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iPad vs. Android tablets- your thoughts?

S

sergey

Android Enthusiast
I own an iPad and I love it.

However, when Rubin pulled out that Motorola tablet during that All Things D forum, it definitely got me interested. Right now, the iPad dominates the tablet market. You can go on about all the android tablets out now, but they're all crappy. The Samsung Tab is a nice try, but not good enough. CES is pretty much here and I'm rooting for the Motorola tablet, and any of the other Honeycomb, Tegra 2 tablet. C'mon guys, wi-fi only versions too!

I hope this isn't a repeat of the last CES where everybody was showing off tablets and 6months later, nothing.

For me, what would make it a blockbuster Android tablet fest tomorrow are the brand-name tablets- Motorola, HTC, Samsung, those companies coming out with tablets. But it's gonna need some sexy software- I hope that Honeycomb extends that "OMG" feeling from Rubin's Demo. I also would love to see Netflix on this (they did say it was coming early 2011) and Google's newstand released at the same time. I would also like to see some games take advantage of Tegra 2, we all know it can handle that. That would be a serious threat to the iPad, since Apple's iBook and digital newsstand flopped... but thanks to Kindle, it is still a viable eBook reader.
 
I'm afraid to say I agree with you that Android tablets aren't very good at the moment. I still don't like the iPad though, I wouldn't buy either tbh.
I'm looking forward to CES and Motorola with their XOOM.
I know HTC patented a 'HTC Scribe' which is described as a tablet.
I'm starting to wonder if Honeycomb is as good as it's rumoured to be however, it's said to be 2.4 rather than 3.0 which leaves me wondering if it's going to have all that many improvements apart from supporting tablets... hmm...
I hope there's a Nexus tablet.
 
I will agree that the iPad is pretty much top it's game, specially against everything out there right now, but after seeing leaks of Acer, Motorola and Toshiba tablets I think a worthy opponent is almost upon us. As long as Honeycomb is up for the challenge I am ready to step into the tablet arena. Even with an iPad 2 on the horizon I think that some of these higher quality Android tablets will still beat it.

The tablet makes a lot of sense for me since I spend a good portion of my work week on a train and could benefit from a screen larger then my phone's (all though a 4.3" screen phone might just work for me). I have played with the iPad before and while it is very nice I just really don't want another Apple product (was an iphone person for 2 years). I rather have a tablet that I can sign in with my google account and all my information (contacts, pictures, apps) shows up.

The worst part about CES is seeing all the awesome stuff and then waiting months before any of them actually come out.
 
sergey said:
I own an iPad and I love it.

However, when Rubin pulled out that Motorola tablet during that All Things D forum, it definitely got me interested. Right now, the iPad dominates the tablet market. You can go on about all the android tablets out now, but they're all crappy. The Samsung Tab is a nice try, but not good enough. CES is pretty much here and I'm rooting for the Motorola tablet, and any of the other Honeycomb, Tegra 2 tablet. C'mon guys, wi-fi only versions too!

I hope this isn't a repeat of the last CES where everybody was showing off tablets and 6months later, nothing.

For me, what would make it a blockbuster Android tablet fest tomorrow are the brand-name tablets- Motorola, HTC, Samsung, those companies coming out with tablets. But it's gonna need some sexy software- I hope that Honeycomb extends that "OMG" feeling from Rubin's Demo. I also would love to see Netflix on this (they did say it was coming early 2011) and Google's newstand released at the same time. I would also like to see some games take advantage of Tegra 2, we all know it can handle that. That would be a serious threat to the iPad, since Apple's iBook and digital newsstand flopped... but thanks to Kindle, it is still a viable eBook reader.
Click to expand...

I'm super ignorant when it comes to the Ipad and it's capabilities. I've seen it and at first glance I think it's a bigger version of an Ipod touch. The same goes with the Android tablets that are out now, I think they are bigger versions of current Android phones and MIDs.
As a matter of fact, I think all the tablets out now including Apple and Android tablets have less functionality than the Ipod touch/Iphone 4 and some of the higher end Android phones.

With that said, what type of Ipad specific apps are out there that can't be utilized on an Iphone or Ipod touch? I mean besides having the non optimized resolution? I can't find any in the Android Market so I wonder the same for the Ipad and it's apps store.

I think this is where Google could change things around with creating a tablet specific OS. I posted in my poll thread, that the tablet specific gmail app shows what they are trying to do with Honeycomb. They fragmented (thanks Martimus) the gmail app to take advantage of the large touchscreen and add a different feel when using the gmail app on tablets. I suspect that they will also used fragmentation on the Honeycomb UI and the devs for tablet apps will do the same. I think this would dissolve the notion that an Android tablet is just a bigger version of an Android Phone.

I think that is a huge win for Google and Android if they can successfully do that. I haven't seen the Honeycomb OS but I sure hope it is what I think it is.
 
To me the iPad is simply an iPod with a larger screen. Personally I don't much like either...

With respect to Android tablets, there are several "diamonds in the rough" currently available but nothing that's properly optimized out of the box. Hopefully this will change in the coming months.
 
I can give some insight on this as I have owned both the iPad and the tab. I have an Evo and love it, also love android. The android tablets have a long way to go to beat the iPad. I sold my iPad to get the tab, took the tab back after a week and bought another iPad. 7 inches is too small. My Evo is 4.3 already. Watching a movie on the tab was just ok, nothing like the iPad, even with it's higher resolution. There are also way more apps and accessories for the iPad.

Where the android tablets are getting it wrong is they are only focused on specs. That's nice and all but people don't buy products on specs alone and that's what apple haters don't get. Apple creates attractive devices people want and your average person isn't going to look at a samsung tab and go oh wait, this has 512 RAM so let me get this instead of this iPad. To be honest, my iPad is just as fast as the tab was, if not faster, with half the RAM. I think HTC is the best bet to make a tablet that gives the iPad real competition. Looks like the scribe is only going to be a 7 inch though, that's disappointing. The android platform, the market and the devices need more polishing before being a real threat to apple and the iPad.
 
mbell75 said:
I can give some insight on this as I have owned both the iPad and the tab. I have an Evo and love it, also love android. The android tablets have a long way to go to beat the iPad. I sold my iPad to get the tab, took the tab back after a week and bought another iPad. 7 inches is too small. My Evo is 4.3 already. Watching a movie on the tab was just ok, nothing like the iPad, even with it's higher resolution. There are also way more apps and accessories for the iPad.

Where the android tablets are getting it wrong is they are only focused on specs. That's nice and all but people don't buy products on specs alone and that's what apple haters don't get. Apple creates attractive devices people want and your average person isn't going to look at a samsung tab and go oh wait, this has 512 RAM so let me get this instead of this iPad. To be honest, my iPad is just as fast as the tab was, if not faster, with half the RAM. I think HTC is the best bet to make a tablet that gives the iPad real competition. Looks like the scribe is only going to be a 7 inch though, that's disappointing. The android platform, the market and the devices need more polishing before being a real threat to apple and the iPad.
Click to expand...

I agree for the most part. I don't think specs are everything to apple their UI and software doesn't take much to run. Now android on the other hand, specs are super important since their software needs good hardware to keep up with their ever changing OS. I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing for Android because with Honeycomb, almost all tablets capable of running that OS will be an automatic competitor to the Ipad.

Oh btw, no one answered my question about ipad apps? I really do want to know.
 
xmr405o said:
I agree for the most part. I don't think specs are everything to apple their UI and software doesn't take much to run. Now android on the other hand, specs are super important since their software needs good hardware to keep up with their ever changing OS. I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing for Android because with Honeycomb, almost all tablets capable of running that OS will be an automatic competitor to the Ipad.

Oh btw, no one answered my question about ipad apps? I really do want to know.
Click to expand...

Question about iPad specific apps? I believe magic piano and most of these musical apps are iPad specific as was the elements one until recently. The iPad is not about that though, it's about functionality and ease of use.
 
xmr405o said:
Oh btw, no one answered my question about ipad apps? I really do want to know.
Click to expand...

There are a few compelling apps on the iPad.

FlipBoard. It is like a magazine layout for your Facebook/Twitter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2vpvEDS00o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7umqKbQ3PA&feature=related

You can't replicate this interface on the iPhone or any Android Phone.

There also magazine apps like Zinio.
I use Zinio to read all my 'real' magazine subscriptions like Natl Geographics, Road-n-track, my British/Euro weeklies,etc.

Also, various companies make iPad magazine apps like MAXIM, Wired, Slate,etc.

Then there are the video apps like ABC, Hulu, and even Netflix which are not the same on their phone versions.

The most important app for me is iSSH.
There really is no comparison to anything.
It is 10 times better than the phone version and decimates any Android competitor like ConnectBot.
It allows you to SSH, VNC but most importantly, Do X11. It has a X11 Client built in. This alone sells it for me.

As for the SSH client, it is dramatically much better because of the UI.
The keyboard floats transparently or solid over your terminal session. It has modal pop-ups for all your keyboard bindings, escape, and control, tab and FN.

I can live in this app all day long to manage UNIX servers. You can basically turn an Ipad into a dumb X-terminal that runs remote X-Apps with the built in X-client.

Then there are exclusive apps that haven't appeared on the Google marketplace like VLC.

With VLC, an iPad can play any video thrown an it including .wmvs, .avis and .flvs. Android has RockPlayer but there is simply no comparison in terms of the breadth-of-capabilities.
Coupled with an app like FileBrowser, you can mount Windows shares and stream any media file.

People can talk about removable sd cards and the such but I have an iPad that connects to a 4TB video server and can stream any video file including various 1080p h.264 movie files.
I have over 1TB of flash .flvs and I stream using FileBrowser which launches VLC. No synching. No iTunes involved.

The other night, while I was in bed, I remotely SSHed into my Home server from my iPad, ran handbrake/ffmpeg that ripped a DVD to my network share and watched the video all from my iPad. That is powerful stuff.
 
RoboMonkey said:
And lets not forget about T3 baby!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UccnoYMdGQ

And Victoria's Secret:
Victoria's Secret iPad App Is Full of Lusty Eye Candy


And the 10 hours of streaming video battery life. No droid tablet will ever get close to that as long as they keep using flash. I have an EVO and iPad by the way (never did like the iPhone or iPod.) And the iPad is still slower than $hit...no fan boy of anything other than the best tech here.
Click to expand...

Hmmmmmm......I like. Lol. I'm gonna get an ipad lol. Fyi- my gtablet can get over 10 hrs on heavy use so I'm guessing the more optimizations are made on the tegra 2 processor the battery life will get better. So I don't think flash will be an issue.
 
mrspeedmaster said:
There are a few compelling apps on the iPad.

FlipBoard. It is like a magazine layout for your Facebook/Twitter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2vpvEDS00o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7umqKbQ3PA&feature=related

You can't replicate this interface on the iPhone or any Android Phone.

There also magazine apps like Zinio.
I use Zinio to read all my 'real' magazine subscriptions like Natl Geographics, Road-n-track, my British/Euro weeklies,etc.

Also, various companies make iPad magazine apps like MAXIM, Wired, Slate,etc.

Then there are the video apps like ABC, Hulu, and even Netflix which are not the same on their phone versions.

The most important app for me is iSSH.
There really is no comparison to anything.
It is 10 times better than the phone version and decimates any Android competitor like ConnectBot.
It allows you to SSH, VNC but most importantly, Do X11. It has a X11 Client built in. This alone sells it for me.

As for the SSH client, it is dramatically much better because of the UI.
The keyboard floats transparently or solid over your terminal session. It has modal pop-ups for all your keyboard bindings, escape, and control, tab and FN.

I can live in this app all day long to manage UNIX servers. You can basically turn an Ipad into a dumb X-terminal that runs remote X-Apps with the built in X-client.

Then there are exclusive apps that haven't appeared on the Google marketplace like VLC.

With VLC, an iPad can play any video thrown an it including .wmvs, .avis and .flvs. Android has RockPlayer but there is simply no comparison in terms of the breadth-of-capabilities.
Coupled with an app like FileBrowser, you can mount Windows shares and stream any media file.

People can talk about removable sd cards and the such but I have an iPad that connects to a 4TB video server and can stream any video file including various 1080p h.264 movie files.
I have over 1TB of flash .flvs and I stream using FileBrowser which launches VLC. No synching. No iTunes involved.

The other night, while I was in bed, I remotely SSHed into my Home server from my iPad, ran handbrake/ffmpeg that ripped a DVD to my network share and watched the video all from my iPad. That is powerful stuff.
Click to expand...

So after the hulu reference, you completely lost me with the ssh stuff.:o. But sounds cool tho. Anyways, I've seen zinio and I have to agree that interface makes great use of the ipads screen. However, is the reason why it can't be replicated on the iphone or touch, is because of the screen and resolution?
 
I think it's fair to say that Apple has the best tablet to date. I do not like the Galaxy tab and others so far. But I'm confident that there will be an Android tablet in the near future that will beat the iPad, just like the Android smartphones are doing as we speak.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Apple. But I find their software to be rather acient when compared to Android. The only positive thing about their software is the fact that it's released on every phone at the same time no matter what kind it is (3GS, 4, iPad,..).
 
My honest opinion is that I would, in every case, just rather have a netbook or notebook. Just my opinion of course, but at the prices these things are running these days I feel I am getting more bang for my buck with one of those.
 
The upcoming Asus tabs look REALLY nice. Several sizes and options. The Moto Xoom is another very nice looking device. Except for crappy LCD, the Viewsonic Gtab is a great device right now. But yes, it takes rooting and ROMing to make it so. Right now I'm most interested in the Asus transformer tab. I despise Apple and the honks that can think nothing but apple, apple, apple. I despise proprietary "anything", and therefore Apple will never be for me. They do make very good products and they have a strangle hold on some app developers, etc, but I think that will slowly shift as Android continues to grow.
 
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