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

[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.

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.

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 :/

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: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?!?!?!

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...

Re:Here:

[PopeRatzo]

Not even a LMGTFY.

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

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.