation provides for a much nicer user experience than vanilla Honeycomb, so much so that the GT with Touchwiz and Android 3.1 seems much slicker than the TF with Android 3.2.
I still love my TF, but it doesn't get anywhere near as much use now that I have the GT.
In the context of this story..
Surely you should have said "The Taxpayers loose anyway" ;)
Now about Apple not innovating....
Being successful is *not* innovating, it's being successful.
Look?
I'm holding a GT 10.1 in my hands right now. Glancing across my living room, I can see another flat screen surrounded by a black plastic bezel that looks remarkably similar, albeit larger - it's my LG flatscreen TV, which predates the ipad!
White plastic?
It may have escaped your attention that the white plastic Macbook isn't actually part of the the Macbook range any more - just the Macbook Air and Macbook Pro, both of which pre-date the Samsung Series 9 by a few years, and are made of aluminium, which also "won't shatter into white plastic pieces"!
Galaxy Tab 7"
Whilst the Galaxy Tab 7" doesn't have a dual-core Tegra-2 CPU, that isn't necessarily a disadvantage. The video playback capabilities of the Hummingbird in the GTab7 are way better than those of any Tegra-2 tablet. It also fits very neatly in a jacket pocket.
As to the 4:3 vs 16:9 discussion - it's very much horses for courses. Apart from browsing the web, I watch more video on my device than I do read books, so from my perspective the 16:9 aspect ratio is a better choice for me. Having said that, on a 7" tablet , reading books in portrait doesn't feel particular odd especially when you consider that most paperback books have a ratio closer to 16:9 than 4:3.
On the subject of the Streak 7 - it simply isn't as good as the GTab 7" - full stop, done, dusted.
The A4 and the Snapdragon do not share cores
The A4 is based on the Arm Cortex core, as are many other ARM processors (e.g. Samsungs Hummingbird, TI's later OMAP processors) but Qualcomm are an instruction set licensee - they have designed their own core (Scorpion) which is ARMv7 compatible, but is a completely custom design and not based on any ARM core.
Depends on what you mean by long term doesn't it?
Given the ultimate fate of the universe (heat death by entropy), our long term survival odds will never be greater than 0.... ;)
Depends on what you want to use it for?
16:9 works much better if you are using an RDP application to connect to a remote server, or watching practically any video since it's all wide screen these days.
Since I do both regularly on my Asus Transformer, a 16:9 aspect ratio suits me personally far better than 4:3 would.
Ordered last week
I ordered one of these last week primarily out of intellectual curiosity rather than expecting it to be a usable business tool.
Battery life on the Chromium-OS based Kogan appears to be only half what other OEMs (e.g. Samsung) quote for their Chrome-OS based devices, but at this price point I'm prepared to give it a shot!
Quadrant scores!
Personal bugbear here, but Quadrant scores are worth less than this comment!
They have absolutely no relation to real world performance, and given that it what benchmarks aspire to achieve, makes Quadrant an absolutely worthless benchmark.
I'm sure that someone will pipe up that it's all we've got, but in the case of benchmarks, no benchmark definitely better than a flawed benchmark!
Nice try!
Software SIMs - great until you lose your phone, or want to pop your SIM in another device because perhaps say, you run out of battery. How am I supposed to get onto the cloud in the first place to retrieve my "SIM"s in those situations?
CPU obsession!
What is it with smartphone manufacturers obsession with faster/dual core CPUs?
As far as I'm concerned, the CPU is my original HTC Desire was more than adequate for anything that can be thrown at it today. What we really, really, need now is better batteries, not more processing power!
I've since replaced my Desire with a Desire HD, which has a "better" processor, but an even smaller battery capacity than the Desire. I'd swap it out tomorrow for a similar device that gave me a *full* day of heavy use on a single charge, without loss of functionality.
As far as I'm concerned, dual core is pretty much just a marketing gimmick on phones right now.
Hey Apple! Leave my SIMs alone! :)
I travel a lot for work - and when I travel, I often have a local SIM that I can simply pop into my phone without having to worry about excessive data roaming charges. For voice, I usually forward my mobile number to my Vonage line which can then "simulring" my foreign SIM, thus saving me vast amounts of money.
SIM cards are great! They are small enough to be easily transportable (I have about 10 in my wallet at the moment) and large enough to be easy to handle. I'll never have an iPhone 4 for a variety of reasons (I did buy my wife one though), but one of which is that it is almost impossible to get hold of prepaid microSIMs in the various countries I regularly visit.
So, I see no benefit to the microSIM as is, and a smaller one even less so. As to dumping the SIM entirely, and letting someone like Apple control my network via something like iTunes - absolutely no way!
It might be "obvious" but...
having taken James Bond's Blackberry when he left it on the train, surely my first step would be to put it into airplane mode so that it can't receive any remote wipe instruction! ;)
So much for security!
Keyboard dock etc
Hi John73,
Keyboard dock was £54.98p incl shipping direct from Asus via the offer given here:
http://techinstyle.tv/news/eee-pad-transformer-keyboard-dock-offer/
I wouldn't be at all surprised if this offer ends up getting extended.
As to the tablet part - it is a very nice bit of kit.
Oh dear!
Just because Amazon doesn't have stock, doesn't mean that the device hasn't shipped!
Comet delivered my Transformer on Monday morning of this week, after I ordered on Saturday morning.
True, it doesn't have the keyboard dock yet, but I consider that an accessory, which I've already ordered direct from Asus with expected delivery in the 2nd half of May.
Ventana is "out"
My Honeycomb packing EEE Pad Transformer that Comet delivered yesterday is based on the Ventana platform.
SIP VOIP!
SIP VOIP isn't just about Google Voice you know?
I've been using SIP VOIP via SipDroid on Android phones for a long time now, without Google Voice!
Future plans?
I do hope this is resolved amicably, because I fear it may affect my plans to open my "Big Jugs" jug emporium in the same town!
Firefox FAIL!
So Opera Mobile and Firefox 4 both go to final versions within a few days of each other.
However, Opera have managed to get the Flash Plug-in to work, and Mozilla haven't.
That would be ok in a beta version, but not in a final version, so that's a big fail Mozilla!
And to anyone who might comment that Flash is bloatware/resource hungry/buggy/slow/security risk/carrier of smallpox etc, all I can say is that I want the option to run Flash on certain sites ok? The Android browsers (Webkit-based and now Opera) all you to load Flash on demand which is a far better compromise than the iOS one of not supporting it at all!
Skype?
Last time I checked, Skype for Android didn't support video calling!
£200? Are you having a laugh?
For those who think that the Tab should be priced at £200, consider this:
An unlocked 16GB Samsung Galaxy S phone currently retails for around £350. The 7" Galaxy Tab shares very similar hardware except that the Galaxy Tab has:
1. A much bigger, and higher resolution screen (ok, not AMOLED, but it's very good).
2. A much more capacious battery
3. A front facing camera in addition to a rear camera (rear camera lower MP on Tab, but has a flash!)
4. A gyroscope
To suggest that somehow it should cost £150 *less* than a less well specified smartphone is a nonsense.
To those comparing it to the iPad 1 - ok, apart from the fact that they are completely different devices due to the difference in size, show me where you can get a brand new 16GB iPad with 3G for £330, because if you are going to make a comparison at least make it like for like! :)
I paid £500 for my Tab when it first came out and I don't regret it for an instant, because it is a constant companion whether I'm home, out and about, or travelling for business. A Tab for £300 is quite frankly a steal!
Politicians!
So, some politicians "recognised" Meucci as the inventor of the telephone.
Well that proves it conclusively doesn't it? Not! :)
@Gordon Barret
Who says 'Xerox it' - pretty much everyone in the US, that's who! ;)
Very much like us Brits saying "I've got to hoover the carpet" instead of "I've got to vacuum the carpet".
Page: