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Samsung May Release an 18" Tablet
A report at PC Magazine says that Samsung may soon field a tablet to satisfy people not content with the 7", 9", 12", or even slightly larger tablets that are today's normal stock in trade. Instead, the company is reported to be working on an 18.4" tablet aimed at "living rooms, offices, and schools." There's a lot of couching going on, but it sounds like an interesting idea: It's said to run Android 5.1 Lollipop and be powered by an octa-core 64-bit 1.6GHz Exynos 7580 processor. Other rumored specs include 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, a microSD card slot with support for cards up to 128GB, and a large 5,700 mAh battery. The device also has an 8-megapixel main camera (and you thought people looked silly taking photos with their iPads) and 2.1-megapixel "secondary camera."
It is bigger than some of the laptops.
Finally something appropriate for the older crowd with poor vision. Add Keyboard & Mouse support and a stand and you are giving a PC a run for it's money when it comes to basic computer tasks for a home user, who have found tablets to be too small in the past.
Dell already sells an 18" "All-In-One Desktop" XPS 18 which is thin enough to be a tablet and has batteries and a touchscreen. I have owned one for over a year and it is very nice. Fast Core I7, 8 GB and a terabyte of hybrid disk. They sell less tricked out versions as well. Other than the Android OS on the Samsung and the Windows 8.1 on the Dell they sound pretty comparable. Not sure this is a really new idea.
Several things that they need:
The front camera needs to have a built-in swivel, so that it can aim if the user is at an angle from the device.
Try 4GB instead of 2GB RAM. That's probably just bad info, as other Samsung products already have more memory.
Apps! They need lots of special apps to take advantage of this. They should partner with gaming companies to have app versions of Monopoly and other well-known board games where the tablet is the board, and players sit around it. It may even use bluetooth to let players have secret information on only their handsets.
I'm holding out for the 64" tablet.
You know you want to laugh with everyone holding this up to their head. Or even better, in front of their face while driving in traffic.
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
Will someone just please make me a coffee table where the surface is a touchscreen?
And make it resistant to bean dip and highball glasses. And my stinky feet.
You are welcome on my lawn.
18" is a nice screen.
2GB of RAM is too little. It should have 4GB (minimum), 128GB of SSD, and removable storage options.
Battery should be changeable
Should host a WIFI hotspot.
Decent stylus support for tablet functionality with drawings and documents.
User side camera should be aimable. Also a smallish IR emitter to allow user lighting without making it objectionable to others on flights, in conferences and classes, etc.
Stereo speakers, in the right location.
Waterproof on the top surface.
Ships with a pack of screen protectors.
Decent encryption support.
Seriously, is it that hard to figure out what people want in a high end device?
oh, you're a 2 dimensional entity. Or just a dumb-ass? An 18" tablet would be much thinner than a laptop
There are currently very few options for musicians who don't want to carry books around. Hopefully this will be more affordable than the current available products.
18'' is a one-dimensional measure. If you're assuming it means the diagonal of some higher-dimensional shape, why limit yourself to two?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I'm all for a big tablet. As someone who regularly works with large drawings having what effectively amounts to a digital piece of paper is a killer feature for me.
But not Android. The entire Android design is centered around small screens, apps designed to fill entire screens, big buttons, large keyboard areas etc. There would be signficant amount of hackery needed to make an 18" tablet useful (which I don't trust Samsung to get right or support going forward), and there are little to no productivity apps that would make an 18" tablet useful in the Android market.
A PC in that form factor on the other hand would make me part with my money.
The biggest issue I see is that few are going to be making apps for this size screen. Instead it'll simply stretch phone apps to the larger screen which will result in highly pixelated apps and less than optimal interfaces. This has long been an issue on Android where less developers are creating apps for tablets. Apple is able to encourage developers to make apps for their specific screen sizes but they also have a smaller range of sizes and a more devoted pool of developers. With just a single tablet available in this size, few will likely make their apps for 18" screen which will result in few apps that really display and operate optimally on the large screen.
Ever since the iPad 1 shipped, I've advocated a range of iPads in all the standard drafting sheet sizes, from A (8.5" x 11") to D (17"x22"). Direct manipulation on large, high-DPI displays would make for an amazing user experience for CAD.
Of course, if I spent the money that a 17x22" device would cost, there's no way in hell I'd settle for Android. I LIKE getting OS updates.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I keep waiting for Samsung to resurrect the 1980's boombox with their ever increasing phone and tablet sizes. Teens walking down the road, a giant touchscreen device on their shoulders blasting the latest from Justin Bieber....
I didn't say it was a pretty future....
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Attach a keyboard to it, with a hinge, so you can close the whole thing up, protecting both the screen and the keyboard.You could even put little feet on the bottom of the keyboard part, so when it's open it won't slide around if it's on a hard surface. While you're at it, put most of the electronics under the keyboard, along with the battery, so the center of gravity is lower; it'll make the whole device more stable when it's open.
Now we just need to come up with a name for this..
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
More like table.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I always thought the print magazine format would have done well on a tablet that could display at least one full page of a magazine at a size identical to the print edition. I don't find the app versions of magazines nearly as satisfying as paging through a physical magazine and the reduce-and-zoom stuff like Zinio does isn't very appealing either.
Oh yes please, a proper A4 tablet with at minimum Galaxy Tab Note class touchscreen sensitivity etc. I currently run a Tab Note 2, and it's decent for note-taking, sketching, diagrams etc with a stylus, but full A4 size screen would make for a much better experience.
I'm still awaiting delivery of my 2000" TV.
Signed,
Frank.
Consider buying a Cintiq. It's exactly what you are asking for, with superb software and stylus support, at sizes up to 27" diagonal. A bit expensive, but this is a niche market, and you get what you pay for.
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
How about a 24" family tablet?
Nabi Big Tab
I Don't Work Here
"Standalone 18.4-inch tablet powered with an NVIDIA® Tegra® 3 quad-core processor"
" detach its 18.4-inch Full HD display and it instantly transforms into a multi-touch Android tablet."
That's the problem - it becomes an over-glorified pda as soon as you undock it. And there's no pen support. Nobody does technical drawings with their fingers, or crayon-sized markers.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Yeah, but then you'd really need a pixel-accurate stylus interface, and that's not how Steve would have used the iPad so it's not allowed to exist. I waiting for 4 iterations of iPad, and tried about every passive and bluetooth-active pen replacement on the market before giving up on that pipe dream. I bought a convertible windows laptop last year, but the software is just now catching up (Bluebeam seems to understand and almost gets it right). Sadly, my screen cracked entirely of it's own volition and I can't even buy a replacement (fuck you, Sony), so I'm hoping that the Surface 4 will fit the bill. (and, honestly, be a little lighter - a 15.6" tablet seems great until it weighs 3.5 pounds).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Slightly larger than B4 size overall, but with a wider format. The width is 1.9cm wider than A4 and 11cm longer. Plenty of space to show a full A4 PDF and even scale it up a bit, and still have controls, status bars and the rest on the top and bottom.
If it is light enough, this would be an excellent device to read and annotate research papers. Your typical 10" tablet is just too small to fit all of a double-column paper on screen and still keep the text readable. Zoom in on one column and you no longer see the illustrations and lose a lot of context. I'm afraid this will be too heavy to use like that, though.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Ghettotablaster
Onyx Boox have an e-ink tablet that you can put in landscape mode to show half an A4 page at full size at a time. It's good for many PDF files. Of course some others for some insane reason are encoded badly enough that you need the grunt of a recent desktop computer to avoid rendering times of many seconds per page.
I remember when I got a Dell Streak 5, smartphone in 2010...everyone laughed "it's too big" Then the next year, Samsung came out with the Galaxy Note...everyone said it was too big. Now, just about ever smartphone maker, INCLUDING APPLE has a 5" or bigger screen, so, who's to say an 18" tablet is too big? Time will tell. If they made a rugged one, I'd get it for work and give up lugging around my laptop.
No, no keyboard please. I've been waiting for a reasonable 13+ inch tablet to replace my 3 foot stack of music books for my piano. I scanned my most-used music scores long ago (or downloaded from imslp.org), and used to use a 12.1" PC tablet a decade ago for this purpose (it had a 1440x1050 screen, vs the 1024x768 or 1366x768 which was common at the time). I'd consider that size the absolute minimum size and resolution - the notes are (barely) large enough to easily recognize at typical reading distance when placed on a piano, and the resolution is high enough to easily distinguish different types of notes from each other. 18" would be just awesome.
I realize this isn't exactly a prevalent use case. But those of you looking for a large laptop already have a lot of choices, and those of you looking for a small tablet already have a lot of choices. Don't ruin this for those of us who want a larger tablet just because you personally don't have a use for it.
A keyblet?
Ezekiel 23:20
If it doesn't include a sub-woofer, it's just not worth it.
If you are in Korea and say "18" aloud in Korean, people will stare at you as it sounds very similar to "F*cking" in Korean. (People in formal situation are normally a little careful saying "18" in Korea especially on broadcasting) So that is F*cking inches tablet. Just saying...
Dell started selling an all-in-one XPS convertible 18" tablet in 2013. Compatible with Windows 8/8.1/10 - still available on their site. But, I guess if it's not Samsung, or Apple, or Google, then it's not news? Innovation has been taking place in the Windows world for over a decade. Miniature systems, hardened industrial laptops, and more that simply doesn't get the consumer publicity, but find very robust deployments in a variety of industries. Someday soon Apple will try to invent a new form factor called "server"?
Every change is not progress, but there is no progress without change.
If anything is prepared for different screen sizes/resolutions on this market, it's Android.
Various assets for different screen sizes, resolutions AND EVEN RATIONS are there out of the box and things do NOT have to have the same layout on different screens either.
In other words, nope, not a problem.
â(TM) Somebody doesn't get it â(TM)
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Jokes aside, check out Dell 7000 series 2 in 1s.
John Wayne coded with Emacs on a CGA terminal, baby.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Zoom and pan on google maps isn't like pinch to zoom on iOS or Mac OS. I have no problem at all using the pinch gesture to quickly magnify what I'm looking at to get the cursor in the right place.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Let's have a tablet on the floor instead : no problem holding it in the air, no gorilla arm, in fact you don't need arms to use it! Keyboarding will be good exercise, toes can be used for fine drawing and even butt dialing can get literal.
I considered iOS devices at one point but I kind of like having a file system. As a result I've stuck to Windows based like Surface and transformer laptops (Lenovo Yoga Thinkpad is nice).
Make that a wireless remote screen that connects to my desktop PC at home for less cost than a normal tablet and let's talk.
I bought an Acer DA220HQL, a 21.5"(!) Android tablet.
It's actually more useful than it seems. We mounted it on the wall in a space we always pass by, and I set it up with Google Keep and Calendar, and synced the family calendars to it, as well as the shopping lists. I did have to use Raccoon to get the apps to install on it, and there are a couple reflow issues with they layouts, but you really can't notice. Now, could we look at a calendar or the shopping list on a phone? Yes, but you don't always have your phone, and having something always there is really useful.
Ever since the iPad 1 shipped, I've advocated a range of iPads in all the standard drafting sheet sizes, from A (8.5" x 11") to D (17"x22"). Direct manipulation on large, high-DPI displays would make for an amazing user experience for CAD.
Of course, if I spent the money that a 17x22" device would cost, there's no way in hell I'd settle for Android. I LIKE getting OS updates.
-jcr
And thus is the main disadvantage of iOS - you get what you're given, and nothing else...
The 7" nexus has more pixels. This 18" screen works out to 122ppi, which is abysmal for any modern hardware, and only fit for a cheap TV.
That's Samsung for ya.
Just prop it up on a stand, obviously add a keyboard and a mouse, and it's exactly what I wanted in 1988, when I was 8 years old.
It took me another few years to get a great desk, but it was worth the wait.
To be clear, I'm still using the 11 foot long solid wood desk, but my AT machine -- 12" screen, 20MB of HDD -- is missing in action, absent without leave, and lost across moves.
no, the size gives the hypotenuse of a triangle with 16:10 ratio on legs, thus it specifies length of 2 orthogonal dimensions. Just as saying cube with 8" side specifies dimensions in 3D
Android gets more and more comical as the screen sizes get larger, not because of Android itself, but because of what people think Android is and thus the way developers program for it.
Android gets comical not because of Android but because of Google Play. People who buy Android devices demand access to Google Play Store, but Google is unwilling to license the copyrighted Google Play Store client except for preinstallation on devices that meet the Android Compatibility Definition (CDD). And last time I checked, one of the provisions of the CDD was that the logical screen size seen by an application never change after the application is installed. This means no Windows 8.1-style split screen for "snapped" apps. Samsung reportedly works around this by zooming each application in and out while maintaining the logical screen size, but this makes text unreadable while an application is zoomed out.
no, the size gives the hypotenuse of a triangle with 16:10 ratio on legs, thus it specifies length of 2 orthogonal dimensions.
This may come as a shock, but there are displays/devices in other ratios besides 16:10, yet they use diagonal inches as a shorthand for their size. So simply talking about inches can be quite misleading, even if you know it's a 2D rectangle.
In fact, the largest area for a given diagonal would be a square. This must be one reason for the proliferation of widescreen displays in general computing -- they can sell more diagonal inches with less area.
While I'm picking nits, 16:10 should logically be simplified to 8:5, but it's never done in practice. I guess it's to highlight its relation to 16:9. Or perhaps to give the impression that ratios with big numbers are always better, given that 4:3 or 5:4 are so last century.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
this may come as a shock, but we're talking of samsung tablet line here with known ratio