question Which Tablets

Toshiba has released ICS for all Thrive 10" (including the AT100 in Australia), and is a nice improvement over Honeycomb. (display/UI is much more fluid). Still waiting on ICS for the Thrive 7" (AT1S0) here, but has been released for the US Thrive 7s.
 
I played with a friend's Nexus 7 for about half an hour today -- first hands on experience with it. Although that's a terribly short amount of time to form any sort of conclusive opinion, in genreal, I enjoyed what I saw. They are still pretty hard to get a hold of (still in low supply / frequently being sold out in the bricks & mortor shops). I wouldn't get one straight from Google or online --- wouldn't want to deal with Google customer service, or Asus', if there was an issue and RMA required -- there were so many reports of screen liffing and such, I would not risk the hassle of going through those routes, so avocate a B&M for the ability to walk in and get a person face to face to do a warranty exchange. Anyway, I didn't spot any sort of manufacturing defect on my friends, and there is a chance that units available for purchase now are from later production runs that may have corrected the earlier observed issue(s). It was a little heavier than what I thought it would be. Screen is nice (not super duper amazing nice, but still very nice IPS).
 
LunarMist said:
The reviews of the 7' one on the amazon are not very encouraging. It seems that the apps are limited compared to the natural Gogggle apps available for other devices.
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Yes. This is the huge drawback that kept me from fully recommending the Fire as well. It doesn't include Google's apps and in fact the Fire has to be rooted to install anything from the Play Store and certain .APKs even if you do take the time to collect them and try to sideload them. I hate the Amazon-centric user shell as well, though at least Amazon does allow users to replace that.

The Kindle Fire HD has wonderful, clearly top-notch hardware but it's paired with retarded software. Like getting Windows ME instead of Linux or Windows 2000 would've been a dozen years ago.
 
So you can put a launcher like Apex on the fire tablets? I got the impression you couldn't without some rooting etc. Haven't looked hard.
 
CityK said:
~ I would not risk the hassle of going through those routes, so avocate a B&M for the ability to walk in and get a person face to face to do a warranty exchange. ~
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I did a warranty exchange on my Nexus purchased through the play store. Within 15 days you can do an advanced exchange which I did. Google support was pretty bad to deal with because of high call rates in getting the tablets out at that time. But after understanding the situation they just pass you to Samsung support which was fine and Dallas based. I's assume similar for Asus and CA based like their motherboard support is? Outside of that short advanced exchange window I guess you are without your device for a week or so.
 
MaxBurn said:
So you can put a launcher like Apex on the fire tablets? I got the impression you couldn't without some rooting etc. Haven't looked hard.
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I don't know about the Fire HD, but I had a different launcher running on my Fire about 90 seconds after I took it out of the box.
 
WTF ever happened to the Samsung? Why is there no 7.0" 1200x800 or so tablet?
 
HTC leaves US Tablet market.
That's basically fine. I suspect that the Android tablet market is going to follow other commodity hardware on a race to be essentially profit-less and that might not be so great for a company that's already shrinking to a shadow of its former self.
 
I got a Jesus-pad yesterday, it's pretty ok so far. I didn't have huge expectations on it, I mostly wanted AirPlay (nice to get the angry bird sound in the stereo ;-) ) and X-Plane.
 
Mercutio said:
HTC leaves US Tablet market.
That's basically fine. I suspect that the Android tablet market is going to follow other commodity hardware on a race to be essentially profit-less and that might not be so great for a company that's already shrinking to a shadow of its former self.
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Maybe so, but I've never heard of HTC. What % of the market did they have?
 
HTC has been major player in ARM-based handheld devices going back a good long time. They made of lot of Windows Mobile devices and they have been a top-tier Android vendor as well. They're presently having their lunch eaten by Samsung. They have a good product (the HTC X One) but they're probably going to wind up a victim of market contraction since Samsung and Motorola are both way, way bigger players.
 
@Re: HTC - Incidentally everyone I know that an HTC mobile loves it, and have very few issues with it. (The HTC Sense UI is IMHO better than Samsung's TouchWiz UI). The hardware even in their entry level stuff is very very good. I've noticed the majority of people have fewer hardware based issues with HTC compared to other brands, but that may simple be a market-share % factor as well (More people have Moto's or Sammies, so you hear more complaints).
 
Motorola generally makes crappy stuff and yes Touchwiz sucks. Early Samsung Android devices were cheap and kind of awful, but it has improved its fit and finish over time to the point where it truly is a best of breed option that competes with or exceeds HTC's options.
 
Apparently Apple released a new thing yesterday and the tech world is still slobbering over it. It's an ipad2, but smaller and ironically still priced identically to an ipad2.
Which brings me to another amusing point I just noticed: A 5" Samsung Note is "too big to fit in a pants pocket" but the same tech web site just labeled the 7.9" ipad mini as pocket-size. Apple's reality distortion has entered the garment industry.

Anyway MS Surface stuff is out now too and everything I've read says the hardware is pretty neat and the little clicky keyboard is great but since it's not desktop Windows and doesn't have an Apple-size app ecosystem, it's just going to suck and die. Which is basically a self-fulfilling prophecy for stuff like this.
 
LunarMist said:
Does it run PS or LR?
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Their product info claims:
"Runs current Windows 7 desktop applications and integrates with your existing enterprise management infrastructure. Use the programs and the apps available in the Windows Store."
 
timwhit said:
I'm more interested in the Surface Pro.
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More for Lunar, Surface Pro is regular x86-compatible Windows 8 in a tablet form factor. It might be interesting, but I suspect it's going to be another generation of clunky x86 tablets saddled with crappy batteries and underpowered CPUs. Going forward, the fact that both x86 Windows and ARM Windows will hopefully lead to some kind of general convergence, but right now the only thing anyone really cares about is the x86 side.
 
The Kindle app no longer opens on my Kindle Fire. No error messages. Nothing. Just doesn't work. I cleared the data, rebooted the device etc. Nothing. Amazon says I have to do a factory reset to fix it. Awesome.
 
I need to buy the 7" tablet for Christmas gift by end of November. Is the Nexxus still the best one? I see they have some new models listed as coming soon. Is that just the extra memory (32GB) or are they different?
 
I'd say that your choice come down to the 1st generation Fire (cheap), the Nexus 7, the Galaxy Tab 2 7" and the Kindle Fire HD.
The classic Fire is cheap and has a great screen but has Amazon's sucky interface and lack of Play Store support.
The Nexus has good hardware and software as Google intended it, but some people say they have screen issues with them.
The Galaxy Tab 2 7" has similar specs to the Fire, but it has a camera, a microSD slot and it doesn't use Amazon's dumbass launcher.
The Fire HD still has Amazon's shitty default launcher, costs $15 to eliminate some ads and still doesn't support the Play Store, but it has a great screen that's 1280x800 instead of 1024x600.
 
Mercutio said:
I'd say that your choice come down to the 1st generation Fire (cheap), the Nexus 7, the Galaxy Tab 2 7" and the Kindle Fire HD.
The classic Fire is cheap and has a great screen but has Amazon's sucky interface and lack of Play Store support.
The Nexus has good hardware and software as Google intended it, but some people say they have screen issues with them.
The Galaxy Tab 2 7" has similar specs to the Fire, but it has a camera, a microSD slot and it doesn't use Amazon's dumbass launcher.
The Fire HD still has Amazon's shitty default launcher, costs $15 to eliminate some ads and still doesn't support the Play Store, but it has a great screen that's 1280x800 instead of 1024x600.
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I was looking at this one. It has 32GB and a 1280x800 IPS display for a reasonable $250. I'm rather concerned about lack of Play Store apps on the Kindles and the Samsung has only a low-res display. Is another Samsung model coming soon?
 
1024x600 was standard on 7" tablets until maybe a few months ago; I suspect the Fire HD is a bit of a game changer among tier-1 devices. You DO want to pay the extra $15 to ditch Amazon's stupid extra ads, though.

As far as Samsung devices go, new ones are released irregularly, but Samsung supports more different form factors than anyone else (5", 7", 7.7.", 8.9" and 10.1") and isn't particularly open about its future roadmap. The Galaxy 8.9" has long been my favorite tablet, but it's no longer being manufactured and I don't know if a replacement model is in the cards or not.

The Play Store issue on Kindles is a sort of frustration to me. Many apps can be side-loaded, which does take a tiny bit of technical savvy but is also a giant pain in the ass since you have to know exactly what app you want and where to get it. It occasionally involves trusting a third-party app store like GetJar, which I'd be the first person to say isn't necessarily a good idea; third party app stores occasionally have issues with trojans and malware. The down side of lacking access to Google's app store is a big enough strike that I can't fully recommend a Kindle HD.
 
It looks like the 7.7' type is only from the carriers. I guess the Nexus is the one. I hope to find it at retail in November.
 
Where/when can I buy the Nexus 7' tablet and have a return period into January?
 
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