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Android Tablets Were Born Too Soon
adeelarshad82 writes "When you look at the Apple iPad's sales figures, it's not hard to see why every technology company on the planet is jumping on the tablet bandwagon, a lot of which are Android tablets. Unfortunately though, some of these Android tablets were born way too early. They are haunted with a series of problems including flimsy hardware, low-quality resistive touch screens, serious display resolution issues, and old Android versions with limited or non-existent access to apps. Even the Samsung Galaxy Tab came well before its time. Even though it's fast, well-designed, and comes with a decent Android implementation, its functionality is limited to that of an Android smartphone. So here's to hoping that Honeycomb's functionality make up for the lost ground."
I don't think they were released too soon. They were the teething stage of tablets, the infancy where mistakes could be made. Thanks to this Google, Motorola and others have learned valuable lessons. Some of the previous Android tablets are hardly failures. Dell's Streak turned a profit, Samsung's Galaxy Tab sold well with a small return rate not to mention the Archos products which others have pointed out.
Basically the demand was there, proven by the 22% of tablets sold that were not made by Apple. So now armed with this knowledge, the multitude of manufacturers can create a truly competitive tablet market.
Personally I'm still not convinced tablets aren't a fad, much like an overpriced Tamigotchi or flares.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
you're kidding right? Have you been hearing all the issues early adopters have been having with getting their Android devices updated? I'm no iToy supporter by any means, but Android is much more fragmented than iOS, both in hardware and software.
Are you joking? Look at the situation of android phones vs iphones. Iphones are getting updates the android phones are not doing very well in that regard.
Pardon? Are you serious?
It's hard to name android devices that even got the bump from 1.6 to 2.0, hell, 90% of them don't even get *minor* OS version updates from the one they started on, there are still plenty of 1.5/2.0/2.1 devices out there for exactly that reason.
Compare this against iOS devices that are guarenteed to get 2 major OS updates and all minor ones for those major versions. Sure, some functionality is disabled in the newer OSes, but that's typically because the older hardware can't deal with it (e.g. old 3G iPhones with a measly 128MB of RAM and multitasking).
Basically, you're comparing being at the mercy of {motarola | samsung | ...} to get OS updates (hahahahaha), against a guarentee written into the EULA that you'll get upgrades. I know which I consider to be the non-issue of those two ;).
Are you joking? Don't get me wrong, I love Android and custom ROMs, precisely because with the right hardware I can enjoy all the newest features of Android for a long time to come, but pretending the situation with official updates is anything other than abysmal is, well, insane.
Froyo: HTC has updated most of their devices. Samsung is halfheartedly lagging behind, and Motorola, well, they've updated like one device (the original Droid), while deliberately sabotaging any chance other handsets had at home-cooked updates by locking up their bootloaders.
Gingerbread: Nothing to see here, folks. Even the Nexus One hasn't been upgraded yet, and I'm guessing most Nexus One owners are pretty pissed about that, what with having expected to buy a device that would be a supported Android dev phone for a few years (let's say two).
Sure, I'm enjoying Gingerbread (CyanogenMod 7 nightly builds) on my Desire right now, and I'm sure Honeycomb will be along soon, but Joe Sixpack is up shit creek... and outdated smartphones don't make great paddles.
I've got 2.2 on my HTC Dream, the first Android phone to be released. In my nation it was released with Android 1.1. Everything past 1.6 is a community ROM but I've still got 2.2.
When Apple decided not to release new functionality for the older Iphones and Ipads, what other choice do you have but to buy a new one to get that functionality. Not like you can run unsigned code on an Ipad.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Born out of wedlock.
None of these Android ODMs care about growing and nurturing the platform whether it comes to constant updates or application compatibility. It's only market growth in raw numbers with the thinnest of margins, but that's just a consequence of dumping bargain-basement hardware into the stores by truckloads to see what sticks. See: Augens, Streaks, Galaxy Tab, and whatever Archos is doing.
On the mobile phone front if you pick up any two Android phones you'll see completely different methodologies, bizarre UI conventions, half-done features that exist for no logical reason for the sake of filling out checkboxes on spec sheets.
Despite this, Android phones took off because a) there was a vacuum of other more coherent, non-iOS platforms and b) because carriers subsidize the cost of the hardware and everyone needs a phone. It's an essential device.
Tablets face a much harder battle because majority of consumers are unwilling to sign a contract for a non-essential, secondary devices. Note the historically flaccid Netbook sales coupled with subsidies. This is especially true when most people have prior contracts with their phones. Having 2 mobile contracts doesn't quite gel.
Motorola XOOM's pricing came out today at $800 USD with additional, carrier specific caveats. You'd be insane to shell out that much money for a 1st gen, untested device with no compelling app ecosystem vis-Ã-vis iPad/2.
My belief is that the market is wide open right now and the second place is still up for grabs. Could be HP, could be Microsoft's new WP7 thing (if they get their heads out of their ass), or Android.
But just showing up with a tablet is not enough. You need to have healthy margins, curated app ecosystem, and platform continuity. iOS provides that. Android is too fragmented at the moment to pull it off. Sad thing is, Google is unwilling to exert any control and clean up their cluttered, spam-ridden marketplace or force these manufacturers into shipping devices without silly skins.
It's been said before that Android is a meta-platform, and I tend to agree with that. This gives hope to other OSes into jumping into the fray and becoming second to Apple. I truly believe that iPad has an iPod-like lock on the tablets for years to come (check above about subsidies).
How can you compare 1 type of handset (the iPhone) with about a THOUSAND different handsets from different manufacturers running Android?
If anything, you should compare the iPhone to a specific brand or manufacturer for instance, the HTC Nexus One - which not only has been getting ALL the android updates officially, but also has INCREDIBLE community support and car run a host of custom ROMs!
It's sad that misinformation has to be the key tactic to make apple look good.
Sigs are for the weak.
Wow, good thing you went with the open platform otherwise you might have had to compile your own hacked third party OS update together when the manufacturer bailed on you. Just think of the hours you could have not spent searching through forums and triple checking instructions. Good thing you didn't fall into Apple's trap. /sarcasm
Not quite. Everyone else released a beta. Apple released a finished product. And they did it a year ahead of their first real competition's 'beta' products. And yes, while tablets are still more on the toy side of the product category that shouldn't be an excuse to release a half-assed product. The competition is releasing products that are neither ahead of the curve or polished. That's just sloppy and sad.
What the heck are you on about?
When a new computer update comes out, you get it day one, within the hour, surely? You dont have to wait for your internet provider to decide to give it to you, without your permission, you dont look up at your screen and see "hello, I'm downloading a major OS update in the background! I may appear to have frozen, please dont turn me off, ok?", do you?
It doesnt matter if you have an HP, or Dell, you get Windows X whenever YOU want to get it.
Lets face it, apparently only the Nexus One, and its successor the Nexus S, both "by Google" get updates... the rest are SCREWED. You buy a "top of the line device", and its instantly obsolete when a new model comes out with a slightly larger screen, 4.3 inches vs 4, with the new OS update. You feel like a fool when you device doesnt have some obvious new feature enabled through an extra few dozen MB being used.
Its not good enough, no matter what your brand loyalty.
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Apple re-wrote the built in apps to take advantage of the increased screen size. Android won't do that until Honeycomb comes out.
All I'm asking is that you compare apples to apples.
iOS Market share vs. Android Market Share.
How many times do we need to repeat this: Android is an OS not a Phone!
iPhone market share is much greater than any single Android based handset.
Sigs are for the weak.
The problem with this kind of "support" is that you are relying on the hardware being picked up by the community and developed for. What happens when your hardware isn't picked up by the community and the maker decides to EOL it before the contract ends? Or it ends up like the Motorola or Sony handsets where trying to root it is all but impossible?
Android tabs are a bit of a joke at the moment, and I'm advising all of my friends keen to get one to wait until their favourite flavour of manufacturer has Honeycomb tabs. Otherwise you're gambling on a possible update by the community should the manufacturer EOL it.
I was keen to get an Android tab mid last year, but there was nothing about. I got an iPad and have been pleased with my purchase. Sure, it didn't come with os 4.X, but it has it now and I know apple aren't going to drop support for the iPad when the iPad 2 comes out. Just as my iPhone 3G didn't lose support when the 3GS or the 4 came out.
What's this talk about technology? The iPad is a fashion accessory. Android tablets are not fashionable.
Seriously, what is the point of a tablet device? At the high school I work at, we're going to be made to use iPad's starting in April. I've played around with one of the test devices and I can't imagine actually getting work done on these things. I'm dreading April. If it were an Android device it wouldn't be any better.
My "Flash-Ready" Motorola Milestone is still in 2.1. Last summer they told publicly that they were considering if they publish 2.2 at all, then decided it would come at the end of September.
It still hasn't materialized. The latest information is, that it would come sometime during Q1.
This was the same phone that was sold as Droid in the States, but with added bootloader protection. When users complained, the director of marketing replied that "you should have bought HTC or Nexus One".
Chronologically late.
This is something I have to explain to customers when we do mobile development, especially explaining our pricing for Android. We only give QA on the Nexus One/(now S). Each additional handset costs extra and typically most will want QA against Droid(Verizon), HTC Evo(Sprint), and Samsung (AT&T/T-Mobile). That makes the Android platform usually between 3 to 5 times the cost to develop for iPhone/iPod. Usually we treat the iPad as a separate device just as we'll treat these new tablets running Android as each being a different "platform".
Last year we tried to treat "Android" as a platform, but we ended up losing money on that side of the business because every time we turned around there were a half dozen new handsets and a new OS version to deal with.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
No offense, but if you ever TRIED using an iPhone 3G with iOS4, you'll quickly find out that Apple would have been better off cutting off upgrades for that device at version 3.
The interface goes from being perfectly usable to damn slow, and applications running on the phone constantly run out of memory and crash.
When I bought it I immediately loaded a much faster and more feature-rich ROM than the one they provided me.
which you should not have to do, and which 99% of people never will do.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Tablets have been around for years yet have not found an actual purpose outside of niche applications.
Their main purpose is to facilitate flexible, mobile one-handed web surfing, if you know what I mean, and I'm sure that you do.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Like the Coby Kyros reviewed in the article, Archos products have resistive touch screens, making them more suited to a stylus than a finger. (I have an Archos 43, with which I use my DS Lite stylus.) Also like the Kyros, Archos products come with AppsLib and lack access to Google's Android Market without hacks such as ArcTools that Google could cease-and-desist at any moment the way it C&D'd Google Apps in CyanogenMod.
So I hope when Android 3.0 turns up that in addition to making the UI more friendly it also addresses the CDD. GPS, compass etc. are nice to haves. The basic tablet spec should not force them. But perhaps it should specify extended profiles for PMPs, ereaders etc. For example, perhaps a "media" tablet profile might mandate more codecs, while an ereader tablet might specify certain screen visibility characteristics, possibly even allowing for e-ink displays.
The point being that Android is growing up but the CDD has long been an impediment and it needs to be improved.
Oh, please. The iPhone 4 lasts for a solid day of heavy use, all most people need, and you can easily use a "boost" charger to juice it up mid-flight if you have to - something that's no bulkier than carrying around an additional battery, I might add. It also recharges amazingly quickly from wall outlets.
This isn't about a pissing contest. I'm sure that your phone is nice and meets your needs as well. But most people don't carry additional batteries (regardless of their phone brand), and the vast majority of the millions of iPhone users have no battery issues. Its not a big liberal-media-coverup, its just a boring fact.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
> I own a Galaxy S and since the Nexus S is basically the same phone
If your Galaxy S is GSM and you don't use T-Mobile 4G, you're mostly right. If your Galaxy S is CDMA, and particularly an Epic4G, you're mostly fucked.
The loadable kernel modules are what will kill you. Linux doesn't have a stable ABI, which means that drivers (.ko modules) compiled for an older kernel won't necessarily (read: won't) work on a newer kernel (think Win98->WinXP, but worse... like being unable to use a driver made for XP Pro/32 under Vista Business/32. Officially, the Linux kernel could break binary compatibility over the equivalent of going from XPsp1 to XPsp2. Samsung gets partial credit for releasing drivers as proper loadable kernel modules (so they can at least be used with recompiled versions of the same kernel), but source-wise, their drivers are as bad as HTC's -- they aren't directly buildable because they have unsatisfied dependencies. The difference is that HTC at least releases new kernels in a timely manner, so the community can grab them and move forward instead of being stalled for 6 months waiting for 4G drivers that work on a 2.6.32 kernel (needed for Froyo) to metaphorically fall from the sky.
All we ask is for Samsung to at least practice benign neglect and say, "Look, bitch to Sprint if you want an official 2.2 upgrade, but in the meantime, here's a zipfile of everything proprietary that you can't compile yourself, recompiled against 2.6.32. Same drivers, same bugs, but automatically rebuilt for 2.6.32's ABI. Have fun."
Of course, Samsung won't do that, because it would mean that by the time the official carrier upgrade makes it out (if ever), it would be *totally* eclipsed by community builds that do more with fewer bugs (because the community versions would have a real-world 4-6 month head start, and several orders of magnitude more hours of developer time behind them). The truth is, though, the carriers would actually have a reasonable excuse to give less technical end users who complained about having to wait: "Our upgrade doesn't make you blow away everything and start over from scratch every time. It lets you upgrade in-place, and should be relatively seamless." Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks.