Ask Slashdot: Why Do Most Tablet Specs Suck?

Slashdot reader Qbertino describes himself as a "happy tablet user," moving from an old HTC Flyer to his Yoga 2. But he notes that most other tablets "have laughable battery times," and "I've yet to find a tablet that does not give me storage or memory problems in some way or other, lasts for a day or two in power and doesn't feel chintzy and like it won't stand a month of regular everyday use and carrying around..." He asks why none of the manufacturers seem willing to offer more than one gigabyte of RAM -- and why they're so stingy with storage. "Where is the rugged 16GB RAM / 1TB Storage / 20-hour battery tablet?"

So leave your educated opinions in the comments. What are your thoughts on the current tablet market? And are they the ultimate all-purpose "convergence" device that Apple and Ubuntu seem to think they are?

Comments

people want cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently these days cheap is all that matters - quality doesn't

Re:people want cheap

[Tx]

apparently these days cheap is all that matters - quality doesn't

This.

Nobody is interested in making a good product, only a cheap product.

The issue is that nobody is willing to pay for high-end tablets. A few years ago, there were more premium tablets around, and they didn't sell.

The fact is that high end phones sell because a) many people get them on contract with low up-front cost, and b) people carry their phones around and use them a lot every single day, so it's easier to justify. By constrast, you mostly have to pay up-front for a tablet, and for many people it's used a lot less than a phone, and so for the majority, a cheap tablet is just fine, especially since today's premium tablet will be outperformed by budget tablets in less than two years.

Re:people want cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently these days cheap is all that matters - quality doesn't

This.

Nobody is interested in making a good product, only a cheap product.

The issue is that nobody is willing to pay for high-end tablets. A few years ago, there were more premium tablets around, and they didn't sell.

Tablets are a niche product with limited usefulness and as a result nobody is willing to pay a lot for them.

The iPad is well made and has good specs, but offers no expandability and you have to buy the most expensive one to get a decent amount of storage. For the same price as the top of the line iPad I bought a laptop with a bigger screen, faster more powerful CPU, a lot more storage, 4 USB ports and an HDMI.

Re:people want cheap

[Sax Russell 5449D29A]

I don't think it's about costs, it's about demand. Having a tablet with such specs would be like cramming a 5 liter V8 into a moped. It can be done, but there likely aren't many people who'd want an unstable and unbalanced vehicle.

Re:people want cheap

[Gondola]

We have three tablets for the two of us. One in the kitchen for recipes, and a personal one for us to use around the house.

I often hang out on the couch and listen to music while I read e-comics, browse Reddit or Imgur, or use the tablet to look up IMDB entries. A laptop is just cumbersome and hot in those circumstances. An 8" tablet like my Samsung (1600p, beautiful display) is perfect, easy to read -- easier to read than a 4" phone screen. Laptop too big, phone too small.

Also works fine in the bathroom. Easier to read than a phone.

I have a crappy Nook HD for recipes and music selection in the kitchen -- it's a lot more portable than a laptop, fits everywhere, lasts a week or more on a charge just sitting there, and I don't have to worry about getting anything in a keyboard or using a mouse or crappy touch pad. Laptop too big, phone too small.

I was skeptical about getting a tablet, but for us they've worked out great in these scenarios.

Everyone has different needs.

Re:people want cheap

[Shadow99_1]

I still don't own a a smartphone and instead use a very old now Asus Transformer TF201. I don't own a smartphone because even basic plans cost me around $90/month and I just don't need mobile data much at all (I almost entirely use wireless at home and use the tablet when I do). My talk and text is astronomically low to the point I have over a 'thousand minutes' built up on my pay as you go feature phone and I spend like $22 every 3 months. However I take my tablet everywhere and have for years with ~8 hours of life as long as I keep the screen brightness down and if I need it I have the keyboard with a second battery in it. My mom actually complains about how I take it with me everywhere so I can read books, play video, tap into open wifi to look things up online, listen to music, take notes, write a novel, and perform all sorts of other tasks. It's more than paid for itself, though it did cost ~$700 brand new with the keyboard. So it could have bought a laptop, but I have a laptop and barely use it because it's to big to take with me easy and overkill for most of what I need. Instead a tablet with a keyboard attachment is basically perfect. Sadly it's getting long in the tooth now running an ancient version of android and it's certainly never going to see an upgrade to a newer version. It's taken a lot of abuse over the years as well and is still ticking, though it's chipped and even has a crack from the hundreds of times it's fallen off of something I lay it on and fallen onto numerous floors including some absurdly hard tiles.

Since most pay pay absurd amounts for a mobile phone each month and already have a smartphone which has grown larger and larger over the years, I'm not surprised most people don't look at tablets. I know I'm so not the typical consumer, but then most people don't know what they are missing either. My parents have wanted a tablet like mine for quite awhile instead of the laptop they got (and which has numerous odd issues). I think they would appeal more to the older generation, but they aren't targeted at that market and so a lot of people who would enjoy them never hear of them (not even the Ipad, which is probably the best known of them).

Re:people want cheap

[Solandri]

That's what I'm trying to do too - tablets lying around the house as convenience devices to replace magazines, sticky notes, a pad of paper, etc.. But the problem is these tablets drain their battery in about a week even when not doing anything. Charging one tablet once a week is trivial. But when you've got a half dozen tablets and no easy way to keep track of all their charges at once, it becomes a chore. Turning them off isn't really an option because it takes about half a minute to turn them back on.

I'd really like a suspend feature like on laptops, where the battery can last a month (or three) when not used, but the tablet wakes up in seconds ready to use at the press of a button. As a bonus that takes care of all the stupid apps which insist on draining your battery even though there is no reason for them to be doing anything because nobody is using the tablet - they can't run if the device is suspended.

Re:people want cheap

[houstonbofh]

The issue is that nobody is willing to pay for high-end tablets. A few years ago, there were more premium tablets around, and they didn't sell.

Not exactly. The "High End" tablets came preloaded with crapware and were hard to root. The China knockoffs had the same specs and had no preloaded crapware and were easy to root if not pre-rooted. I will pay more for more ram, and flash. I will not pay more for Samsung Update Utility and backup!

Advertising, that's why there's no storage

[CRCulver]

and why they're so stingy with storage.

Because the business model of a number of tablet makers is giving you little on-device storage so that you start using their cloud storage service, which gives them an opportunity to sell you an additional service or sell your data to advertisers, duh.

Re:Advertising, that's why there's no storage

[thegarbz]

I don't think it's that nefarious. I think it's because tablets are treated as toys and therefore priced as such.

Convergence device?

[krisbrowne42]

Most pundits decry Apple for not making the iPad a convergence device. The tablet condenses nearly every hard problem in making computers - big, high-res displays take more memory and compute to drive. Memory takes battery to drive. Battery weighs a lot. Nobody wants to carry that weight. Every tablet is a compromise - no matter what MS tries to tell you.

My Recommendation...

[EmeraldBot]

Try checking out the Memopad 572c. 2 GB RAM, a fantastic screen, supports SD cards, and a really high performing chip with ~ 10 hour battery life, all for less than $199. It's not made anymore, can only get up to Android 5 at the moment, and won't take on the full size ipad, but for what you get it's a fantastic deal, if you can still find it. A decent $199 tablet seems to be a lost art these days :/

"Where is the rugged 16GB RAM ... tablet"?

[Nutria]

In fairy land with the unicorns and super-dense LiPo batteries that don't explode when you sneeze really hard.

Because what do you need in order to power 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD??? Lots of power. Which don't exist in batteries with the density required at prices that are affordable.

Re:"Where is the rugged 16GB RAM ... tablet"?

[AmiMoJo]

It's pointless having 16GB of RAM anyway, because tablet apps don't need it. Anything that needs 16GB RAM would be better run on a laptop with a keyboard and mouse. You can get laptops that are under 800g with a good 12" screen and good battery life.

1TB of storage is more useful if you are really random and can't plan far enough ahead to whittle your HD movie collection down to a 256GB SD card.

Re:"Where is the rugged 16GB RAM ... tablet"?

[thegarbz]

This is the dumbest comment on Slashdot today. There's almost no difference in power consumption between small and large SSDs, likewise with the additional RAM. For example: standby power difference between a 120GB 850 pro and a 500GB 850 pro is in the order of 5mW. For those that don't understand what five milliwatts is let me put it for you in an example:

An iPad has a 43Wh battery in it. The power difference between the SSDs would drain the battery in 8600 hours, or to put it in numbers that are easier to understand, if you iPad currently lasts 10hours, with the upgraded SSD the iPad would last 9h 59m 18s.

During write these numbers are worse but the standard tablet usage scenario does not include continuous writing.

Here:

[bill_mcgonigle]

Here.

Not even a LMGTFY.

Re:Here:

[OzPeter]

Interesting. But I am amused to see that the SSDs are listed as "Shock mounted MIL-STD-810G ". You really ned to shock mount an SSD and not the rest of the electronics?!?!?!

Re:Here:

[PopeRatzo]

Not even a LMGTFY.

I don't see what sexual orientation has to do with this.

The perfect tablet is impossible.

[jellomizer]

RAM: the more you want the more power it uses. Every one of those bits in RAM being used or not needs that charge to keep its state.
CPU/GPU: the faster the more power it uses. Every tick is a pulse of electricity
Video: The higher the resolution the more RAM and CPU/GPU needed.

Now what happens to this power once the calculation is done. Most of it becomes heat. Excess heat from these devices can damage components in the table. As well damage your body as well.

Then we have battery life. Battery storage capacity has been improving linearly, while computing power has been growing exponentially. So while the computer components get smaller leaving more room for battery, however it will rarely allow doubling the power capability.

Your Desktop PC can have loads of performance as you can burn energy right off the grid, filled with big empty spaces for heat dissipation
Your Laptop PC has less space and weight, however due to the space needed to type on a keyboard they are allowed much more room for battery power, as well some air pathways to keep the device cool.
Tablets are self contained computing devices. with nearly 0 room to spare. So any components are often underpowered or under clocked to keep heat down and extend battery life.

Normally this is a good tradeoff as they are normally just browsing web pages, or running simple apps. or more complex apps off of the could.

Convergence devices suck anyway.....

[King_TJ]

Seriously, I work in I.T. for a company with a highly mobile workforce, and we're both Mac and Windows friendly on top of that. So our environment is mixed, with a lot of emphasis on trying out various portable options and cloud offerings, while still supporting some traditional server "back end" for our financial system and shared network drives.

Long ago, we switched all of our users from desktop systems to laptops, and we had a policy of issuing corporate iPads ever since the iPad 2 came along. (For a long time, we had a division of our company doing iOS software development - so it made sense to issue hardware to run the stuff we made.)

Right now, we're starting to issue the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 to new hires who request a Windows PC instead of a Mac. And that brings up the question of whether its time to stop issuing iPads - if the Surface Pro is supposed to double as a tablet.

What we're seeing though is that generally no, the "one solution fits all" model is a big compromise and doesn't really work that well. Out of all of the different computers we've issued over the years, from HP Elitebooks to various Dell machines to different Macbooks -- the only one that's held up over the years as the "gold standard" that users really liked AND worked reliably was the Macbook Air 13". It's light and thin enough so people can throw it in a backpack or whatnot and take it with them without a care. Battery life is great. It's about half the price of the high end Macbook Pro laptops. The basic look stayed the same from the first year of production through current models - meaning there's no stigma about someone pulling out and opening an older 2011 or 2012 model in a meeting with clients. And repairs are pretty reasonably priced. (With Apple doing a "flat rate" repair program on them, you can have one with 5 or 6 things wrong with it and it's still cost effective to have it serviced rather than trash it.)

With the Surface Pro 4, by contrast? Yes, people think things like the pencil are cool, and it's a very capable machine when plugged into a dock and used like a desktop. But as soon as you take it with you to use like an iPad, you run into a lot of downsides. Battery life NOT so great, for starters. And because it runs a full Windows 10 OS, it has the inherent problems that come with a full blown, more complex OS. Issues not always waking from sleep properly, for example -- leading to a long wait to reboot the whole thing, or apps that aren't designed for the hi-res 4K display so fonts display so tiny, they're unreadable. The keyboard cover is too flimsy to allow typing on it like laptop if you actually have to use it in your lap. (It's designed assuming you have a solid surface like a table underneath the whole thing.) Lastly, I think it's a big omission that you can't buy a Surface Pro 4 with a built-in LTE cellular modem like you can an iPad. Having a cellular data plan on the devices goes a LONG way towards feeling "always connected" and ensuring your cloud-based data or apps are always available "on the go".

Re:Convergence devices suck anyway.....

[bananaquackmoo]

Disclaimer: I don't like Microsoft, but I like the Surface Pro. All of your complaints are relatively incorrect. I've never had a problem typing on the keyboard cover. You can scale the font-size or set the display to a different resolution. >= Four hours of battery life running a full-fledged OS is, for me, much better than a battery which can last all day but can't do half the stuff I need it to. Who is using it that far away from some kind of charging device for more than 4 hours? I can run multiple VMs at a time or run full windows-based games on it, such as The Division. I've never had any issues with waking from sleep and the reboot isn't long, it's a minor quantity of seconds. Personally I have no issue with tethering to my phone for data. Finally, the Surface (not pro) has an option for built in LTE and gets better battery life, but is admittedly much slower.

Re:Convergence devices suck anyway.....

[dprimary]

4 hours will barely get me between major airports. It is not worth the risk to believe that I can find a place to plug in while in the boarding area. What happen when I have to be in three cities that day? when is the device getting recharged.

Re:Convergence devices suck anyway.....

[guacamole]

I am glad there are people like you who can think rationally about devices like Surface Pro 4. Those "tablets" suck. They're too bulky and heavy for any real tablety application. Try to hold an iPad Air or Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 and then tell me after that that surface pro 4 is actually a tablet. Moreover, Surface Pro 4 is also a _bad_ notebook. For one, it's very clumsy to be used as a laptop, since the screen won't stand on its own without the rear hinge. The keyboard bends like its made from carboard. And people end up paying upwards of $1200 for this? I never got what exactly makes Surface Pro 4 better than say a convertible ultrabook such as Lenovo Yoga series. The Yoga is a full-fledged laptop, very lightweight, but still converts into a (relatively thick and bulky tablet) just like Surface Pro.

Supplies in Guangdong & Shenzhen

[Pollux]

It's the same reason why 1366x768 laptop displays aren't going away. There's a huge supply of them, they work, and they're cheap.

Guangdong and Shenzhen are mass producing cheap and common tablet parts like mad. You can find and buy them yourself on Alibaba; there's tons of cheap 8 and 16GB eMMC chips, 1GB RAM chips, and ARM processors. Companies like Samsung make higher quality and newer, pioneering products, like chips that integrate the storage & RAM together. Soon, the Chinese generics will add these to their lineup, making tablets even smaller and cheaper.

If you want something different, vote with your wallet and buy something different. Then, if enough people do, that's what will become cheap and mass-produced.

Re:cuz RAM uses power

[TechyImmigrant]

More RAM less battery life

Not with effective power management. Unused RAM can be powered down.

The Rules, Break Them

[BrendaEM]

A tablet camera must be barely acceptable.
A tablet with a pen must be updated rarely.
Android cannot be upgraded; You are allowed only one newer version or 2 years, whichever comes first.
A tablet cannot have removable main storage.
A tablet must use expensive MicroSD even if there is room for a full sized SD card.
The number of SD cards must only be 1.
Android must not be vanilla; it must be larded with crap so updates come slow.
Early Apple updates must break your device.
The tablet screen must be so shinny that you cannot use it outside.
You may not put a volume knob on anything.
Tablet must all look the same.

The form factor sucks

[Dracos]

I have yet to come up with a reason why I would want a tablet.

Tablets are meant for consumption, not production. Touchscreens are a regression in human interfaces: sloppy, imprecise, immediately unintuitive kludges for meta input. Tablets are one side of a power grab by the industry because PCs offer too much freedom, privacy and repairability; the other side is app markets and cloud services. Tablets are too convenient; to achieve that they must sacrifice any spec based on volume: battery capacity, storage, RAM, cooling, etc. Except screen size... gotta keep packing more pixels.

Laptops

[bluescrn]

The really good tablets come with keyboards attached...

Old junk

[rasmusbr]

A lot of companies that make Android tablets over-estimated the market size and rushed to marked with less than stellar devices. Then the market turned out to be a lot smaller and a lot more crowded than most of them had predicted. So they stopped investing in Android tablet hardware development. I think most of the Android tablets that you seen on store shelves now are probably basically 2012 models with some slight modifications. Of course they're under-powered compared to smartphones from 2015 and 2016 that have much more RAM and more powerful CPU:s.

Some exceptions:
Lenovo's new models. Their screens are not great, but they're okay for indoor use.
The Nvidia Shield K1.
Samsung's high end models, if you want to spend iPad-levels of cash on an Android tablet.

Re:Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact

[chipschap]

the fact is tablet specs actually don't suck, since they're good enough for the task most people use them for

This clearly states the issue.

A year ago I bought a supposedly high-end expensive Samsung tablet and completely regret it. I've gotten little use out of it because (and I confess to having done inadequate pre-purchase research) it is just about useless as a productivity device, even with a Bluetooth keyboard.

At about the same time I bought an Asus Zenbook, installed Linux on it, and it's been worth every cent I paid--- I can get work done, unlike on the tablet. (For me, work is mostly writing and blogging.)

Tablets indeed are media consumption devices and seem to be nearly always used as such. It leads to a self-limiting cycle in which a productivity oriented tablet won't come to pass.

16GB RAM, 1TB storage right here

[raymorris]

> "Where is the rugged 16GB RAM / 1TB Storage / 20-hour battery tablet?"

I think the submitter might be happier looking under a different category in Newegg. Newegg has 26 options with 8-16GB of RAM, and 256GB-1TB storage. Most products with that much RAM and storage ALSO come with a detachable or fold-away keyboard, so they are listed in the "2 in 1" category.

Re:Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact

[yithar7153]

Yeah, I agree with you. I don't understand why he doesn't just buy a laptop with those specs, as laptops are better productivity devices. It's not clear to me why he specifically needs a tablet with those specs.

re: complaints relatively incorrect?

[King_TJ]

I have to disagree that "all of my complaints are relatively incorrect". I'm glad you haven't experienced issues typing on the MS keyboard cover, but it's a fact that many of our users have. The Surface Pro is designed so it props upright along the edge of the cover, and the cover is a plastic and fabric combo that's slightly flexible. That means if you're sitting on a train or other form of public transportation and it's vibrating/bouncing around, the Surface Pro 4 can't really be held still by the keyboard portion - unlike a laptop with a traditional hinged lid firmly attached to the bottom half of the shell. That doesn't even begin to discuss such questions as why MS feels the need to sell the keyboard cover as an *option* for over $100 on a computer this expensive? Seems to me it should be included, as I've never met anyone who bought a Surface Pro 4 and decided to skip the keyboard cover.

As for the font scaling? Try any of a number of older apps developed using Java 6.... It's typically not compiled to be "scaling aware" (even if Java 6 technically did offer the option to compile source that way). Our Fonality VoIP "HUD" control panel is one such example. On a Surface Pro 4, if you launch it - you can't even see the phone extensions you're trying to click on because it draws them so tiny. There's no way to get Windows 10 to tell the app to draw it larger in proportion to everything else. All you can do is drag it onto a regular (non 4K) external display where it will display properly.

Re: complaints relatively incorrect?

[bananaquackmoo]

What I'm hearing is "I want to use the keyboard a very specific way that the Surface Keyboard doesn't do" and "I have a problem with Java 6". It's like complaining that the 2 door car you bought doesn't have 4 doors. Why not buy the 4 door car then? I'm saying that I'm very happy with my Surface Pro. The only thing which could make me happier is a better GPU.