So it’s the second week in January and all the cold weather, burst pipes and tyre snow socks are behind us, hopefully. What did you get for Christmas? Amongst other cool things I got was something I bought for me, from me to me (Really – for me? Oh you shouldn’t have, thanks you so much). This was an Android tablet.
Only wanting to have a (cheap) dabble into the tablet world, after a good few years of using Windows tablet PCs here at xta, I was curious to see how usable a tablet with an OS designed to be used with your fingers and not a pen/stylus might actually work.
I am pleased to report that, all things considered, it all works rather well. I bought a 10 inch Chinese iPad rip-off (in terms of styling and packaging, not performance or quality, that’s for sure) first. This was actually pretty appalling, and went back 24 hours after purchase. Even at £185.00 I reckon on getting something that doesn’t need a reboot every 20 minutes, drop its WiFi when it goes to sleep, and with a battery that lasts more than an hour.
Never one to learn from his mistakes (!) I then went onto the lunacy of eBay and bought a 7″ Chinese MID ePad (see what they did there). This was on the grounds that it was all black (obviously very important, or not, but would at least not be covered in tacky plastic chrome), supposedly was loaded with Android 2.2, and was well under 100 quid delivered.
Ignore that misleading 'flash' icon on the screen - it's a lie. Bit like the Internet Explorer icon - who are they trying to fool?!
Several things to learn from this:
1) UPS can still sting you for import duty and that invoice can arrive any time after delivery! (Still came in under 100 so not a disaster)
2) Google clearly don’t allow access to the app market in China (after their little falling out) so any ‘market’ installed is filled with a load of old toss and very little of use (this can be got around by downloading apps to the SD card on a PC and installing them that way)
3) Despite what you may have been told, flash doesn’t run or can’t be installed on Android 2.2 (although again this could be China’s fault, as I know the Samsung Galaxy Tab runs 2.2 currently and has flash support)
4) You get what you pay for 😉
Point 4 aside, for getting your email, having a quick pick about on t’internet, or downloading a bit of music (and saving this to the micro SD card!), it actually works rather well. Battery life isn’t amazing, but it’s OK, and whilst it’s only a resistive touch screen, and won’t win any awards for speed, it’s relatively zippy and has yet to crash once (and that’s with a few weeks of use now).
So with new releases of Android imminent, although they are always imminent, will ‘Gingerbread’ or indeed ‘Honeycomb’ make tablets a viable alternative to the iPhone and almost as ubiquitous iPad as a cheap and simple remote platform?
